Catersource + The Special Event’s 2025 trade show held at the Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale last week is now in the books, and here we recount what we saw, what we learned, and what to apply to our own work going forward.
PopUP CleanUP was selected as one of the speakers for our presentation on sustainability and event cleaning logistics: Keep Your Events Classy not Trashy! Event Cleaning Logistics & Landfill Diversion Strategies. Our 45 minute discourse addressed many topics found in our Sustainable Event Guide including how to create a zero waste event, certain decisions that should be made on the front end to avoid incurring costs on the back end, and how many cleaners, trash cans and dumpsters you will need for your event. It was an honor to be chosen and we hope to come back.
The first evening the Connect Social party at The Bonnet Museum and Home in Fort Lauderdale was a showcase in highlighting event trends. From Paintillio’s paint-by-numbers mural to a live painting demonstration by Trey Bryan to sustainable square palm leaf plates, the party gave guests plenty to enjoy and experience. Even though Florida brought out the rain that evening, the lush grounds, stunning art and decor, and historic venue set the stage for a fun and engaging evening. We are still dreaming about the plant-based gazapacho soup.
Tuesday’s flurry of conferences punctuated by our own presentation included Sebastien Center’s talk on how delivering the last 5% for a client is predicated on planning the first 95% exceptionally well. Sebastien emphasized how important responding quickly—preferably within the first 24 hours—is critical in terms of delivering first rate customer service and putting yourself in front of the competition.
After a dip into a vegan soul cooking demonstration where the hearts of palm crab cakes were delicious, a Marketing Masters panel discussed in depth the pros and cons of using artificial intelligence as a productivity tool and being careful about your privacy, data, and intellectual property. The one thing they stressed was to figure out your differentiators as a company and lean into those to separate yourself from the crowd.
The marquée event was the opening keynote speech by Will Guider, former owner of Eleven Madison Restaurant and author of Unreasonable Hospitality. The emphasis of his message was to do something where no one else does anything and that you want to pursue making people feel seen. He went on to say that the pre-meal or pre-event gathering is the most important part of any shift because that’s where you can set the tone, get everyone on the same page mentally and energetically, and learn. The people at the top have all the authority and the people at the bottom have all the information, and these meetings allow both sides of that dynamic to present different perspectives on the business and how to best serve the client base.
The Diced Competition is a real-time cooking show where the chefs were given salmon, plantain chips, lychee nuts, black eyed peas, and a handful of spices and told to create an original dish in an hour. As fans of THE GREAT BRITISH BAKING SHOW and UNBELIEVABLY VEGAN WITH CHEF CHARITY, this was undoubtedly the most entertaining and creative part of the conference.
We also learned Mickey’s Ten Commandments for event planners at the Disneyland Events’ presentation Internal Partnerships on Planning and Executing Memorable Events.
- Know your audience and the purpose of the event.
- Wear your guest’s shoes.
- Organize the flow of people and ideas.
- Create a Wienie (a visual magnet).
- Communicate with visual literacy.
- Avoid overload.
- Tell one story at a time.
- Avoid contradiction: don’t compromise your core values and do the right thing.
- For every ounce of treatment, provide a tone of treatment. Have fun!
- Keep it up.
Both presenters emphasized how storytelling is an important part of any event and used ample examples from the Disneyland playbook and amusement park of how they put these principles into practice.
As they had in Austin in 2024, the tradeshow floor was an amalgam of event producers, staffing app and recipe planning software companies, sustainable food ware vendors including PackNWood, Jungle, Verterra, and Kaneka’s Green Planet, and caterers.
Brett Culp’s closing keynote was both entertaining and emotionally affecting. His story about a media-shy guy who froze on the local television news where he was trying to raise awareness for the screening of Culp’s documentary LEGENDS OF THE KNIGHT where all proceeds went to nonprofits to help kids struggling with illness was one for the ages. Check it out HERE.
The best part of conferences is learning, meeting new people, and disrupting your normal work routine (but what is a normal work routine in the world of events?) to push you out of your comfort zone. Next year Catersource hits our home town of Los Angeles. Hope to see you there.
