Health Care Partners, the largest physician-owned and led independent physicians association in the Northeast, serving the five boroughs and Long Island, knows how to do a perfect employee appreciation event.

After hiring Maui Wowi (that’s us) to provide smoothies and hot cocoa (because it’s March in New York, and you never know whether it will be frigid or like spring) the human resources team decided to do a Hawaiian theme employee appreciation event.

HCP promoted the event to employees and encouraged them to get into the mood and go Friday-extra-casual with Hawaiian shirts, which the staff complemented with leis. Our staff blended smoothies (kiwi lemon lime, tropical fruit and strawberry banana) for their 200 staff, and made Ghirardelli hot cocoas as well.

As you can see from the photos, the HCP team took the Hawaiian part seriously. (Especially the lady in red with the sunglasses!)

So what are the essentials for a successful employee appreciation event? Here are a few to get you started:

1. Promote, promote, promote: Signage in the hallways, break room, and other conspicuous places at least a week before the event. Email blast a few days before and then the day-of.
2. A theme is a plus: Coupling the employee appreciation event with a theme (like Hawaiian) adds to the fun of the event.
3. Decorate and accessorize: In the case of this event, a little bit of extra signage (“The tiki bar is open”) and leis given out by the HR staff as people arrive is a nice touch.

While March 1 was the official National Employee Appreciation Day, don’t restrict yourself to the date. Maui Wowi does employee appreciation events year round – espresso and hot cocoa drinks in winter, smoothies in the other seasons, and often both.

Planning something special for your employees to show them some love during the week of Valentine’s Day? It’ll be here before you know it – mark your calendars for the week of February 11, 2019 (the actual day is Feb. 14). Maui Wowi smoothie catering can make your employee appreciation event delicious and properly themed.

Valentine’s Day is great for employee appreciation events for lots of reasons – the most important of which is saying thank you to your staff. But it’s also super-easy to decorate for. Pink ribbons and cups, red leis – the possibilities are as endless as they are inexpensive.

As for our smoothie drinks, that’s the best part of tying in the fun holiday theme with employee appreciation. We have quite a number of plays on pink smoothie drinks: Strawberry Banana, of course. But when we combine strawberry banana with pina colada for a Strawberry Colada, we get a delicious smoothie that’s a lovely light pink. We also can blend Hawaiian Breeze – a combination of strawberry and mango/orange, which has an orange-red color.

Now what about a red cocktail umbrella and red paper straw to top it all off? That makes for a smoothie that definitely says “we love our people.”

To round it all out, our servers who will be blending your amazing smoothies will be clad in red Aloha shirts, and we can also decorate our bar with any other gifts, giveaways, decorations or signage you’d like to provide. If you plan your event in advance it would be easy to procure napkins, cups and other items with your company logo – an even more thoughtful way to recognize and show you appreciate your employees.

We love it when a college tries Maui Wowi smoothies for their campus events for the first time. Today it was Point Park University’s turn. We met Point Park’s students at the NACA convention and they couldn’t wait to have us on campus. The Pittsburgh-based university with 4,000+ students held a Welcome Back event to get students in the mood for the new semester. And contrary to what you might think, we make a lot of smoothies in the winter, especially on college campuses.

We visited SUNY Maritime College today, on the wind-swept Long Island Sound. It’s technically in the Bronx, but unlike any other place. The wind is something else! We provided our Ghiradelli hot cocoa bar – no Swiss Miss for us! We use the best hot chocolate for our campus and other catered events, with syrups, sauces, whipped cream, marshmallows and more.  

Spring campus events are starting, even though it’s still winter jacket weather. The students at Temple Universitybraved the chill to bring some brotherly and sisterly love outdoors in their plaza yesterday. From here on out for April through June, it’s a non-stop Maui Wowi sprint to campuses all over the country. Break out the t-shirts and sunblock. Your pina colada is coming.

Thanks to all our customers for making 2016 our best year ever, with 332 smoothie and coffee bars catered for hundreds of corporate clients, colleges and social events. Everything from 3,000 frozen cocktails for Viacom to a 5-city event for Emblem Health to espresso for Billy Joel’s 4th of July party, a birthday party at Samantha Bee’s show, plus hundreds of college events, health fairs, corporate conferences, department store promotions, weddings, camp visiting days, and even a briss or two! Looking forward to an even more exciting 2017.

Want to do something really special for your students or employees? Take a look at what we did at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, NY. Maui Wowi literally moved in for an entire week and created a catered espresso and gourmet hot cocoa bar to get students through finals week. We served nearly 2,000 drinks over the course of the week. We use our own Kona espresso beans, ground fresh with each cup. Our cocoa is Ghiradelli (and if you find something that’s better, we want to know about it – because we think this is the best there is). Add our selection of Monin syrups, sauces, toppings and you have a fantastic selection of customized espresso drinks for your people. Students love having us for 2 hours, but what about having us for 4 hours for an entire week? That’s 10 times the love. 🙂

A Maui Wowi catered espresso bar is also perfect for corporate employee appreciation events. January’s coming and it’s going to be cold in most of the country. Imagine having our catered espressos, cappuccinos, lattes, mochas and more on site for the whole week. Your employees will save a small fortune from their usual Starbucks. And our’s is fresher and better, anyway!

If you want to know where fashion is headed, spend some time at Fashion Institute of Technology.  Tomorrow’s style trendsetters go to school here! Maui Wowi is fortunate enough to spend time with these students and bring some relaxation and refreshment to their events with our espresso and hot cocoa bar.

We’re wrapping up the end-of-semester events, but the January term is straight ahead. We look forward to serving our campus event friends in what’s left of December and in the new year (can you believe it!).