Amazon Luxembourg partnered with ChefPassport to organise a 61-person Thai cooking team building experience in October 2024, using a unique rotation format that gave every participant three different experiences: hands-on cooking with Chef Corrie, a wine and cocktail workshop, and an interactive culinary presentation.
Results at a glance
- 61 Amazon team members participated across three simultaneous stations
- Flavors of Thailand menu with rotation between cooking, beverage workshops, and culinary presentations
- Led by Chef Corrie, Niels, and the Cactus team in Luxembourg
- ChefPassport's largest rotation-format event to date, coordinating three parallel experiences
Why Amazon chose a rotation-format culinary experience
When you're organising a team event for more than 60 people, keeping everyone engaged is a real challenge. Amazon's internal event team, led by Francisca Rojas, wanted something better than a standard team dinner—an experience where colleagues could actively participate, learn new skills, and connect across different touchpoints throughout the day.
The rotation format solved that. Rather than splitting the group into static teams, ChefPassport designed three simultaneous stations: 20 participants cooking Thai dishes hands-on in the kitchen, 20 learning about wine and cocktail pairing in a beverage workshop, and 20 attending an interactive culinary presentation in a meeting room. Every hour, the groups rotated, so by the end of the event, all 61 participants had experienced every element.
What the day looked like
The cooking station focused on core Thai techniques—mortar and pestle work for curry pastes, balancing sweet, sour, salty and spicy flavours, and plating fresh ingredients. Chef Corrie guided participants through the Flavors of Thailand menu, offering hands-on coaching as teams prepared their dishes together.
At the beverage station, Niels led tastings and demonstrations, teaching the group how to pair wines with bold Thai flavours and how to build cocktails that complemented the menu. The session was interactive, with participants tasting, comparing notes, and asking questions about ingredients and techniques.
The presentation station, run by the Cactus team, offered context: the origins of Thai cuisine, the role of fresh herbs and aromatics, and how to bring these techniques into everyday cooking. It was a quieter, more reflective moment between the energy of the kitchen and the bar.
After the rotations, everyone gathered at a long communal table—red tablecloths, wine glasses, chopsticks—and shared the Thai feast they'd collectively created. The meal wasn't just the end of the event; it was where the connections made during the rotations came together over food, conversation, and laughter.
Why this format works for large corporate teams
The rotation model kept 61 people actively engaged for the full event. No one was waiting. No one was watching from the sidelines. Every participant moved, learned, and contributed in three distinct ways, which meant more interaction, more variety, and more energy than a single-format event could deliver.
For the organiser, ChefPassport handled the complexity: coordinating chefs, ingredient delivery, kitchen and room setup, timing the rotations, and ensuring dietary requirements were met across all three stations. Francisca and her team could focus on welcoming participants, not troubleshooting logistics.
The Thai menu worked especially well for this format—bright, aromatic, hands-on, and unfamiliar enough to spark curiosity without intimidating anyone. It gave people something to talk about, compare, and enjoy together.
What it means for your team
If you're planning a large-scale team event and want something more dynamic than a static cooking class or sit-down meal, a rotation format can deliver variety, engagement, and energy for groups of 40 to 80 people. It's particularly effective when you want colleagues from different departments or locations to mix, move, and connect in multiple settings throughout the day.
ChefPassport has run rotation events with teams across Luxembourg, combining cooking, beverage workshops, culinary talks, and shared meals in formats tailored to your group size, venue, and goals. Explore more corporate cooking class experiences in Luxembourg or get in touch to design a custom rotation event for your team.