Rob Giardinelli
When Haute Cuisine Meets High Stakes, Every Plate Becomes A Prize In A Quest For Exclusivity
A new trend has emerged: culinary experiences with renowned chefs are increasingly stealing the spotlight. These chef-driven packages, whether featuring celebrated local talent or internationally acclaimed Michelin-starred masters… are now commanding six-figure bids and eclipsing even the most coveted trips. In Texas, from Dallas to Houston to Austin, gala-goers are discovering that access to a top chef is the ultimate status symbol, something to savor not just for a night but as a story (and a taste) to dine out on for years to come.
Something interesting is happening in the nonprofit gala space, particularly when it comes to auctions, both live and silent. Experiences still sell well, but something interesting has happened in the past year.
For years, even before COVID, the top auction items almost always were in-demand trips. Sure, the hotspots changed as tastes changed; for example, in the first one to two years after COVID, safaris in Africa often topped the live auction list, as people yearned to get as far away from home as possible.
Over the past couple of years, an interesting dynamic has occurred. The top auction item is still once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Now, however, the top item often includes a mix of faraway locales and items close to home. These items are once-in-a-lifetime culinary experiences with renowned chefs.
What we can make of this is how similar access to a renowned local, regional, national, or international chef is to owning an Hermès Birkin bag? The dining packages are primarily available to those in the know or to those who spend big at top restaurants. Having access to acclaimed chefs is something that people can dine out on for years, pun intended.
What has been interesting to see in this latest twist is how these auction packages are often the largest packages in live auction lots, and often by a great deal of money. I am even seeing instances where donors are, on the fly, opting to purchase chef’s packages instead of raising at the top level of a paddles-up.
These packages are also going for well more than the top paddles-up level, which is something that only occasionally, if rarely, happened when trips reigned as the marquee live auction item. The interesting thing is that this is happening whether a package features a top local chef or an acclaimed international Michelin-rated chef.
We have seen it time and again at top galas all around Texas. In Dallas, Côtes du Coeur is the American Heart Association’s largest single-night fundraiser in the United States each year, where guests get to enjoy a delectable, multi-course menu helmed by legendary Dallas chef Richard Chamberlain in cooperation with approximately a half dozen other top Dallas-based chefs. To accompany that, the night boasts a live auction with multiple culinary experiences, including one of the top items: a private dinner in a world-class wine cellar.
The 2024 Houston Children’s Charity Gala featured a chef-prepared dinner with special guests Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and Andre Johnson that sold twice for $250K each. More recently, Texas Children’s Hospital hosted a Hope and Opportunity dinner featuring the internationally acclaimed Roca Brothers of the legendary Michelin-Star restaurant El Cellar de Can Roca and six of Houston’s hottest chefs, some of them Michelin-Star chefs in their own right. The event was so successful that the organization had to have seatings on two different nights to keep up with demand.
Another trend that has helped auction score five and six-figure auction items is private dinners and exclusive culinary experiences. During 2025 in Austin, The Art of Kindness Gala, celebrating the 10th anniversary of The Kindness Campaign, founded by Andra Liemandt, the top live auction item was a private chef experience with acclaimed chef Paul Qui that sold twice. Other top events, including the 2025 FOREKids ATX Gala hosted by Angela and Sergio Garcia and Chris Harrison and Lauren Zima, served up a double dose of fun, including a conversation with World Kitchen Founder and legendary chef Jose Andres, while also boasting a Your Table to His: the Tyson Cole Exclusive Omakase Package that scored six figures and sold twice. Just a few weeks later, at Dancing with the Stars benefiting the Center for Child Protection, an Ultimate Chef Wine & Dine package with Tyson Cole, John Carver, and Kevin Taylor, sold twice for $150,000 each.
This phenomenon is happening in markets all over the country and not just in major Texas markets. One is the Napa Wine Celebration hosted by the V Foundation. Their 2025 event raised over $12 million, blending on-site world-class food and wine with an auction featuring once-in-a-lifetime experiences and trips that include culinary delights within the packages. Additionally, Naples, Florida’s annual Naples Winter Wine Festival, benefiting the Naples Children Foundation, is held over the course of a weekend in late January. The event features a live auction so vibrant and dynamic that it requires two auctioneers to bid on several dozen six-figure culinary experiential packages, which netted approximately $35 million for the organization in 2025.
This shows that there is a high demand for such chef packages and bespoke culinary experiences. It also shows that an individual chef can have multiple auction packages in a short amount of time and score a phenomenal amount for a gala’s live auction. Who needs another Birkin when you can feast like royalty?
The chefs packages do not work due to only the pedigree of the chefs, but also because the nonprofits hosting these galas know their audiences and how these packages can raise tens, or hundreds of thousands of dollars, for their respective organizations to maximize impact on the communities they serve, and yes, the opportunity for people to dine out on something that sets them apart. This will likely include a couple of anecdotes that allow them to dine out on it themselves for years to come.
Want to experience more with your gala? Rob Giardinelli helps nonprofits transform their galas from transactional to relational so you can grow revenue, improve guest retention, and develop deeper donor relationships. Register to attend his Event Success Blueprint Webinar on Thursday, January 29, 2026 at 1 PM CST by clicking here.
