Corporate meetings are commonly held at hotels and resorts, but independent OC event spaces with no formal ties to hotels have opened this year or increased efforts to offer a change of scenery for out-of-town guests or to tap local businesses that aren’t looking for an overnight stay.
• The Plaza de Magdalena meetings and events venue opened May 23 in San Juan Capistrano.
• The Anaheim Packing House debuted dedicated meeting space in April.
• Asian-Hawaiian fusion restaurant Roy’s also upped its commitment to corporate work.
The venues span the county and cite such elements as privacy and exclusivity, food quality and variety, and the uniqueness of the venue as main selling points.
Leveraging a Legend
Magdalena owner Rob Quest said the venue bases its experience offering on a local legend connected to Mission San Juan Capistrano that involves a love story; Magdalena’s intended, Teofilo, has a room named after him there.
Quest runs Sundried Tomato American Bistros & Catering, which has two restaurants in South Orange County and plans to begin the hunt for a third site in Central or North OC starting early next year.
Magdalena also is under that company, literally, since its roughly 6,000 rentable square feet is in a renovated area one level below one of the restaurants in downtown San Juan Capistrano.
The legend tie-in positions the space as likely for weddings, and Quest said the corporate side is also gearing up. About 20 events are booked so far this year and a Sept. 10 open house to further promote the venue.
“It’s kind of a slow period [for corporate] with people on vacation, but companies do have their budgets for holiday parties,” he said.
Companies are looking at those events and beyond.
“People are starting to ask about next [year],” Quest said.
Rooms pull double duty depending on the event—a “green room” for a company’s speaker might later be where a bride awaits her entry to the reception.
The area had shops before building owner Alpha Plaza Inc. and Managing Partner Alberto Mobrici renovated it for Quest and Magdalena.
“He’s a contractor and did the build-out,” Quest said. “We control all the space down there,” including gates and traffic flow.
New-Style Option
The Packing House opened last fall in downtown Anaheim as part of the “food hall” trend.
The hall itself has 26 tenants, said its community relations and events manager, Katherine Vuong—and corporate clients can get food from any of them.
“If the group is small enough, they would just send them [into the rest of the Packing House] to get food,” she said.
“If it’s larger, it’s easier to coordinate with one or a couple of the [restaurants].”
The formal meeting space that opened in April is called Cooks Chapel—“like a ‘chapel’ for chefs,” Vuong said.
Group business capacity is about 125.
The outdoor lawn at the Packing House, called Farmer’s Park, can hold 500—but events aren’t private and gear more toward community and nonprofit functions, like fundraising galas.
Other corporate events have included all-day and cocktail receptions.
“That’s a popular one,” Vuong said.
The space has an exhibition kitchen that smaller groups—or larger groups in rotation—can use for team building.
An outside area called The Backyard has space for 50, and community rooms hold 10 to 40, depending on the setup.
Roy’s
Both Roy’s restaurant locations in Orange County—one in Anaheim, the other in Newport Beach—offer meeting space.
The Anaheim restaurant held an open house on a Saturday morning this summer to showcase its food, bar and spaces.
Rooms at the event were arrayed as they might be for a variety of events—one of the “corporate” mock-ups included a sample “prize package” filled with boxes from Irvine-based mobile phone case maker Incipio Technologies Inc.
Most space is semi-private, though the whole restaurant can be rented for an event. Common group sizes are 10 to 75, according to information at the event, and larger numbers are possible for the full restaurant.
Its higher-end food is said to be one draw; Roy’s has a food and beverage minimum for events.
Corporate events could include sales seminars and meetings to reward top employees.
Hospitality Ecosystem
The independent venues aren’t directly connected to hotels but often overlap with their work.
Roy’s in Anaheim is at Gardenwalk, near major hotels and the Anaheim Convention Center, and the Newport Beach location at Fashion Island is surrounded by hotels and resorts near the mall and along the coast.
OC travel and visitors groups talk up the Packing House as a place they want guests to see more of, and it’s on the city’s resort transit routes.
Quest of Plaza de Magdalena said San Juan Capistrano is more and more becoming a place for local hotel guests to hold meetings. The venue is just down the street from the train station.
He said a business group staying at the Surf & Sand Resort in Laguna Beach came to town this summer, visited the Rancho Capistrano Winery for a tasting, had dinner at Quest’s layout, and then visited the Mission.
Hotel work is poised to grow as local developer Rivendell Land Co. breaks ground on the 124-room Mission Inn San Juan Capistrano under Marriott International’s boutique Autograph brand by early next year.
