New Ideas

For a corporate party held last year in the Washington area, Magnolia Bluebird Design & Events worked with Occasions Caterers to design several made-to-order food stations, including one that let guests customize champagne cocktails. Garnish options included herbs, fruit, house-made syrups, and flavored sugar cubes.

At the February opening of Washington venue the Powerhouse, Design Cuisine added a D.I.Y. element to the cheese and charcuterie buffet: Guests topped their selections with unique spices displayed in suspended glass bowls or flavored olive oils and vinegars housed in squeeze bottles.

New York’s Great Performances can set up a dessert station featuring hanging pastry bags filled with flavored custards that guests pipe into mini beignets and profiteroles. Custard flavors include tangerine, mint, three-berry, Earl Grey, and vanilla bean.

For an event in April, Scoozi Events NYC designed a “foraged” custom cocktail bar that allowed guests to pick garden-fresh herbs, fruits, and veggies for bartenders to add to their drinks.

Wolfgang Puck Catering offers a ­poutine station that lets guests top individual plates of French fries with beef or vegetarian gravy and mozzarella or cheddar cheese curds, plus a variety of other toppings including brisket, ham, or duck confit.

At the Museum of Science & Industry’s Black Creativity gala in Chicago in January, Sodexo provided a table that held hanging terrariums of flavored salts including red chili, pink Hawaiian, smoke, and rosemary. Also on hand: grinders holding pink, green, white, and black pepper, as well as a variety of flavored butters such as lavender honey and garlic.

At Microsoft Convergence in March, organizers offered buttons to help like-minded attendees more easily identify and network with one another. Buttons can be a simple and inexpensive way to help attendees share their pride in attending an event.

To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Sterling Engagements hosted a party in Los Angeles in 2015, where vast catering options throughout the residential venue included a milk-and-cookies dessert bar.

In 2013, the New York City Opera staged the United States premiere of the opera Anna Nicole. The dessert table got a boudoir-inspired look, with a menu was written on mirrors in lipstick. Candy overflowed from jewelry boxes and glass jars, and Lucite displays offered pink cotton candy presented in paper cones.

A neutral palette made for a sophisticated feel at a wedding at the Four Seasons Restaurant.

The ground floor of the event space featured square cut-out frames for photo ops. “Fujifilm came to us as their experiential activation partner because they wanted to take a leap out of the box into direct-to-consumer marketing. The only creative guideline was that the highlight of the experience was square,” Kayne said.