Black tie dinner will raise hospitality funds

Hospitality and tourism students are putting together a black tie affair on campus slated for Feb. 25.

The event is designed as a fundraiser for both the hospitality and tourism club and the program itself to provide funding for field trips and to give students a chance to go on trips that will help them in their industry.

“The gala dinner and hospitality and wine auction that we sponsor is a combined event. It’s really one fundraiser and money is brought in from both selling dinner tickets and also auctioning off donated items from the hospitality industry that have been given to us to allow us to support the pr

ogram,” said Court Carrier, program director for hospitality and tourism.
“The purpose is to supplement field trips which we have no budget for,” Carrier said. “We also have an endowed scholarship fund that we established and we give money to that every year from these fundraising efforts,” he said.

The name of the event is “The Distinguished Guest Chefs Invitational Gala Dinner” and this year’s theme is “experience Peruvian cuisine — ‘the land of abundance,'” Carrier said.

The event will take place in the Town and Gown Room (2057) and the Jazz Café. Admission is $70 per person and includes hors d’oeuvres and wine sampling during the reception as well as a four-course dinner. The event will begin 5:30 p.m. and dinner will be served at 6:30 p.m.

According to Carrier, the concept is to have a different executive chef who works with the program’s culinary students and they end up crafting the meal.

“Our other students are volunteers and they end up working the event either as hosts, as cashiers, as runners to help take auction items out to peoples cars afterwards, marketing and logistical committees, food committees to get donated items of food, so we don’t have to buy the food for the dinner,” Carrier said.

Carrier said the event will have about 16 students working with guest chef Hank Costello in the kitchen and about 60 more students working on the event and planning it.

Costello is the executive chef of Andina Restaurant; he will be working with students to create a Peruvian cuisine.

“About half the money that we raise comes from the dinner tickets sales and the other half comes from the auction. Restaurants donate meals for four people, hotels donate weekend packages, attractions give us tickets to the places, like museums,” Carrier said.

“Usually we end up with about 130 or 140 different items on our auction. There is a lot of fun things,” Carrier said.

“Program resources, scholarships and field trip supplemental funds are what we use that money for,” Carrier said.

Tickets for this event are still available for purchase. There is a limit of 120 attendees. Tickets can be purchased by calling the Hospitality and Tourism Club at 503-491-7486.