Budget Friendly Pizza Making Competition

by Kim Hesse - Managing Director of Venues 2 Events
(Melbourne Australia. )

Our client had 80 guests in Melbourne for a three day conference and on the second evening they wanted to host a team building event. We were on a very limited budget and while brainstorming cost effective team building ideas we came up with a pizza making competition.

This event provided us with the opportunity to take guests out of the hotel and place them in new and exciting surroundings.

Step one was to find the perfect venue. When working on a budget use your venue to set the scene. We found a rustic underground restaurant with a wood fired oven.

Being a weeknight we were able to hire the entire basement level at a great price. Note - Venues always want to fill their function space on a weeknight, you should be able to negotiate a better rate on a weeknight as opposed to a Friday or Saturday evening.

To start the evening off, we had the executive chef demonstrate the art of pizza making. The group were then split into teams and given the task of creating their own pizza's. This was a great way to provide a team building activity but also save money as they ate the pizza's they had made. Of course we supplied some professionally made pizza's as well!

In regard to themeing the venue, with not too much expense we transformed the space into a Little Italy. We utilised the venues free white table cloths and simply hired in red and white check table cloths to be placed over the white cloths provided by the venue.

We brought white candles from the reject shop and melted them onto empty wine bottle provided free of charge by the venue. Add some artificial grapes, again from the reject shop and presto a budget friendly and easy table decoration!

Lighting is also a great way to create effect without the expense. Here in little Italy we hired mini up-lights, when chatting to an audio visual supplier you can also ask for parcan lights. The lights were only $5 each and you get to choose what colour gel (in other words a thick cellophane cover) you would like. We chose gels in red and green placing them around the room to light the walls for a warm effect.

Our guests had a fantastic evening and as well as pizza making there was plenty of dough throwing!