Successful Meetings Magazine

Chocolate can be lacy, swirled, structural, or molten. It can be a filling, an accent, or an entire meal. Whether it's the silken slather of decadence atop a perfect strawberry or slim sheets of dark, sweet taste formed into a logoed box holding pillow-gift candies, chocolate could well be the most versatile of gourmet foods. But that's just one of its virtues.

"People get so excited about chocolate," says Dana Zemack of Cambridge, MA, who educates chocolate lovers at tasting parties. "It's a very unusual connection, and one of the strongest connections to a food item we have."

"Everyone wants chocolate. Everyone can relate to it," says David Ramirez, executive pastry chef at Orlando's Rosen Shingle Creek Resort. "It's sexy, romantic, indulgent," says John Brazie, executive chef for The Woodlands Resort & Conference Center, near Houston, TX.

Another word that keeps coming up in relation to chocolate is "fun," so it's a great choice for any planner to balance a business-heavy agenda. In fact, many chefs say chocolate is more popular and appreciated than ever. For meetings, then, here are some uses.

Hold a Tasting
At microbreweries or wine bars, the tasting menu includes "flights" of beer or wine to allow a neophyte the chance to educate his palate. In that vein, Murder on the Menu/Teambuilding Unlimited offers flights of chocolate to those seeking to develop their appreciation of different types.

Entertain with Chocolate
On the West Coast, Janet Rudolph runs a Berkeley, CA, company called TeamBuilding Unlimited that features a "chocolate challenge." She divides the group into teams of four or five people, furnishes chocolate-covered graham crackers, M&Ms, chocolate Gummy Bears, Hershey bars—"anything you can think of that is made of chocolate. We go for different shapes, sizes, and textures, not high-end chocolate."

Groups then compete to build a structure. One HMO firm had its teams build their ideal hospitals. Another group set its teams to designing resorts. The result "has to stand up on its own and, except for the white cardboard base, has to be completely edible," says Rudolph. Teams are given about an hour to design and build, and then they have to present the results. "Half the fun is explaining why they did what they did," she says. www.teambuilding-unlimited.com

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