Healthier diets, cooking with locally-produced ingredients, learning to prepare typical dishes… all are very current topics that show a real trend towards more “authentic” eating habits. Cooking workshops are growing in popularity, and the success of cooking shows on television such as Top Chef or Master Chef has helped to promote gastronomy in a variety of countries around the world… including Spain, a country well known for its rich gastronomy and culture! Every year, our event production company in Spain organises more and more team building cooking classes and incentives.
Read on for some observations on the growing popularity of Spain’s gastronomy and to find out more information on our team cooking activity, a favourite amongst DMC in Spain.
Culinary tourism in Spain
Spain’s gastronomy is one of the country’s major assets for tourism. Recent studies conducted by The Ostelea Business School & Hospitality concluded that the average spending in food tourism in Spain for 2014 was 837€ per person. The same studies predicted that this budget would increase to 934€ per person by 2018 – a 12% increase overall, and a 2% increase each year. The numbers are very positive and show that Spain’s restaurants are increasing their business every year.
Spain’s gastronomy is also famous internationally. According to Food Tourism 2014, Spain is the leader for gastronomy in Europe. Many Spanish restaurants are listed in the top 50 restaurants in the world (World’s 50 Best Restaurants index). In the top 10, we find the likes of El Celler de Ran Roca in Girona, the Mugaritz in San Sebastián, and l’Asador Extebarri à Axpe (Basque Country). At Es.cultura Events, we wanted to capitalise on the diversity and popularity of our country’s gastronomy to propose our most succulent and exciting team building activity to date!
A team building cooking activity in the format of Master Chef
What exactly does our Master Chef team building involve? We let our participants compete in a real-life simulation of the famous television programme. The objective? To provide a platform where participants can unhinge their creativity, learn to work as a team, and dive into Spain’s wonderful gastronomy. Learn to prepare some of Spain’s 10 most typical dishes in our entertaining team building with taste!
The last time we organised this team building cooking activity was on the rooftop of the Hotel Vincci La Rábida in Seville, with a breathtaking view of the Giralda. A unique and dazzling setting in which 23 participates pretended they were candidates of the television programme Master Chef. Upon arrival, participants were presented with a buffet covered with ingredients as well as several tables with all the necessary utensils for the team building cooking activity. Participants were split into several groups to compete against each other, and a head chef was appointed in each group. Under the guidance of a professional chef and an actor playing the role of another typically demanding chef, our team building cooking challenge was quickly under way.
Two phases needed to be completed in the team building activity, and one tapas to be prepared in each phase:
Mandatory tapas (45min)
Using only the ingredients that were provided, participants needed to prepare one of the following recipes: strawberry gazpacho, beetroot gazpacho, watermelon gazpacho, scrambled eggs, or pepper lasagna.
Creative tapas (45min)
A grand buffet was made available to our participants for the second phase of our team building cooking challenge. Ingredients of all sorts were provided: fruits, salads, peppers, whipped cream, chocolate, eggs, garlic, olive oil, etc. The objective was to prepare a creative and well presented recipe in a limited amount of time. Our teams were given 5 minutes to decide which recipe they were going to prepare, after which each team’s chef had 3 minutes to collect all the necessary ingredients from the buffet table. At the end of the challenge, the winning team was selected following several criteria: it had to have finished preparing both tapas, have shown creativity and a great presentation, and above all… have worked well as a team.
Try our team building cooking challenge!
Contact us to try our team building cooking activity for your team! We have 20 years of experience organising team building in Spain. Click the links below for more information on the team building activities that we propose:
- team building in Barcelona
- team building in Valencia
- team building in Madrid
- team building in Malaga
Don’t forget that you can also include our team building cooking challenge in your incentive travel to Barcelona or any other destination that you may select for your incentive travel in Spain!
