What a Game Show Actually Tastes Like (feat. Wine & Dine’m)
Every Banana Life Game Show is different.
We customise every experience around the client, their people, their objectives and most importantly the energy in the room. With different rounds and formats to choose from, we can build the flow of the game around what the event needs to look and feel like.
Usually, trivia nights and game shows don’t have food that’s actually considered as part of the experience. Usually, catering is just… there on a table in the corner. People graze on it between rounds before jumping straight back into the game.
So when we started working with Wine & Dine’m, the obvious question was: what if the food wasn’t just next to the game, but part of the overall event experience?
That’s where we think we work really well together. We think about the flow of the game and the energy in the room; Wine & Dine’m can think about where catering fits, what type of catering makes sense and when it should happen within that flow.
Together, we can build the food and the experience around the event, rather than treating them as two separate things.
Meet Wine & Dine’m
Wine & Dine’m offers a range of catering solutions designed to suit different event formats, venues, budgets and objectives. From arrival canapés and roaming canapés to working lunch boxes, morning and afternoon tea, grazing stations, shared platters, substantial canapés and beverage service, their catering can flex around the way an event runs.
They also offer interactive food stations and seated lunch or dinner options, making it possible to build catering around everything from a quick-paced team building session to a more formal corporate event.
For a Banana Life Game Show, that flexibility is particularly useful. The food doesn’t need to compete with the game. It can work alongside it and be planned around the flow of the experience.
So, what happens in a Banana Life Game Show?
For anyone who hasn’t been in the room, a typical two-hour session is built from a mix of rounds like:
- Trivia — the warm-up, everyone’s comfortable
- Buzz In — the warm-up is over, tensions rise
- Around the World — fast, chaotic, great for big groups
- Pictionary — someone on your team cannot draw and everyone now knows it
- Know the Ad — 80s and 90s Australian ads, surprisingly emotional for a Tuesday afternoon
- Physical rounds — gets people out of their chairs, on-brand for the “brighten up your bunch” thing we say too often
The important thing is that every one of these rounds has a natural rhythm.
There are moments for high energy, moments for people to reset, and moments where the room naturally shifts from playing to socialising.
That’s where catering comes in.
Rather than treating food as something that happens separately from the activity, Wine & Dine’m tailors the catering around the event flow — whether that’s something light on arrival, food people can grab between rounds, or more substantial catering once the game is finished.
The Run Sheet: One Way to Bring It Together
Just like how we customise the game around each client, we can work with Wine & Dine’m to shape the catering around how you want your Game Show to flow. Here’s one example of what that could look like and the beauty is that we can adjust, move and change each element to suit your event.
Time | What’s happening in the game | What’s happening on the food side |
0:00 – 0:15 | Arrival, teams forming, awkward small talk | Arrival drinks / roaming canapé service — easy to enjoy while people mingle, meet their teammates and settle into the room. |
0:15 – 1:00 | Trivia, Buzz In, Around the World — the main block | Let them play. No interruptions. The focus is on the game and keeping the momentum going. |
1:00 – 1:20 | The natural lull after 2-3 rounds, energy starts to dip | Mid-game food break — this could be personal grazing platters on each table, another round of canapés, or a freshly opened afternoon tea station where people can grab something, stretch their legs and get straight back into the game. |
1:20 – 1:50 | Pictionary, Know the Ad, physical round, final scores tally | Back to the game. The food has done its job and the energy is back up. |
1:50 – 2:00 | Winners announced | Time to unwind. Substantial canapés such as burgers or bowls and beverage service give everyone a chance to relax, celebrate the winning team and enjoy the end of the event. |
And that’s where the experience changes.
You’ve gone from a room full of people who didn’t necessarily know each other, to newly formed teams raving about their trivia knowledge, laughing over their creative drawings, raving about the food and getting competitive about answers they absolutely should have known, all without hungry bellies!
Why This Actually Works
We spend a lot of time getting our facilitators to read a room. Turns out the same logic applies to food.
A well-fed crowd is an easier crowd, full stop. That’s not a soft skill, it’s just true. But when the food lands matters as much as what’s on the plate. Feed people at the wrong moment and you kill momentum. Feed them at the right one and you don’t even notice the transition, it just feels like the event is flowing.
That’s the bit we love about working with Wine & Dine’m.
They’re not just thinking about what food to serve. They’re thinking about how the catering fits into the event, the people, the venue, the timing, the budget and what the client actually wants their guests to experience.
Planning a Game Show Event? Here’s the Pairing
If you’re planning a corporate event that needs both the energy of a proper gamified team experience and catering that’s considered as part of the event, Banana Life and Wine & Dine’m make a pretty good pairing.
And that’s what a Game Show actually tastes like!
