The 2000 corporate hospitality guests and 400 people working behind the scenes at The Prince’s Trust ‘Party in the Park’, Bon Jovi and Shania Twain concerts, in Hyde Park this summer, enjoyed the culinary delights of the UK’s premiere event catering companies, Chevalier Event Design and Eat to the Beat.

The sister companies share the attributes of producing imaginative menus and excellent food in logistically challenging event locations. Whilst Chevalier Event Design specialise in whetting the appetite of VIP’s and corporate guests at prestigious events, Eat to the Beat provide tasty, nutritionally balanced food for artists and production crews for some of the world’s largest productions.

Chevalier Event Design
Chevalier created a range of exquisite hot and cold buffet menus and provided the all important bars, amidst one of Britain’s warmest and driest spells of weather, for The Prince’s Trust corporate hospitality guests in the backstage area for the three concerts, which totalled 2000 guests over the three shows.

The Prince’s Trust offered these ‘hot tickets’ as part of their fundraising activities, giving fans the opportunity to watch their favourite artists as part of a deluxe experience.

Caroline Wright, Special Events Project Manager for The Prince’s Trust commented;
“Chevalier provided a fantastic service at The Prince’s Trust’s biggest annual fundraiser, Party in the Park, where we were entertaining our very important donors who enable us to continue to support thousands of young people.”

Eat to the Beat
Eat to the Beat were on site for six weeks in their temporary kitchen and production catering marquee, providing a constantly changing menu for up to 400 event professionals per day, working on the production of one of Europe’s largest event infrastructures. Project manager Suzie D’Andrea managed up to 17 staff per day in an incredibly relaxed manner considering the magnitude of the task. She explained:

”We have drawn on our experience of catering for this event from the previous two years, so we knew what to expect. This whole event is very well organised, I would have to say this is the best job to work on all summer; it’s all very civilised. Tony Wheeler and John Probyn give us the best equipment, so we can get on with catering for them easily.”

The equipment Suzie referred to was a PKL equipped kitchen, a good-sized food preparation area in their De Boer marquee, 3 walk in fridges (from Lowe Refrigeration) and two porta-cabins to serve as stores and a site office.

During their time on site the staff were on rotated 12-hour shifts, preparing full breakfast (choice of cooked, cereal, fruit and yoghurt), lunch (a constantly changing choice from a hot and cold buffet table) and dinner (offering a 3-cource dinner with 4 menu choices).

John Probyn commented:
“Once again the food on site has made it a pleasure to work in Hyde Park – it’s like having one of London’s finest restaurants on your doorstep!”