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What a company night actually needs
Four things, in this order: parking that is not an argument, a room that contains the noise, a bill that does not get split twenty ways at the end, and something to do at nine o’clock. Food is the fifth thing, which surprises people, but a good dinner in a venue that fails the other four still ends at eight-thirty with everyone standing awkwardly by the door.
Free street parking and a twenty-five-minute run on one highway cover the first. The rest is a conversation about which room and how the tab is set up — both of which are easier to settle in advance than on the night.
Start the conversation02
Pick the room for the shape of the night, not the headcount
A seated dinner with speeches and a stand-up event with a bar are different rooms even at identical headcounts. Old Main has a private room downstairs, the main dining room, the whole upstairs floor, and four thousand square feet of beer garden — which covers a board dinner for a dozen and a summer company party for a crowd, but not with the same space.
Capacities are confirmed on inquiry rather than published, because a wrong number on a web page is how an event goes wrong six weeks out.
A seated dinner and a stand-up night are different rooms even at the same headcount.
The four spaces03
The after-dinner problem, solved by a staircase
Every corporate dinner hits the same wall. The food is finished, half the room wants to keep going, half wants to go home, and there is nothing between those two options. So everybody goes home.
Upstairs there are two golf simulator bays, two pool tables, and a twenty-tap self-pour wall charged by the ounce. A simulator bay is the single most effective thing we have seen for keeping a group of people who work together in a room together — it turns the awkward hour into a competition, and nobody has to make conversation while they wait their turn.
The simulator bays04
If the event has to happen at your place
Office parks, halls, barns and warehouses all host events that would be better catered than ordered in. The same kitchen does carving stations, family-style beef dinners and appetiser spreads off-site, which means the thing that makes the restaurant worth driving to travels with it.
Packages and pricing are quoted against the actual event rather than listed, because headcount, service style and distance change the number enough that a published figure would be wrong for almost everyone.
Catering05
What to send us
The date, the headcount, seated or standing, and anything that is non-negotiable — a projector, a hard finish time, a budget per head, a vegetarian count. Four lines in an email is enough to get a straight answer about whether it works.
What we will come back with is which room fits, what the night looks like, and what it would cost. If the date is gone, we will say so rather than talk you into a room that is wrong.
Send an inquiry
