With in-person events—from cocktail parties to sit-down dinners—on hold, brands have been trying to replicate the IRL event experience for virtual attendees in their homes. And a big part of that is the food. Since the pandemic hit, companies have begun to rely more heavily on branded mailers to incite excitement around a digital event and literally offer a taste of the experience to at-home guests. Here, we’ve gathered up some impressive cocktail and meal kits that caterers created for brands and their virtual events.
For a virtual cocktail class hosted by bankruptcy-related services company Stretto, Cocktail Academy created these custom old fashioned and martini kits presented in branded boxes with glassware and drink ingredients.
Cocktail Academy designed these decadent tequila tasting kits for Avion with Avion Reserva 44, custom glasses, edible gold dust, and gold ice cubes. The mailers were sent to celebs and influencers.
To promote J Balvin’s "Behind the Colores: The Live Experience," which was presented by Buchanan's Whisky, Cocktail Academy created a cocktail kit inspired by the concert. The augmented reality experience, which aired on YouTube, featured Balvin performing live in a virtual space inside his home in Medellín, Colombia.
For the launch of Casa Don Ramón’s Tequila Don Ramón Limited Edition collection, New York-based creative and marketing agency Gaudrey executed a media event that included a preview tasting of the three expressions of tequila: Plata, Añejo, and Extra Añejo, as well as a lesson in agave spirits. Pinch Food Design through its Parcel program designed curated sustainable packaging that contained tasting bottles of tequila, Reidel tequila flutes, and a trio of desserts inspired by each expression of tequila, all wrapped in a custom-printed linen cloth.
For a luxury jewelry company, Italian catering company Acquolina created customized boxes that were sent to clients who might have left New York because of the COVID-19 pandemic and now miss their home and its eats. The boxes included black and white cookies, petit fours, marzipan red apples, sugar cookies in the shape of taxi cabs and the Empire State Building, roasted “street” nuts, truffle popcorn, a mini cheese pizzette, and Serendipity’s frozen hot chocolate mix. The goodies were presented in large wicker picnic baskets, along with a Diptyque New York candle and the New York by New York book published by Assouline.
For this year’s iHeart Country Festival, which took place in October, iHeartMedia hired Creative Edge Parties to create 125 VIP attendee cocktail pairing kits for the virtual fest. The catering company was tasked with creatively incorporating Tito’s product as well as highlighting BBQ flavor profiles in custom-made curated packaging. Each kit contained instructions for making the frozen drinks; a mini funnel; freezer pop sleeves; a pre-mixed cocktail concoction with blood orange, sage, and Tito’s; BBQ kettle chips; and a branded plaid blanket.
For the Northern Westchester Hospital virtual gala, which took place earlier this month, Abigail Kirsch Catering, as part of its new Prepped program, created a dinner in a tote with a vodka sour cocktail, hors d'oeuvres, an appetizer of burrata and root vegetable salad, a chicken provencal entree with Mediterranean vegetables, farro quinoa salad, capers, olives, and harissa roasted pepper sauce, and a tiramisu parfait for dessert.
