Hosting Holiday Parties with Gather

Have you planned your company’s holiday party yet? Gather is here to help!

Kira Doman sat down with Gather’s catering manager, Maddy Meyer, to discuss what all goes into booking a beautiful and memorable corporate dinner or holiday party at Gather on Broadway.

“Corporate dinners and holiday parties are much smaller than wedding parties and receptions, so the quantity of food ordered is also much less than the typical wedding, which allows more room for me and my staff to get creative in the kitchen,” Meyer explained. “When you go to a wedding there are strict deadlines and numbers to adhere to, trying to get 150-200 plates out and onto tables within a small timeframe can be a lot more challenging than it sounds, and that’s also why we keep the menu a bit more simple. For corporate dinners, it’s a much smaller audience, and people are coming from work to sit and relax while eating deliciously unique food. Corporate dinners or holiday parties are typically looking for a more elevated and exciting dining experience.”

While we at Gather strive to make wedding planning smooth and easy for the happy couple, the planning process for a corporate or holiday party is even easier! These smaller events allow Gather to really shine in giving it’s attendees a unique experience they well never forget, with very little planning and involvement on the booker’s part!

“We’re able to book corporate dinners and holiday parties much faster than we would a wedding using a pre-picked menu because there are usually no invitations to RSVP to, the meal counts can be more flexible, and the timeline is much shorter,” Meyer said. “Our booking timeline for a corporate or holiday party is typically one to three months out, and quite often they don't have a preference on what they're eating, or they'll ask for a prepared menu.”

There are many things that make booking a holiday or corporate party with Gather memorable. For example, we offer multiple ways of how to structure your party, giving you all the fun choices of your theme of party, and deciding what you want to offer as food and drink, and we’ll take it from there!

“We offer two options: You can either go the custom menu route, where I make a super custom menu, with custom appetizers, a custom dinner experience, a plated dessert, and then you would send out an RSVP to get people's meal choices; or, we offer the Grill Room Experience where, like a restaurant, you would order when you arrive. This way guests don't need to pick their menu ahead of time.”

We know the holiday time can be busy, it’s gift buying season, and deadlines are fast approaching before any holiday time-off, so planning the company party might not be at the top of your to-do list. That’s okay! We’re ready to help in any way possible.

“Quite often, the people who are booking the parties are assistants or someone booking for a much larger company, so we like to make it super easy,” Meyer promised. “We’ll give them all the information, a proposed menu, and promise them an amazing time, and they can take that, get it approved, book here, show up, and not have to worry about anything! We, at Gather, are going to go above and beyond and take that extra step to make sure it's not just your average holiday party, that it's going to be an amazing night out that everyone will enjoy, no matter who they are.”

We at Gather strive to make your experience completely relaxing, where you do not have to help with set-up or take-down of the party, let us take care of everything! 

“We like to schedule more wait staff for holiday parties than we would weddings because people are showing up to relax and kick their shoes off. They want to hang out with people from work, but not necessarily feel like they're at work,” Meyer smiled. “They want to feel comfortable, have fun, and dress up, so usually I would schedule a bit more wait staff just so we're able to be hospitable and are making those connections, making the guests feel like important people, rather than just a guest to wait on. We want to go above and beyond for these individuals who are here to have fun and hang out with their coworkers, and not stress about the day-to-day.”

Not only are these corporate and holiday dinners meant to be fun for attendees, but they’re also fun for the staff! Watching the party take shape into whatever theme the bookee has requested, and hearing the amazingly creative menu lineup leads for a unique experience for the whole team. 

“I love corporate dinners and holiday parties because their menus are typically custom-made for a specific group of people. I really get to play in the kitchen,” Meyer smiled enthusiastically. “When we do weddings the menu repeats quite frequently, whereas corporate dinners allow me to create a whole new menu, try new things, to really play and get creative.”

Meyer’s favorite ways to get creative in the kitchen are with desserts, due to her professional training as a pastry chef, and appetizers!

“There's so many like crazy things you can do with appetizers, it’ so fun,” Meyer exclaimed. “You can make someone's favorite steak dinner into a little mini skewer, or you can turn brunch into appetizers, things along those lines. I love getting creative with appetizers because you're able to get super seasonal and you can find things you won’t see any other time of year, so it allows you to get super creative and fun.”

“When it comes to plated desserts, I like to do something that's going to WOW someone because a lot of places will offer the typical cheesecake or flourless cake, the sorts of desserts that you see on every menu, but I like to go super sophisticated,” Meyer dished. “If you want a strawberry shortcake, everything's made from scratch. It's the best strawberry shortcake you’ll ever have, the biscuits are a different type of biscuit with a grated, specialty butter, or something that makes dessert more than just something you can have at home. I’d love to take gingerbread and turn it into a crazy tart rather than it just being a cookie that someone thinks about.”

It’s not just the freedom of creativity that opens up in the kitchen for Maddy Meyer when whipping up a menu for a party, but the crowd’s reaction is also entirely different from a wedding.

“I’m feeding people who are choosing to come and have dinner here, they're not necessarily getting invited just to this event and showing up to it,” Meyer noted. “What really makes it all worth it to me is being able to feed people and entice them to book again next year because what they had was amazing. I love my platform of getting to play and feed people stuff that they're not going to get anywhere else in town.”

For more information or to book your holiday party or corporate dinner with Gather visit - /www.gatheronbroadway.com/social-events