Raising the bar
A Brussels marketing specialist has hit upon the ultimate stunt with his sky-high dining idea
words by Boyd Farrow
photograhy by JJ De Neyer / Triptyque
Occasionally when entrepreneurs are telling you about their breakout ventures, you have to force yourself not to slap your forehead and shout: “It’s so obvious! How come no one else thought of it first?” However, when David Ghysels is talking about his brainchild, you simply think he is a lunatic.
Ghysels, who runs an exhaustingly wacky Brussels marketing outfit, has cracked the age-old problem of how 22 people can sit down and eat a full meal whilst dangling 50m above the ground. His eureka moment came when he discovered that in the town of Hasselt, a mere 80-minute train ride away, was events specialist Benji Fun whose company motto is ‘nothing is too ridiculous for us’. They were, of course, delighted to build his floating restaurant.
“A few years ago everyone was coming up with gimmicks and I wanted something completely different,” explains Ghysels, who had experimented, somewhat less successfully, with a kind of bungee jumping involving vehicles. “We had organised a couple of suspended dinners and they were very popular. When Benji Fun said its engineers could turn my designs into something special we decided to create a separate business. Dinner in the Sky launched in April 2006 as a 50–50 venture.
With prices starting from a bargain €7,800, the company offers a fairground-like table-and-chairs structure, held aloft via crane. Up to 22 guests can enjoy a meal, served by professionals from up to a height of 50m. If you decide to go really mad, you could hire supplementary cranes so you can have a band serenading you or a grand piano, say, at the same altitude. Sessions are available in eight-hour chunks but the restaurant is rarely airborne for more than two at a stretch – it only takes a minute to lower to the ground “like a lift” for drinks to be replenished or toilet breaks.
Although the venture has attracted a lot of publicity – few journalists have been able to resist the notion of ‘haute cuisine’ – Dinner in the Sky has actually very little to do with food. “We are selling an experience, not gastronomy,” admits Ghysels. “We can prepare anything on the ground or in the air. We’ve been asked for everything from a champagne reception to sushi platters for Japanese TV but we’re really selling the concept. It is very popular with corporate clients for product launches, a new car, whatever. It’s incredibly strong.”
Businesses that have used the service include Coca-Cola, Les Vins du Val de Loire, San Pellegrino – which suspended a piano – and the Irish Dairy Board, which, disappointingly, resisted dangling a cow. For one publicity stunt in Holland, Bavaria Beer created a four-sided wooden beach bar, complete with hammocks and palm trees “with roots trailing” for maximum effect.
“It’s perfect for company events,” Ghysels says earnestly. “With three sessions per hour, more than 500 people could have access to the platform.” He says the UK’s Virgin Radio was even keen to broadcast a well-known singer performing in the sky for competition winners but later cooled on the idea. Who knows: maybe it was Amy Winehouse and Virgin belatedly realised a crane wasn’t necessary to get her so high.
Considering Ghysels is selling, basically, a customised platform, he appears to have done very well out of his brainwave. The service can be set up any place the client has secured permission – as long as there is a 500m2 surface – and he so far has three structures in circulation. “A board of directors at a company asked to use it for a confidential meeting,” Ghysels says. “You can’t imagine a more confidential location!”
So far, the company has raised the platform in Belgium, Holland, Portugal and the UK. Slovakia, Germany and South Africa are imminent and Ghysels says he is in talks with a client in Dubai, where cranes are even more plentiful than moneyed thrill-seekers. He is also fielding requests from New Zealand, Australia and Hong Kong.
He is desperate to take the concept to the US, but he grumbles that “the demands of the insurance companies there are unrealistic.”
Dinner in the Sky’s existing insurance is limited to cancellation “in case of bad weather”. There is, he emphasises, “always one security guy below, who is in radio contact with the crane driver and another stationed on the platform alongside the entertainers and chefs.”
In fact, the cost of the annual German security certification – “the strictest of all of them and the one we wanted” – is the reason that Dinner in the Sky has not as yet recorded a profit. “At the end of this year we should break even,” breezily predicts Ghysels who is confident that the company will, er, really take off in 2008. “Media interest is crazy, there are lots of new corporate clients clamouring to come on board and we’re hoping to hit the wedding circuit soon.” You just know that at some point Ghysels is going to proclaim that “the sky’s the limit” and, ever the showman, he obliges.
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