Bringing Back Banquets

Club and resort chefs are putting a renewed focus on this important piece of the pie //

By Amanda Baltazar

Shangri-La Resort and Golf Club in Monkey Island, Oklahoma, was “rediscovered” during the COVID-19 pandemic. As nearby residents stopped traveling, they instead turned to what was local, and that meant holding more banqueting events there.

Last year, banqueting at Shangri-La constituted just less than a third of food and beverage business, and sales are anticipated to rise even further — to 40% to 45% this year.

banquet team — which consists of a banquet chef and five employees, as well as a banquet manager and assistant manager — prepares meals for everything from high-end fundraising dinners to corporate meals and family reunions.

Nine areas in the hotel are designated for events, but there are a number of other outdoor areas that can be used, too. “In season it's not uncommon to have five or six events at the same time at one meal period,” Chef Moosmiller says. Plus, staff members are cross-trained. “In the kitchen we utilize any set of hands that has time to help. If the restaurant happens to be slow, staff will help with prep or plating of events; we also use this model on the front of the house as well. If we are slow in the restaurant, staff helps with setup and breakdown of events.”

Banqueting constitutes around 50% of business at The Abbey Resort & Avani Spa in Fontana, Wisconsin, where Chef Luis Quezada, CEC, is the executive chef.

ACF Chef Jonathan Moosmiller, CMC, AAC (pictured above), joined the resort in August 2021 as the executive director of food and beverage, and loves the range that banqueting offers to him and his team. “It's very creative, and we have such a variety of levels of catering,” he says. Chef Moosmiller notes that his

“We do a little of everything,” he says, though he's only been at the resort since the end of 2022. This ranges from weddings to church groups and a lot of family events. The venue has 22 event spaces, inside and outside. Food is served at sit-down events and passed at cocktail events; some events have action stations. There are continental breakfasts, boxed lunches and everything in between.

Off-site events

In addition to on-site events, The Abbey Resort also caters to events held off-site within 15 miles. Staff from the resort always goes to the venue. “We help with the setup, and we want to make sure everything represents The Abbey well,” Chef Quezada says. “We have to make sure it is served as best it can be.”

The challenges with off-site events are transporting the food, maintaining its integrity and keeping food in a safe temperature zone. “We have had to be really creative to execute these events,” he says. “If possible, a way to manage the obstacles of off-site events is to utilize a satellite kitchen to finish production. In those cases, we perform all prep work at

The Abbey and then bring those items to the satellite kitchen and work from there.”

At Country Club of Detroit in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, banqueting constitutes about 50% of the $5 million food and beverage revenue with almost all of it done on-site. This is according to ACF Chef Brian Beland, CMC, AAC , executive chef (pictured above), who keeps the off-site business fairly hush-hush but will do small carryout dinners for up to 15 people, or even send a team to cater a small dinner in a member's home. “It's not a business model we promote, but working with the membership and trying to be the most accessible resource to them, we quietly will consider doing some things,” he says. This might include private fundraiser events, special business dinners and private family requests.

Menuing variety

Chef Quezada's favorite banqueting go-to’s, he says, are American and international barbecue items for casual events, and braised dishes for formal meals “because they present well.”

His favorite events are weddings. “It's a special day for the couple; we consider it an honor to be part of such a personal event,” he says. But he also loves the wide range of tasks that working at a resort offers. “It's always something different,” Chef Quezada says, “and it makes it more interesting for me as a chef because it's not like working in a restaurant where you do the same thing over and over. Here you have the opportunity to be doing an Italian wedding today, then a business group with American food tomorrow, then a Latin lunch the next day. We have so much freedom.”

Special diet considerations

One thing to be aware of in banqueting events is allergies and intolerances, Chef Moosmiller says, and his sales team tries to get ahead of those as much as possible. The difficult ones, he says, are the unplanned ones. To keep everyone happy, “we plan for a percentage [of special meals] over because there is always that person that becomes vegetarian as soon as the entree comes out.” He tries to make sure special meals cover a lot of bases, such as glutenfree and vegetarian, to suit last-minute orders, and he tries to always have things on hand he can pull up quickly.

What's important, he says, “is that the special meals are as good as the rest of the meal.” If they get requests for celiac meals, he'll designate one kitchen employee to handle that whole meal “so there's no chance for cross-contamination.”

Chefs Quezada also takes special diets seriously. He might use almond milk for sauces so they are dairy-free, and vegan stock in soups. Chef Beland, meanwhile, might dust a protein with gluten-free flour, which, he says, “doesn't affect the outcome of the dish.”

Chef Beland's team expects 10% to 15% of a banqueting group to have allergies, and no one calls ahead anymore, so he tries to make sure his staff always has food on hand to meet different needs. This might mean the banqueting team will need to prepare 110 dishes for a 100-person meal, but this, he says, allows them to have better meal execution and to keep stress levels down in the kitchen. “Plus we always look to member and guest satisfaction,” he says.

Supporting staff

Regularly scheduled events at Country Club of Detroit range from business lunches to Easter brunches and the ever-popular weddings. While Chef Beland says, “I don't pull out my knives as much as I used to,” he loves running a full food and beverage team and having so many different irons in the fire.

“It's all about empowering our team leaders to run their services. I'm a support system, trying to think a week, a month, a year, five years down the line,” he says. “I'm the visionary for our department and I provide a lot of direction for the club.” Chef Beland makes sure all restaurant cooks and chefs are trained and can partake in banquet services.

He also loves finding the right job for the right person. Having so many different things going on, he says, “allows us to recruit a lot of different people to our culinary team and find them a spot they enjoy. They might like consistency and the same thing day in, day out; they might like banqueting, with its known quantities; or they might prefer the hustle and bustle of the restaurant side. I like watching individuals grow, and I'm fortunate to do it through my passion with the kitchen.”