The background

In March 2017, contract caterer Elior hosted its esteemed annual awards ceremony and management conference. As a long-standing client, Elior once again turned to Apex to ensure this celebration of employee and company achievements was a resounding success. 

Elior required a venue in which their chefs could collaborate with the onsite chefs, resulting in a gourmet dinner for over 200 employees. Finding a perfect venue was, therefore, an essential part of our brief. But our mission didn’t stop there. Elior also required a big celebrity name to wow their guests; particularly as David Walliams had been such a success as host the previous year! As always, the awards dinner also had an elaborate stage set and AV requirements.

At Apex, we called upon our 30 years’ experience in the events industry - and our relationships with a variety of great industry suppliers - to meet and exceed our client’s vision.

See our project gallery.

What we did

Apex was responsible for the overall event management of this year’s Elior Awards event, including:

• Sourcing a venue, conducting site visits to the shortlisted venues, and creating a venue report to present to the client. (This year the event took place at 8 Northumberland Avenue in the centre of London. The client liked the venue so much last year they decided to return!)
• Taking care of the venue contracts
• Undertaking all aspects of venue management prior, during and after the event
• Researching the availability of several celebrity hosts and securing two great hosts with Gary Lineker and Sally Gunnell

• Setting up the contracts and managing the celebrity hosts and their representatives before, during, and after the awards (including the rehearsals and live show)
• Sourcing and managing suppliers and equipment for all AV and staging requirements
• Overseeing the set-up of the event including AV equipment and room layouts
• Undertaking all stage management requirements including show calling
• Not only did Apex manage the awards dinner, but we also handled the conference aspect of the event which took place before the ceremony. We made sure that the entire day ran effortlessly for our client.

Project gallery

This year, Elior opted for a modern theme, with DMX controlled table centres and lasers throughout the event. For entertainment, we sourced two stunning laser violinists to perform a duel.

Follow @elioruk and @Apex_co_uk on Twitter to keep up with news about future events as they happen.

Check out our other case studies below. Or contact us to find out how we can help make your events a success.