How to Fire Your Audience—And Have Them Love It!
A quick disclaimer: 'firing' your guests requires a delicate touch. Save this stunt for late in the evening, once the ice is well and truly broken.
If your product touches HR, ERP, or sales performance, you have a natural bridge to the ultimate sales culture reference: Alec Baldwin’s infamous Glengarry Glen Ross speech. (1st prize: A Cadillac Eldorado. 2nd prize: A set of steak knives. 3rd prize: You’re fired.)
Certain categories of software involve the prospect of firing employees. HR software is the most obvious, but ERP may also touch it. I was actually able to use this in a dinner event with Sales leaders because of the infamous Alec Baldwin monologue in Glengarry Glen Ross about firing salespeople that don’t perform.
If you don’t want to watch the 8-minute clip, it involves a sales contest where 1st prize is a Cadillac Eldorado, 2nd prize is a set of steak knives, and 3rd prize is “you’re fired.” There are a number of other commonly-used sales quotes in the clip, that it’s worth watching to know where they came from.
Regardless, if you think your content might touch on firing people, consider using this bit. Lest you have doubts, this is what one guest sent in an email the day after a dinner where she was fired:
The attention to detail was end to end. The Glengarry Glen Ross-inspired ‘fired’ marshmallows with our faces on them may be one of the greatest event touches I’ve ever seen (my kids were so mind-blown, they took them to school to show their friends!!). That was the cherry on top of an already unforgettable evening.
Prep
For this exercise, you will need:
Chef’s torch (NOTE: you cannot take this on a plane, even in a checked bag. Ship ahead of time, or buy locally).
Gourmet chocolate-covered graham crackers
Personalized marshmallows
Goodie bags
Ziploc bags (to seal the cookies)
(Optional, but recommended) Hot towel warmer, towels, and tongs
Technique
The Marshmallows
The personalized marshmallows have the longest lead time, so budget for lead time. Any photo of the guest will do, but I usually grab their LinkedIn profile photo since it’s public for 90%+ of your likely guests. For the < 10% that do not have a LinkedIn profile, or do not share their photo publicly, a quick Google search will usually turn up a photo you can use, and in 1% of cases, you may be unable to find a photo. In that case, depending on your comfort level, you might reach out to someone else at their company, explain it’s for an event they’re attending, and in many cases, they’ll happily share a photo so their colleague doesn’t miss out.
There are lots of businesses with edible ink printers that can put someone’s face on a marshmallow, but I exclusively use Sugar Chic Design in Omaha, Nebraska. The marshmallows are delicious, the printing is high quality, and I return to them because of their service given an experience I had with my original vendor. Best for you, Sugar Chic has made 1000+ personalized marshmallows for me, so they understand the assignment.
Your needs may vary, but I order 5 marshmallows per guest: one to be eaten at the event and four as a gift for the guest to share with family, friends, or co-workers. Sugar Chic Design will happily seal one separately and four together to make it easy to setup for your event, just make sure you specify the quantities you want sealed (they will seal each one individually if you want, but then you’re sorting through 100s of marshmallows by photo, so if there is a goodie bag quantity, just ask to have those sealed together).
The CCGCs (a.k.a. the Chocolate-Covered Graham Crackers)
If your s’more experience is like mine, it involved Honey Maid graham crackers and a Hershey bar. That might have been fine in the 1980s, but it’s a foodie’s world these days, and your s’more needs to evolve. You can source your own graham crackers, of which, a lot of gourmet brands are available. And there are infinite chocolate options, including milk and dark chocolate. For efficiency’s sake, mostly related to setup at the restaurant, I have opted for a combination chocolate-covered graham cracker. One item to procure and set rather than two.
After rigorous 'field research' across a dozen vendors, my top choice is the Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Company (yes, three times—and no, that’s not a typo). They offer both milk and dark chocolate options. A word to the wise: they sell out often, so secure a backup supplier before building your inventory around them.
I have tasted close to ten different CCGC options, and for my money, the best I’ve had are from the Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate Company (that is not a typo). They are available in both milk and dark chocolate…when they are available. As I write, they are sold out of both and I have run into that many times. Sometimes, you can call them and they may have some ready to ship, they’re not just showing as available on the website. You will want to have a second option.
The Reveal
Personalized marshmallows are novel enough on their own, but a proper reveal heightens the surprise. The way I have done it at dinners is to setup the full s’more before the dinner starts, laying out a bread or dessert plate for each guest. Put down a CCGC, put the guest’s marshmallow on top of it, cover it with something (I’ll get to that in a second), and then figure out a way to mark each plate so it’s delivered to the right guest.
Initially, I used cloches. Unfortunately, they are hard to buy in quantities and even harder to ship or travel with. After a couple dinners, I moved to just using compostable bowls just big enough to hide a s’more. Inexpensive, lightweight, and perhaps most importantly, easy enough to use a pen to write the first or last name of the guest indiscreetly on the bowl so you can ensure the right s’more goes to the right guest. You may want to announce to the group not to touch or lift their bowls until they are instructed to so that no one spoils the surprise.
When the time comes, tell your guests to lift the bowl and I can guarantee you the room will erupt. Never in a million years did they think their face was going to be on a marshmallow about to be fired.
Torching the C-Suite
You will want to practice this before you do it in an actual restaurant! Obviously, there’s no giant campfire in a private dining room, so the easiest way to roast the marshmallows is with a Chef’s torch. Whether you grab a $60 culinary torch from Williams-Sonoma or a budget option from a local smoke shop, the tool matters less than the technique. (Just remember: do not try to fly with a torch, even in checked luggage. Ship it to the venue or buy it on-site.)
Because a Chef’s torch’s flame is more intense than a campfire, you need to approach the marshmallow with care. My instructions for helpers are to start about 6-9 inches away from the marshmallow and get closer slowly until you see the marshmallow start to lightly brown. Get too close and the marshmallow will catch fire, not only charring it, but requiring someone to quickly blow it out, and if it’s not the guest, it means you’re blowing your germs all over someone else’s marshmallow they’re expected to eat. In other words, do everything you can not to cause the marshmallow to catch fire.
I instruct my helpers to start around the edges of the marshmallow so that they’re also warming the chocolate underneath, and then work their way to the face. This also allows the guest time to start recording it on their phone as many will want to do. The entire process should take 30 seconds or less for each guest. If you have a room of 20+, I highly recommend having two torches and teaching a helper beforehand (someone from your company or one of your servers from the restaurant) how to do it so you can tackle the entire room in half the time. The video below gives you a sense of how it works:
The Persuading
You’d think people would dive into eating a s’more of themselves. I’ve found some to be hesitant for one of three reasons:
They don’t want to eat what they think is the only marshmallow in the world that has their picture on it. After the Reveal but before the Firing, I make it a point to announce to the room that they will be taking home goodie bags with more cookies and marshmallows so they don’t have to worry about eating the only one in existence.
They don’t like s’mores. Their history with s’mores likely involves Honey Maid and Hershey as well, so I also make it a point to emphasize that these s’mores are made of gourmet chocolate-covered graham crackers and gourmet marshmallows. This should be the most delicious s’more they’ve ever had.
It looks really messy. They know they need to eat it with their hands, there’s melted chocolate and a gooey marshmallow. It’s like eating spaghetti on a first date. This is why I’m such a firm believer in the warm, wet washcloth at the end (described in the last section). If they know they’ll be able to clean up the mess, they’re more likely to dig in.
The Goodie Bag
My Sales Executive Dinner for 6sense was originally a lunch event, and since I love wordplay, I had a bit about a “brown bag lunch.” The goodie bags being a literal brown paper bag made sense. If it’s a dinner event, you may already have fancier, branded bags that can serve as the goodie bag.
A bag with your company logo will suffice, but my obsession over details led me to have the 6sense design team create a custom logo for a sticker that could be affixed to the bags that tied specifically to the dinner event. Since the s’more finale was inspired by the famous Glengarry Glen Ross monologue that includes the line, “A, Always, B, Be, C, Closing—Always be closing,” the goodie bags had a sticker reading “always be s’moring.”
The marshmallows, sealed, will last forever; the cookies, on the other hand, should be put into a Ziploc bag or anything that will seal them for freshness until they can be enjoyed.
Coup de grâce
Coup de grâce? Don’t I mean oshibori? Yes. It’s an oshibori coup de grâce.
A proper s’more is messy and it’s eaten with one’s hands, not a knife and fork. Between melted chocolate and gooey marshmallow, it’s a lot to expect of a lowly bistro napkin. My preferred option is a warm, moist towel fresh out of a hot towel warmer. The good news is that a lot of high-end restaurants where you might host an exclusive executive dinner will have a towel warmer already, saving you from having to travel with one. However, best to ask! Many restaurants won’t.
There are a lot of hot towel warmers on the market, so this is by no means the one you have to buy, but this is the one I’ve traveled 20,000+ miles with: ForPro Professional Collection Hot Towel Warmer, 23L. In particular, it can easily fit 30+ towels for a dinner of 20-30 guests. For towels, I’ve used these Amazon Basics Washcloths. They’re a good size, not too big, not too small, they’re bright white, and highly absorbent.
Can you reuse the towels? Eh. You can, I have; however, I did have one or two people mention there were faint chocolate stains on them even after washing them with bleach. I have no concerns with bacteria or anything, but at just 75¢ per towel, I moved to just using a new set for each dinner.
Can you give out individually prepackaged wet naps instead? I mean, you can. But if your event is at a nice venue of any kind, I think it’s towels or bust. Better to not offer anything than to offer something you might get at a fast food wings stop.
In terms of what you need to ask of the restaurant: you’ll need a power outlet which every restaurant will have in their private dining room, and maybe two large serving plates so that two people can hand out the towels to the group while they’re still warm, and a set of tongs for each helper (the restaurant likely has something, otherwise bring your own).
