Food and Beverage
[food]
1. any nourishing substance that is eaten, drunk or consumed to sustain life, provide energy, promote growth, etc.
2. a particular kind of nourishment
As meetings professionals gradually begin to resume planning in-person meetings and events, one of the most impacted components will be food and beverage (F&B). F&B has always been crucial to executing a successful event, but how will the post-COVID era impact this long-standing event component? In this Education Essentials, you'll learn how to balance post-COVID health and safety protocols with sustainability efforts, what F&B trends to watch for in 2021, how you can eliminate food waste and more.
FICP Anytime Webinar: The Sustainability Outlook: Food & Beverage
When it comes to selecting meeting menus, the choices meetings professionals and their catering partners make are vital to the well-being of their attendees, budget and the planet. Sustainable food and beverage requires much more than calculating your carbon footprint. In lies a responsibility for making healthy and safe food choices for a large number of people while also maximizing budgets and minimizing waste. And while the COVID-19 pandemic enabled a return to more single-use packaging and plastic in the short term, sustainability is still an achievable goal to maintain and improve your events. From incorporating organic products, minimizing transportation, minimizing waste and utilizing registration systems (and even more!), this upcoming FICP Anytime webinar, taking place on Friday, July 30, will provide key considerations for creating sustainable F&B programs for your events, as well as resources to assist you. Register on TheNetwork.
Sustainability in F&B
F&B post-COVID will likely prioritize health and safety, yet one question remains over how sustainability will fit in with the new world of F&B. Will the need for pre-packaged convenience and perceived safety be prioritized over the still urgent need to reduce food and packaging waste? According to Centerplate, both meetings professionals and hospitality partners are making an effort to balance concerns around safety and health with environmental considerations. Read more.
Looking Ahead: F&B in 2021
In this article, Doug Quattrini, 2020 president of the National Association for Catering & Events, identifies five central themes for F&B-related meeting elements this year. Meetings professionals can expect pre-packaged or individually portioned items to remain the norm, multiple points of service to be a requirement and venues will need to clearly communicate their safety protocols.
Preventing Food Waste
In this guest blog by Jim Spellos, Jim provides commentary and resources on how meetings professionals can join the no waste movement and donate leftover food to others in need. For years, meetings professionals have been protected by the nation’s Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act that protects all donors, stating that except in cases of gross negligence (i.e. cases where the donator knew that the food was likely harmful to the health and well-being of another person), all people and organizations are protected against liability.
#TBT – FICP Chats: The Return of In-Person Events – Best Practices for a Successful Event
In this recent FICP Chats, FICP Board Member Jen Squeglia, CMP, brought together FICP meetings professional members and hospitality partners to moderate a discussion about the future of meetings. During this discussion, the group focused on the return of in-person events and best practices for a successful event, particularly on F&B planning, agenda design, meeting sets and health security plans. Access the recording here.
CMP Corner
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