Vested with the responsibility of overseeing the F&B efforts of Live Aqua, Grand Fiesta Americana and Fiesta Americana, the premier brands of the more than 180-property Mexico hotel chain Posadas, Gerardo Rivera stakes his living on pinpointing and delivering the latest group cuisine trends. Here are the top group food and beverage trends he believes will impact 2020 and beyond. Read more.

Executive Chef Christopher Covelli chats with Meetings Today contributor Jennifer Jeurgens about Sarasota cuisine, food trends he sees in the meetings and events industry, and some of the best dishes at his restaurant, Sage. Read more.

Chefs from meeting and event properties in the U.S. and Mexico share their favorite holiday dessert receipes.

Panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean and a seafood-centric Cali Mex menu are served to groups in Southern California’s Laguna Beach at Las Brisas restaurant. Helmed by Orange County native Michael Gaines, Las Brisas is in the midst of a major three-phase renovation that is scheduled to wrap by the end of 2019.

Carrying the tagline “Beyond All-Inclusive, Beyond All Compare,” the Velas Resorts properties offer food and beverage options that rival top non-resort restaurants. Overseeing it all—22 gourmet restaurants brand-wide, with cuisine types ranging from French and Italian to Asian and Mexican—is Michel Mustiere, culinary director for Velas Resorts.

With a career firmly rooted in the food scene of Southern California, chef Octavio Sabado has an acute sense of culinary trends and which of them are here to stay. He gets to put this knowledge to good use as executive chef of the Westdrift Manhattan Beach. Sabado’s menu at the hotel’s signature eatery Jute Coastal Kitchen + Bar and the group banquets it serves, is filled with dishes that could be considered special dietary menus elsewhere.

Austria is renown as a great producer of top chefs, such as Wolfgang Puck. Add Josef Huber, who has worked with Puck in the chaotic kitchen at the Oscars Governors Ball in 2016, to the list. Salzburg, Austria, native Huber oversees all F&B operations as corporate executive chef for AHC+Hospitality’s six owned and managed hotels.

Last March 2018, Ben George was feeling the madness. As executive chef for Savor… at INTRUST Bank Arena in Wichita, Kansas, he was preparing food for the first and second rounds of the 2018 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship, hosted by Wichita State University. George led the efforts to provide meals to more than 45,000 guests during the event, including more than 4,000 boxed lunches.

Like other top chefs, David Belknap had to venture out in the world before finding a home, which happened to be where he began. The executive chef of AC Hotel Columbus Dublin’s Spanish tapas-inspired lounge and restaurant VASO was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, but his career trajectory and love of his family brought him back home to Dublin, a nearby suburb.

In today’s meetings and events scene, the F&B business is show business, and nowhere is this more evident than with the top-shelf team at Disney Catered Events. The catering theater staged by Disney is worthy of a Hollywood production, or in this case, Walt Disney World, with Culinary Director John Clark in a leading role. And for Clark, as the saying goes, business is good.