Cater+Event Schedule 2027

Dietary complexity is no longer a special request; it is the baseline expectation of every client signing a contract today. Vegan, gluten-free, halal, kosher, nut-free, low-FODMAP, and a dozen other needs arrive on the same RSVP sheet, and the catering operation that treats them as afterthoughts loses the rebooking. The one that turns them into a competitive advantage keeps the client for a decade.

This session is not about accommodation. It is about architecture. Matthew Thompson has spent 25 years building dining programs in settings where dietary precision is not a marketing differentiator but a clinical and contractual obligation in fine dining, hotels, healthcare, education, corporate dining, and senior living. He is a World Certified Master Chef, a Culinary Institute of America ProChef III, and holds a Certificate in Lifestyle Medicine from Harvard Medical School. He brings that operational discipline directly to the catering floor.

The hour is a working clinic rather than a lecture. A composite client RFP lands on screen in the first five minutes, and the room builds the menu from it, sorting the actual RSVP data into categories, engineering the plate, and working the cost-per-head math live on a worksheet that fills in as the session runs.

Attendees leave with that completed worksheet, plus pre-built templates for the two event formats the room does not build together.

Note: Build on what you learned in this session by attending The Menu is the Marketing at 2:45 p.m. Tuesday.