Have you ever been part of a debate over the dress requirement for an evening or event? This usually isn’t a supper club issue, but it isn’t uncommon either.
In my former life at Kraft we were hosting an event at a Research Chefs Association trade show in Montreal. The venue for the event was magnificent and our budget wasn’t. We staged the event doing a lot of the work ourselves. As we were developing the invitation for the event we had a healthy debate about what we should tell people to wear. Our Marketing department wanted to require formal attire. Our Sales department wanted to keep it business casual. In the middle of the debate one of our Sous Chefs walked over to a black board and wrote:
“ATTIRE SHOULD MATCH THE ELEGANCE OF THE EVENING”
The debate was instantly over. The invitations went out and our event became the “Go to” event of the show.
Check out the video on the event.
I can remember showing the invitation to my then 85 year old mother. Her reaction was: “Who wrote this? It is simply brilliant!” I told her that our chef Amanda had written it. She said: “A chef wrote this? She should be writing your advertising copy”. I probably should explain that past being a great chef, Amanda is also really gifted. She did get a degree in English Literature before deciding to enter the culinary world. It was fun working with such sharp people.
One lesson I did learn about invitations from the corporate world that does carryover into supper clubs is that all invitations should state:
DATE:
TIME:
PLACE:
Those three requirements are critical and I am consistently amazed how many times they get left off. I heard a similar story last week. The head of HR at a local company was telling me how he received a resume from a student from a major University that had lots of wonderful information, but no name on it. You can debate dress, what to bring, and RSVP requirements, but you can’t forget the date, time and place.
And, if you have trouble with the wording of the invitation, defer to the chef with a degree in English literature.
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