Private chef for MIPIM in Cannes: culinary team building for a sales team on the eve of the fair
Contents
Introduction
Every March, the Marché international des professionnels de l'immobilier brings together developers, property companies, local authorities and investors from all over the world at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes. The teams who staff the stands arrive the day before, often from several offices, and they must come together as a team in a single day.
Culinary team building addresses precisely this moment in the calendar. The team cooks together on the Monday, and in doing so discovers how its colleagues work rather than on the third day of the fair.
Lory Herschkorn and Fabien Mimoun, based in Marseille under the Monsieur et Madame name, run this format as a service rather than as entertainment. It has a written objective, a timed schedule and a debrief, and it is judged by what the team takes with it onto the stand the next day.
This article sets out the complete method: the briefing with the sponsor, the choice of format, the kitchen actually available in Cannes in March, the seasonal basket, the running of the three hours and the written record. Each decision is presented alongside the constraint that drives it, because no rule holds outside its context.
Why a trade fair team prepares around a stove
Four days on a stand at MIPIM are unlike any other week of the commercial year. The team moves from one standing meeting to the next, through follow-ups and delegation visits, and it does so constantly under the eyes of its own clients.
What the week demands of a team
The stand calls for shared reflexes more than individual skills. Knowing who takes a visitor, who fetches a colleague, who holds the reception desk: these decisions are made in two seconds or not at all.
A simple drink together the evening before builds none of this. The team talks, but it never sees itself working together under time pressure.
The stove as a testing ground for the team
A kitchen imposes the same constraints as a stand, in three hours instead of four days. There is a shared objective, a clock, a space that is too small and a division of roles that reveals itself along the way.
This is the whole point of the format, and there is nothing symbolic about it. Friction shows up on a worktop long before it shows up in front of an investor, and it is resolved there without any commercial consequence.
We work throughout the week of the fair, and this format ties in with the receptions described on our page private chef for MIPIM in Cannes. The team building the day before and the service on the following days fall under the same brief, with the same pop-up brigade.
The three sponsors behind the request
Sales management wants alignment before the doors open. Human resources wants integration for newcomers, and the communications department expects internal content it can share after the fair.
From a distance these three requests look alike, but they diverge as soon as the schedule is drawn up. Confusing them produces a pleasant session that no one can later say what it was for.
Setting the objective with the sponsor before talking about the menu
The first mistake is to discuss the menu before the objective. A cohesion format, an integration format and a celebration format produce neither the same schedule nor the same mixing of participants.
What we need to know before writing a proposal
We ask for the actual headcount, where participants are coming from, the free slot in the Monday programme, the working language, dietary requirements and the expected level of confidentiality. The sponsor's objective comes first on this list, because it governs everything else.
A generously announced headcount and a generously announced time slot are the two pieces of information most often wrong. We cross-check them against the stand build-up schedule, which is the only reliable document on that Monday.
Three objectives, three formats
Bonding an established team calls for a challenge between mixed brigades. Integrating newcomers calls instead for collaborative cooking, where no one can finish their station without a neighbour.
Celebrating a commercial year calls for a guided demonstration and a carefully prepared lunch. The same length of time then produces three sessions with almost nothing in common, from the basket to the seating plan.
This briefing resembles that of a consulting assignment, and we detailed it in our latest article on culinary consulting for a brand pavilion. A poorly written objective weighs more heavily than a technical constraint, in either case.
The single sponsor rule
A format that serves three objectives at once serves none of them properly. We therefore ask for a single sponsor and an objective stated in one sentence, even when three departments are funding the session.
This sentence is read aloud to the participants at the start of the session. Announcing what everyone is there to do removes half of the misunderstandings that usually weigh down the first half hour.
The Monday before: the only window in the Cannes calendar
MIPIM opens on a Tuesday and closes on the Friday. Monday is devoted to building the stands, final adjustments and the arrival of the teams, which makes it the only day on which a group format can still work.
Why late Monday afternoon is the safest slot
The build-up takes the whole day, and the first business dinners only begin on Tuesday evening. A session started in the late afternoon and extended into a shared dinner therefore leaves the fair programme intact.
This slot has another, less obvious advantage. The teams are already on site and still available, whereas they stop being so as soon as the doors first open.
Fallback slots, in order of preference
Sunday suits teams who arrive early, with the drawback of imposing a weekend on participants. It does, however, have a decisive advantage, since it is the only day on which the market is still open before the fair.
Tuesday lunchtime remains possible for a smaller group. It does, however, compete directly with the first meetings, and the drop-out rate regularly exceeds what the sponsor had anticipated.
Thursday evening no longer serves preparation; it serves celebration. We are happy to accept it, provided the sponsor takes ownership of this change of objective and tells the team.
What the calendar rules out
A session squeezed into Tuesday evening, between two receptions, has no chance of working. The team arrives worn out by its first day on the stand, and the format turns into a dinner without substance.
Choosing the format according to what the team needs to build
Three formats cover almost all MIPIM requests. They differ in the degree of interdependence they impose between participants, and it is this degree that does or does not create cohesion.
The brigade challenge
Three or four brigades receive the same basket and the same time constraint. Each produces a complete dish, and the jury is made up of the participants themselves rather than the chefs present.
This format creates energy and very quickly reveals natural leaders. It is ill-suited to a team that is already tense, where competition replays office rivalries instead of dissolving them.
Collaborative cooking
A single menu is divided among all the stations, and each station depends on the one before it. Plating cannot begin until the sauce has been strained, which makes the interdependence physical and immediate.
This is the format we recommend for a team getting to know itself. We described the same mechanism serving an audience of guests when recounting the cooking workshop led with a creative delegation, where it produces conversation rather than internal cohesion.
The guided tasting, a seated format
Some teams cannot cook, because of headcount or venue constraints. A guided tasting around a single product, conducted as a vocabulary exercise, then fulfils part of the function without requiring a single worktop.
Olive oil, lemon and raw Mediterranean fish lend themselves well to this exercise. Everyone must name what they taste in front of the others, and it is this act of speaking up that works on the group.
The format we decline
A show workshop in which the chef cooks and the team watches produces no cohesion. It has its rightful place at a client evening, never in a format sold as team building.
The venue and the kitchen actually available in Cannes in March
MIPIM week saturates the Croisette and its surroundings. Professional kitchens free on the Monday are rare, so the venue must be booked well in advance, often even before the format is chosen.
The private villa in the hills
A villa in La Californie or Super-Cannes offers a generous domestic kitchen and a large table. The journey from the Palais takes around twenty minutes outside rush hour, and this margin is built explicitly into the schedule.
The constraint of a villa is never the kitchen; it is transport. A late return to the hotels in the town centre must be organised before the session and not improvised at the end of the meal.
The corporate apartment and the hotel suite
Many delegations rent an apartment on the Croisette for the whole week. The kitchen there is narrow, which caps the headcount at around ten participants and requires all the mise en place to be done in advance.
The hotel suite poses the opposite problem. The space is there, but the kitchen is almost always absent or off-limits by order of the hotel.
When the delegation is already staying on site, the accommodation's kitchen becomes our workstation. This is exactly the configuration described for our chef in residence with a delegation on the Croisette, and the technical survey follows the same checklist.
The technical survey to carry out before committing
We note the usable electrical power, the number of burners that can be lit simultaneously, the oven volume, the refrigeration capacity and the net length of the worktop. A twenty-hand format on two metres of worktop does not work, whatever the menu chosen.
Refrigeration is the most frequently underestimated constraint, in March as in summer. A basket of early vegetables and fish requires twice the refrigerated volume the sponsor imagines.
The March basket and a visit to the Forville market
MIPIM takes place in March, and the produce of that period dictates the session's menu. This is good news for a workshop, because March offers produce that can be prepared without heavy technique.
What Provence offers in March
The month brings spring onions, Swiss chard, sand-grown carrots and the first poivrade artichokes from the coast. Broad beans and peas only arrive at the end of the month and change the menu from one week to the next.
Green asparagus from the Var is only just coming in at this time. We include it on a workshop menu only if the previous day's delivery confirms it, never on the strength of the calendar.
From the sea, cuttlefish and octopus return to the stalls, alongside pandora, white seabream and mackerel. Menton lemons are still in full season and serve as the reference acidity for the whole menu.
The Forville market as the first act of the session
The Forville market is held at the foot of Le Suquet, a few minutes from the Palais. It is open from Tuesday to Sunday in the morning, with Monday given over to the flea market.
These opening hours create the central trade-off of the day before. A Monday evening format cannot include the market, and only a Sunday morning session allows the market hall and the kitchen to follow one another.
The visit to the market hall is not a tourist stroll. Each brigade receives a written constraint rather than a shopping list, and it must come back with what it needs to complete its dish in the allotted time.
This visit produces an effect that the kitchen alone does not achieve. Choosing in front of a stall forces people to decide quickly and out loud, which is precisely the behaviour expected afterwards on a stand.
The fallback when the market hall is closed
On Monday, the most likely day for the session, the market does not host the produce growers. We then put together a basket delivered the evening before, and the constraint of choice shifts to the worktop.
This fallback does not lower the quality of the basket; it simply moves the exercise. The brigades draw their produce by lot from a shared basket, which recreates the element of the unexpected that the market hall provided.
Leading three hours with untrained hands
An effective format fits into three hours, debrief included. Beyond that, attention drops, and a team that arrived that same morning switches off before plating.
Twenty minutes of welcome and instructions, ninety minutes of production, thirty minutes of plating and forty minutes at the table. This structure cannot be stretched, because any delay is taken from production and never from the table.
The tipping point comes halfway through production. If a brigade has nothing cooked at that moment, we take over a station ourselves without announcing it to the rest of the room.
Techniques that work without training
Low-temperature cooking is forgiving, impressive and occupies the oven without constant supervision. Cutting into large pieces, braising and cold emulsions succeed at the first attempt in inexperienced hands.
We rule out deep-frying, timed pastry work and anything that depends on thirty seconds either way. A collective failure at the end of the session destroys the intended effect, and there is no second service to put it right.
Plating, the only truly technical moment
Plating is the gesture participants remember best and talk about the longest. We reduce it to three simple rules, and we let everyone plate their own dish instead of turning it into a demonstration.
Language, dietary requirements and safety
A MIPIM delegation is rarely monolingual, and instructions are given in the team's common language. Dietary requirements and allergens are collected at registration, and the menu is designed to be inclusive from the outset rather than corrected on arrival.
Safety is non-negotiable in a kitchen occupied by non-professionals. Knives are counted at the start and end of the session, hot zones are marked out, and each cooking station remains the responsibility of a single participant.
Discretion matters as much as safety during this week. Conversations held around a worktop are as valuable as those at a business dinner, and they never leave the kitchen.
The shared meal, the debrief and the written record
The session does not end with the last plate. The meal eaten together is the moment when the team sees itself for what it has become, and it deserves as much care as the production.
We take back control of the service as soon as the plates leave the worktops. The team moves from the role of cooks to that of guests, and this switch must be clear-cut for the conversation to change register.
Food and wine pairings and an alcohol-free option
A white from Provence or a light red from the Rhône effortlessly accompanies a March basket. An alcohol-free pairing built with the same care, based on cold infusions and pressed juices, avoids dividing the table into two categories of guests.
The debrief led by the sponsor
The debrief does not belong to the chef; it belongs to the management that commissioned the session. We hand the floor back after the main course, and we remain available for technical questions without taking over that space.
The written record, a condition of collective memory
A session without a record fades away within a week at the fair. We leave behind the recipes prepared, the list of producers met and the survey of the kitchen used, which makes it possible to repeat the format the following year.
Continuing into the rest of the week
The fair begins the next day, and the stand calls for other catering formats. The team that cooked together on the Monday handles the breaks, cocktail receptions and dinners we provide on the following days better, because it already knows how we work.
Some delegations extend the week with a day away from the venue. We described this format in the culinary 4x4 safari in the hinterland, which generally takes place on the Thursday rather than at the opening of the fair.
Summary table of culinary team building formats
Format | Suitable headcount | What it builds | Indicative duration |
Brigade challenge | twelve to thirty participants | collective energy and the emergence of leaders | three hours |
Collaborative cooking | eight to twenty participants | interdependence and integration of newcomers | three hours |
Market visit followed by cooking | eight to sixteen participants | quick decision-making and product knowledge | four hours |
Guided tasting | ten to forty participants | shared vocabulary, with no kitchen available | two hours |
Demonstration and served lunch | twenty to sixty participants | celebration, outside the scope of team building | three hours |
The durations given cover the session alone, excluding transport and venue set-up. They assume the headcount actually present, not the headcount registered, a gap that regularly widens during a trade fair week.
This table opens the discussion; it does not close it. The format is decided after the venue survey, and a personalised quote follows that assessment.
Illustrative case study
The following case is not a client review. It brings together constraints encountered over several fair weeks to show how a format is decided, and no real person is named or paraphrased in it.
A regional sales department brings together in Cannes teams from three different offices. The participants know each other by name, and several of them have never met before this build-up Monday.
The available slot runs from late afternoon to early evening, in a villa in the hills rented for the week. The technical survey shows four burners, a domestic oven and three metres of worktop, which caps production at four brigades of three people.
The format chosen is collaborative cooking rather than a challenge, as the written objective is integration. Each station depends on the neighbouring one, and no brigade can complete its service alone.
The March basket dictates the menu without discussion. Poivrade artichokes, spring onions, cuttlefish and Menton lemon make up a starter and a main course, and low-temperature cooking occupies the oven without tying anyone up.
The first difficulty appears after forty minutes, concerning the length of the worktop. Two brigades get in each other's way, and moving a side table resolves the congestion for the rest of the session.
The second difficulty is linguistic, as three participants do not speak French. Instructions switch to the common language from plating onwards, and the technical vocabulary is written on the board in both languages.
The meal ends with a debrief led by the sales department itself. The report on the week mentions a better-organised stand from Tuesday morning, without any quantified measure being attributable to the format.
Composite illustration, with no identifiable client. The venues, headcounts and difficulties described serve the demonstration and do not reproduce any single engagement.
Frequently asked questions
How many participants can a culinary team building session accommodate?
The limit depends on the kitchen, not on the format. A villa kitchen can hold around twenty participants in production, and beyond that we switch to a guided tasting or to two successive sessions.
Do participants need to know how to cook?
No, and it is actually preferable. The schedule is designed for untrained hands, and the techniques chosen succeed at the first attempt.
Can the session take place during the fair rather than the day before?
It can, but it then loses its preparatory function. A session held during the week becomes a moment of celebration rather than cohesion, which the sponsor must own in front of the team.
What happens if the venue has no proper kitchen?
We move the mise en place to a production kitchen and bring on site only the steps that can be carried out there. The guided tasting remains the fallback solution, and it requires only a table and water.
Are special dietary requirements an obstacle?
They never are when they are known in advance. The menu is designed to be inclusive from the outset, and no participant receives a scaled-down version of the workshop.
How do I obtain a proposal for a team attending MIPIM?
A message via the contact page is enough, with the dates, the headcount and the objective of the session. The quote follows the venue survey, because the available kitchen determines the format chosen.
Organising your team's culinary team building before MIPIM
Monsieur et Madame designs and runs team culinary formats, in Marseille as well as along the Côte d'Azur. We work on the day before the fair as well as throughout the week in Cannes, with the same pop-up brigade.
Tell us the dates, the actual headcount, the intended venue and the objective the session must serve. The format and the quote are decided after the venue survey, and our contact page offers the shortest route.
