A Farm-to-Table Destination Meeting Menu Makes History as Animal Welfare Approved

New York City has seen explosive growth in farm-to-table menus for destination corporate meeting dinners, and now your attendees can experience a unique "upstate" taste in Manhattan at the only Animal Welfare Approved restaurant in the world.

Animal Welfare Approved is the most rigorous certification we have found for humane treatment of animals, and it's awesome to be able to enjoy delicious gourmet meat that don't require innocent animals to suffer so your group can eat them.

The burger menu is quite good - juicy, flavorful, well-seasoned, with a fantastic balance of flavors in the toppings. We tried the Uncle Dude, which is a standard 6 oz. (grass-fed and finished) beef-burger with cheddar, bacon, carrot jalapeno relish, and chipotle mayo.

However, if you want something more experiential, try a pig heart tasting!

The story behind this venue is also intriguing as the proprietor/farmer was once primarily responsible for developing the W brand for Starwood Hotels.

4 Meatless Corporate Event Menus for Meatlovers

While many of us try to eat healthy during the winter, those traditional vegan tastes haven't exactly warmed the soul when it's 30 degrees outside.

Until now.

New York City is becoming a leader in making healthy, vegetarian food tasty, fulfilling and mainstream enough for your corporate meeting attendees to enjoy it throughout their destination experience.  Even the most loyal meat eaters are taking notice!

According to the market research firm Mintel, 36 percent of U.S. consumers said they buy meat substitutes although only 7 percent identified themselves as vegetarian. That might explain why sales of meat alternatives reached $553 million in 2012, up 8 percent from 2010. And New York is the kind of destination that can offer unique twists on the 110 new meat substitute products that have entered the market since 2010.

Whether featured at a meeting break, lunch, outside event venue or even a corporate gala, here are 6 of our favorite meat-free menu ideas:

1. The "UnReuben". Want the Katz's Deli taste without the calories? Serve tempeh Reubens. You can also try other  deli meats without having meat at all.  These include Philly Cheesesteaks made with seitan, Buffalo chicken wraps and a meatless-ball hero.

2. Vegetarian Surf and Turf. We recommend a shark fin soup that won’t damage any endangered species.  Combine it with BBQ’d vegetarian meat and a five-color assorted appetizer that includes stuffed bread, beef, chicken, and duck

3. "Soyful" Soul. Try a creole soul chicken that consists of panko breaded soy chicken with Cajun and rosemary seasoning, served with sweet corn mashed potatoes, steamed carrots, yellow squash, zucchini, and classic mushroom gravy.

4. The Fried Fatless Bucket. This is a new twist on Texas Fried Chicken consisting of deep fried soy chicken with taters, with a hickory smoked BBQ sauce on the side.

Green Meetings: Have Your Cup and Eat it Too!

Have you noticed that plastic cups and plastic wine glasses are showing up at more events? No one will argue that disposable cups help prevent the inevitable shattering sound at cocktail hour that leads to someone’s embarrassment (hopefully not yours!), but don’t tell that to Mother Earth.

Landfills get almost a billion of these cups per year and that alone should offset how cool your company’s logo might look on them at a special event.

We found a New York City start-up, Loliware, that offer destination meeting planners lots of cup cache with one huge sustainable advantage – the cups the company has designed for events are 100% biodegradable.
And there is another twist – you can eat the cups! Tasting like a roll-up, Loliware’s vegan cups for Green
Meetings are the next frontier in edible event components.

The company’s founders recently appeared on CNBC.com with business guru Marcus Lemonis and this kind of innovation is not an isolated example. Overall, we are seeing Green Meetings in New York evolve because a new wave of entrepreneurs are finding ways to make sustainability sexy.

Javits Center gets even easier access with Downtown-to-Midtown ferry

The first commuter ferry to travel within Manhattan on the Hudson River will launch next week to serve  midtown’s transit-starved Far West Side.   The westside Ferry boats will travel between West 44th Street and the World Financial Center every 15 minutes during the morning and evening commutes.

Overall, the Far West Side is on the middle of a major renaissance that includes a $463 million renovation of the Javits Center, new boutique hotels and a boom in luxury residential construction.  The Javits center now offers 110,000 of additional exhibit space and the largest roof lawn in the Northeastern United States.