End of Financial Year Edition

Open Cooking Studio for Business Event Planners

Try it yourself first.

You book events for everyone else. Come to one.

You are the person who gets asked to "sort something out for the team before June" — usually with a budget that appeared last week and no idea whether the venue is any good until forty people are standing in it. Come and stand in it first.

What you'll experience

You cook. Properly — knives, heat, your hands in it — alongside our chefs, in the same format your team would. Then everyone eats what they made at one table, with a drink, and you go home with something from the kitchen.

Along the way you will see how the room feels with a group in it, how people who arrive as colleagues end up talking, and what it actually costs. Ask us anything. That is what the evening is for.

You will leave with

• A clear idea of which format gets the result you are after — a team that needs to loosen up wants something different to one that needs to meet each other
• Answers on the practical side: timings, group sizes, what is included, how dietary requirements are handled
• A venue you have actually stood in, so when you recommend it you are recommending something you know
• Contacts who do your job, and the guest list afterwards
• Dinner, a drink and something from the kitchen

Why come

Because you are looking for something new, or something better than what you ran last year, and there is only so much you can tell from a website.

And because you spend your working life running these evenings. This one is yours.

Who else is in the room

Executive assistants, personal assistants, office managers, People and Culture, team leaders — all quietly organising the same thing, mostly on their own, mostly on top of an actual job. You will not have to explain what you do. Bring a colleague if you like, but only two per company, so the room stays mixed.

Cook. Connect. Plan a food experience that works.

Cook, instead of organising for once. Connect with people who understand the job. And leave with a format, a price and a date that will actually suit your team.

What we run for teams

Our events all work the same way: everyone cooks, nobody watches. Small groups, a job each, and about fifteen minutes in they stop being colleagues and start being people cooking together. Then everyone eats what they made at one table.

• MasterChef Challenge — teams cook against each other, judged at the end
• Culinary Connection — one menu, built together across the room
• Market tour and cook — a Melbourne market first, then the kitchen
• End of financial year celebrations — the full evening, food and drinks included

14+ cuisines, groups of 10 to 40 in one studio, or up to 80 across both, three kilometres from the city.

Getting here

Otao Kitchen, 393 Victoria Street, Abbotsford VIC 3067

Trams 109 and 12 stop at the door, North Richmond station is seven minutes away, and there is street parking after 6:00pm. Both studios are at street level. Tell us your dietary requirements when you book — we will sort them out, exactly as we would for your team.

Cooking in Melbourne since 2014. Gold for Excellence in Food Tourism at the Victorian Tourism Awards, 2022 and 2023.

Book your seat

Two per company. Your booking fee comes off your first event with us, so if you go ahead, the evening is free.

June and July dates start going from April — come early and you will still have the pick of them.

[email protected]