#GESPartnersDay: Wedding Planners, Caterers Interact on Future Opportunities, Safe Catering and More

by  Komal Darji Business Events | October 12, 2020 | Feature

GESPartnersDay Gourmet Entertainment Show

EVENTFAQS Media, in association with Touchwood Group, hosted #GESPartnersDay, an extension of the Gourmet Entertainment Show, on September 24, 2020 via a virtual event platform, Airmeet. The virtual event had a total of 127registrations.

The event successfully enabled caterers to become co-hosts and meet wedding planners to discuss ideas, learn what the best in the business is, share future plans, create partnerships and more.

#GESPartnersDay had 21 co-hosts who interacted with wedding planners to discuss future opportunities and discover new ways to deliver a safe catering experience at events.

The event was executed with an aim to collaborate and co-create, mould new partnerships, explore synergies between co-players, collaborate with celebrity chefs, restaurant owners and F&B stalwarts to come up with saleable products and menus for the #NewNormal.

Session one was on the topic ‘Opportunities in Intimate Catering’ with speakers Narender Somani, Chairman & MD, TGB Banquets & Hotels Ltd; Sammir S. Gogia, Director, Saltt Catering; Sanjay Vazirani, Chairman & Managing Director, Foodlink; Vijay Arora, Director, Touchwood Group; VirenderHanda, Director, Creative Cuisines Inc. and Vishal Nagdev, Co-founder, EVENTFAQS Media.

‘Collaboration Nation - Partnerships between chefs, caterers & restaurants’ was the second session of the virtual event with speakers Chef Nishant Dubey; Chef Priyanka Biswas; Pranav Bahl, Owner, Embassy Catering; Sanjay Khullar, Vice Chairman, The Seasons Group; Puneet Sikand, Managing Director, The Kitchen Art Co. and Vishal Nagdev, Co-founder, EVENTFAQS Media.

Glimpses from the sessions

“Post lockdown, we met alot of people, discussed concepts on how to cater at intimate weddings. We did a wedding at a house, in an open farmhouse and after five-six weddings, we have realised what will work and what will not. We will now focus on live stations where only one chef will be preparing food at one counter to maintain social distancing,” said Parth Girdhar, Director, Food Art Hospitality Pvt. Ltd.

Talking about their business amidst the pandemic, Narendra Somani, Chairman & Managing Director, TGB Banquets & Hotels Ltd., said, “In order to sustain our 300-400 permanent outdoor workers, we had to work for intimate weddings, provide catering services in hospitals, and also take up small orders. Working towards new opportunities, we did around Rs 1crore business per month during the lockdown. We are proposing a sit-down dinner concept to customers for small parties with a minimum of 20-50 people. Currently, all our services for intimate and small events focus on live counters.”

“We receive a lot of inquiries for an intimate in-house restaurant-like set-up where we can follow social distancing norms. If we are supposed to just give an infrastructure to the client, it becomes difficult for us to do business in terms of revenue,” added Puneet Sikand, Managing Director, The Kitchen Art Co.

“We will be moving out from plastic packaging as well as paper packaging. We are planning to move towards cutlery. We are coordinating with a large number of people based on our earlier projects for this new initiative. As of now, we have received about five orders. We are positive about receiving many more in the next few days,” said Gaurav Trehan, Director, Cha-Art.