It wasn't so much that the Oncenter War Memorial arena was a sports venue — appropriate for celebrating “The Express,” a 1950s college football story — but that it was the only venue in town offering 30,000 square feet of event space, vital for accommodating the big crowd expected.

Although the venue's space was a major plus, the venue team had no experience with a major premiere party, says Precision's Jason Wanderer. “The venue had never hosted a full conversion or an event that required masking 360 degrees,” he notes. “Rigging and load plans did not exist. We brought in our own technical staff composed of architects, engineers and riggers to assess the building and determine possibilities.”

Further, the arena's in-house caterer had no background with Hollywood-caliber events. “They are industrial caterers with very set menus,” Wanderer explains. “They don't really deviate from that. And while they were very helpful and willing, they just didn't have recipes, and they didn't have a vision of what we like to call creative food presentation.”

Nonetheless, “We were cognizant of the fact that we were going into someone else's house, and when you're in someone else's house, you don't want to jump on their couch,” Wanderer says. Precision presented the process as a team effort, bringing in New York's The Catering Co. as consultants on the event's menus. The result was a combination of upscale dishes such as grilled beef tenderloin and oysters with champagne mignonette alongside thematic bites including mini gourmet hot dogs and logoed cupcakes. In order to ensure both exceptional food quality and effective food presentation, Precision imported line chefs and servers from other cities, along with 12 trucks of rentals from Classic Party Rentals, New York, and a variety of its own serving pieces.

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