In July, the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding at Washington, D.C.'s Howard University with a huge banquet that literally was one for the record books. Held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, not far from Howard's D.C. campus, the gala included a sit-down dinner for 16,206 people - the largest known banquet in convention history. The Guinness Book of World Records is expected to make the record official this month.

Even for the staff of the Washington Convention Center Authority (WCCA), whose experience includes hosting presidential inaugural balls, the sheer quantities of food and supplies involved were extraordinary. Chefs for Centerplate, WCCA's catering partner, prepared three tons of beef filet, served as Beef Wellington, along with more than a ton of mashed potatoes, 1,800 gallons of pink lemonade, and thousands of individual "Pink Velvet" chocolate cakes with green icing. (Alpha Kappa Alpha's official colors are salmon pink and apple green.) The tables filled three ballrooms and two halls, and were set with 300,000 utensils, three-and-a-half miles of linen tablecloth, and seven miles of pink and green napkins. Afterward, it took a day and half just to do the dishes.

When you're serving that many people, "it goes beyond chairs and tables," said Candace Johnson, the convention center's senior event manager. "It becomes a question of, how do you get everyone through the building and to their destination safely?"

The convention center managed the flood of attendees by instituting a ticketing system that directed guests to specific entrances, where staff waving pink and green traffic flags further helped direct the flow. Meanwhile, catering managers carefully mapped out their own crowd movements. In all, Centerplate added 300 chefs, 1,200 waiters, and 46 managers - many from its operations throughout the country - to its regular D.C.-based staff for the banquet.

"There are layers and layers of training that occur in an event like this," said Gary Prell, Centerplate's Colorado-based vice president of leadership development, and a certified chef. Making thousands of salads isn't hard. But getting the right quantities to the right place at the right time, Prell said, "is like a military logistics line. If one piece of the puzzle gets out of sync, the entire event gets out of sync."

Centerplate staff drilled for months beforehand, not only committing the logistics plan to rote memory, but also practicing cooking under the high-volume conditions they would face at the actual event. Although the convention center's kitchen facilities are among the largest in the country, Prell said, they weren't big enough to allow staff to prepare such vast quantities of food at the necessary pace. Centerplate reduced food-preparation time by adding two temporary kitchens on site.

When the world's biggest banquet rolled out on July 17, everything went almost precisely according to plan. "To the credit of my team," Prell said, "the biggest drama we had was that we were missing one box of green napkins." Added Pia Brown, WCCA's director of convention management: "In a lot of respects, it was just what we do for every event. But magnified." 

Innovative Meetings Take Away

From the world's largest banquet to one of the world's largest shuttle services:

From Sept. 4-6, Capitol Services Inc. (CSI) provided transportation for 30,000 people celebrating AARP's 50th anniversary in Washington, D.C. - the largest non-government move in the city's event history. At peak times, more than 100 motor coaches shuttled passengers on
12 routes, stopping at 51 hotels.

Temperatures were in the 90s on the first day of the event, when the group visited the National Mall. On the final day, Hurricane Hanna brought high winds and hard rain. CSI staff made sure plenty of air-conditioned buses were available in the heat, and adjusted routes to help keep passengers out of the rain.
"It's taking a lot of puzzle pieces," said CSI Director of Trans-portation Thayer Phillips, "and putting them together."

Barbara Palmer is senior editor of Convene.

The Innovative Meetings column is sponsored by the Irving, Texas, Convention and Visitors Bureau, www.irvingtexas.com.