In 1988 the V&A caused a controversy with its ‘ace caff with quite a nice museum attached’ campaign. But 40 years on, every Museum wants that ace caff. How do you do it?
The Garden Museum, whose in-house café won Leading Cultural Venues’ award for best café in a cultural venue in the world in 2018, hosts this conference looking at the challenges of setting up a museum restaurant or café.
With case studies and expertise from industry consultants, sessions will discuss how to tender and make the right choice for your business, venue hire and events catering, visitor services, and just how important is good food?
Who is it for?
This conference, the first to offer advice on this point of much discussion in the sector, is aimed at museum professionals in Visitor Services, Hospitality, Development, Directorial and Marketing roles.
Speakers will include:
Hamish Anderson – CEO, Tate Eats, will talk about visitor services and how he has adapted Tate Eats’ offer across sites to address different customers’ needs.
Fiona Boyd-Thorpe – catering consultant for museums and heritage, Boyd-Thorpe Associates, the go-to person for getting the right contract with an external caterer.
Julian Saipe – former Managing Director of events company Zafferano, now an events consultant, will share insiders’ tips on venue hire contracts.
Neal Trup – VAT Consultant and expert on community cafés, will talk about smaller-scale in-house operations, including for example, exercises in menus and food costs.
Harry Kaufman and George Lyle – Head Chefs, Garden Café, will give an insight into going from working in prestigious restaurants to an in-house Museum café.
The conference will be chaired by Maurice Davies, former deputy director at the Museums Association.