Farnborough Airshow

Date: 11-17 July 2016
Length of Event: Seven days
Location: Farnborough Airport, Hampshire

Background

Farnborough International Air Show is the biggest event in the aeronautical and defence industries calendars. The week-long event brings together over 200,000 of the most influential people in the procurement process from Princes and Sheikhs to Prime Ministers and Presidents.

Tapenade has catered corporate chalets at Farnborough International Air Show for over six consecutive years, working with global brand name Kallman Worldwide, as well as Martin Baker, Dassault Systems, Rafael, UTC and Kongsberg.

The Brief

For Tapenade, the overriding brief was to provide delicious, sophisticated and stylish food for a number of corporate clients at Farnborough International Air Show 2016. For this year’s show we needed to balance both consistency, which has helped foster repeat bookings, whilst living up to our reputation as innovators, offering on-trend and seasonal food to our clients and their guests.

Why Tapenade?

Throughout our tenure we have built a strong reputation for our passion, innovative food and service excellence, complemented by a focus on quality, detail and individual customer needs.

We also have an intuitive ability to be able to deliver catering that exceeds our clients’ expectations whist still adhering to the strict security, health and safety measures that are in place.

Finally, we have a proven track record for working in the Airshow marketplace. Emphasised by our continued presence at the Paris Air Show and Royal International Air Show, RAF Fairford in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015.

The Event

We understand scale and how to deliver excellence in line with big logistics. This year we delivered top-quality catering to 12 chalets (3,000 guests) and 1,200 people across a selection of exhibition stands over three days.

Key Challenges and Solutions

The sheer scale of the airshow presents obvious logistical challenges, especially year-on-year as Tapenade’s client list grows, resulting in more sites to take into consideration.

Uncontrollable factors always need to be considered. The rain this year was a big challenge, as this shut down the exhibition halls early on the Monday. However, we continued with our drinks receptions under mobile phone light for as long as possible until the halls were evacuated.

There was also many chalet rows that were closed and this disrupted vehicle movement, however we continued and this didn’t affect our level of service across all clients.