Festivals: Turning F&B into an Event

 
Generally speaking, everything revolves around fine dining and drinking when people get together to celebrate. Hence, it’s no great intellectual leap to the idea of getting together to enjoy exclusive culinary delights in the company of like-minded people. The spectrum covered by such festivals ranges from elite gourmet dinners to mass picnics. In many cases, a multifarious programme attracts gourmets to scenic regions with their own culinary traditions, on which the festivals then focus. And, no less frequently, celebrity chefs, whose creations are normally reserved for their affluent guests, are only too pleased to demonstrate their skills – an ideal opportunity for lovers of the culinary arts to watch them at work, to learn and to enjoy. A pan-European survey.
 

 
Switzerland
Since 1994, the name St. Moritz has been synonymous not only with winter sports but also with ‘the mother of all gourmet festivals’, a unique event for the world’s best chefs and for lovers of fine cooking. Naturally, as a meeting place for rich and beautiful people and not a destination for the masses, St. Moritz was hardly uncharted culinary territory in 1994 and it could already boast excellent restaurants and 5-star hotels with first-classchefs. The idea of holding a top gastronomic event alongside sporting highlights, such as horse racing and polo tournaments on the frozen lake, Alpine skiing championships and windsurfing marathons, caught on immediately among St. Moritz’s cooking and marketing professionals with the result that the first St. Moritz Gourmet Festival was held from 28 January to 6 February 1994 – literally a ‘summit meeting’ becausethe first motto was ‘Leading chefs promote the young generation of top chefs’. Over the following years, the worldwide network of gastronomic contacts was extended and this still guarantees the presence of the best international teams of chefs at the annual festival. The specialevents, e.g., Opening Cocktail, Kitchen Party, Gourmet Safari and Grand Finale, have also become classic episodes at other gourmet festivals and a fixed part of the programme. St. Moritz is a unique setting with 40 hotels, 60% of them in the four to five star category. There are no less than five 5-star hotels here – more than anywhere else in Switzerland. The target group of theGourmet Festival: both guests and locals. For the guest chefs, however, the Festival is anything but a holiday. Besides the ‘Diners Dégustation’ (daily in all partner restaurants), they have to participate in three official events (Opening, Kitchen, Finale), the ‘Safaris’ and between 4 and 6 special events for the sponsors. The emphasis at the St. Moritz Gourmet Festival has always been not only on networking and the exchange of culinary information but also on variety and turning gastronomy into an event.
 
The Festival, which takes place every year at the end of January/beginning of February, is organised by President Reto Mathis, son of ‘founder’ Hartly Mathis, Vice President Vic Jacob (Suvretta Haus), Lothar Molitor (head chef, Carlton Hotels) and the directors of the town’s nine best hotels. Every year a motto is laid down as guideline for the chefs and their creations. In 2000, for example, the millennium began ‘Young & Wild’ while five years later, in 2005, it was women only at the stove with the ‘Grandes Dames de la Haute Cuisine’. In 2006, the organisers recalled the roots of the festival with ‘Edition Suisse’ and invited Swiss chefs only. For the 15th anniversary in 2008, the festival reminded its guests that it is ‘The Original’, and in 2009, from 28 January to 2 February, there are going to be some ‘Spicy Chefs’ from Europe and Mexico. Usually, no less than 250 guests attend the Grand Opening Cocktail at the Carlton Hotel, 200 crowd into the kitchen of Badrutt’s Palace Hotel for the Kitchen Party while 400 enjoy the Grand Gourmet Finale in the VIP marquee on the frozen Lake St. Moritz. Prices: from CHF40 (Chocolate Tasting) to CHF480 (Finale).
 
www.stmoritz-gourmetfestival.ch
 

 
Another annual Mecca for gourmets is the mountain village of Gstaad in the Bernese Oberland when the gourmet community holds the Davidoff Saveurs. Organised for the first time in 2002, the Saveurs claims to be, “The festival for authentic pleasures from the kitchen, cellar and humidor; a presentation of the genuine, the original, prepared and made to a very high standard and enjoyed in a stylish setting.” In 2008, from 11 to 20 July, the event was characterised not only by various splendid dinners but also by a ‘pleasure golf tournament’, a mountain-meadow breakfast, lunch at 3,000 m and an evening with the Swiss national cooking team. Among the guest chefs participating were Ivo Adam, Andreas Caminada and Antonio Colaianni. Main sponsor Davidoff provides cognac and cigars for all events, which are held in exclusive locations such as Hotel Restaurant Schauenstein, Grand Hotel Bellevue and Hotel Grand Chalet. The finale is an extraordinary brunch at Golfhotel Les Hauts de Gstaad, before which the participants have to go on a mountain hike and collect the herbs and mushrooms for the meal. The prices for the individual events range from CHF110 to 666. Today, Saveurs Festival has offshoots in Mauritius (2007) and Ticino (2008).
 
www.saveurs-gstaad.ch
 

 
Incidentally, Davidoff has been the sponsor of numerous gourmet events since the beginning of the decade. They include not only the ‘original’ in St. Moritz but also comparable events in Kitzbühel, Berlin and on Sylt. Additionally, the company supports Gault Millau’s annual ‘Tour Gastronomique’ in many countries, a culinary excursion to the nation’s top restaurants. In Switzerland, this year’s tour took participants, inter alia, to Gérard Rabaey at Restaurant Le Pont de Brent (Brent), to Marcus G. Lindner (Restaurant Mesa, Zurich) and to Fredi Boss at Restaurant Meridiano (Hotel Allegro Bern). For an average of around CHF200, a limited number of guests can enjoy a gourmet meal created by the top chef of the restaurant concerned together with appropriate wines, cognac and cigars supplied by Davidoff. Some of the events are also held on board the MS Davidoff, a luxuriously furnished, 27-m-long ship on Lake Zurich.Similar events are held in Germany and France.
 
www.davidoff.com
 

 
Festival Business Characteristics
 

• The focus of food festivals, not to mention their raison d’être, is on nothing more or less than good food and drink. Fringe programmes of cultural and/or business activities are secondary. The name of the game: to make an event of food & beverages.
• The number of participants ranges from a few hundred to a hundred thousand. And they can last from a weekend to half a year or more.
• In many cases, the event figureheads are celebrity chefs who make guest appearances alongside local chefs, let guests watch them working and give a wider audience the chance to enjoy their creations.
• Food festivals are frequently used to promote local food and beverages and, in this way, to give a boost to marketing efforts for regional products and tourism.
• The organisers are often local restaurateurs, hoteliers, food producers, tourism organisations, municipal/regional authorities and trade media.
• Keys to success: super location, integration of guests into the cooking process, personal contacts to (prominent) chefs, potent PR.
• Negative factor: bad weather.

Read in the full article more about the following countries:Switzerland, Germany, Austria, UK, Irland, Netherland, Belgium, Italy, France and Spain
 

 
| 22 October 2008 |