The Day We Built an Event from Scratch at Pier 27
There are venues and then there are buildings.
Pier 27 is a building. A magnificent, cavernous, cruise ship terminal on the San Francisco waterfront — and when it's not welcoming ships, it is an absolutely empty shell. No power. No infrastructure. No kitchen. Nothing. Just concrete, steel, and 50,000 square feet of possibility.That's what we started with when we were hired to produce a full-scale AI conference for 1,000 people.
To transform a place like Pier 27 —-It means bringing in power. It means union crews. It means four furniture vendors coordinating on two floors simultaneously. It means a stage buildout and screens positioned throughout the building so 1,000 people can see what's happening no matter where they are. It means a live broadcast. It means $30,000 in live plants — including a plant wall that stopped people in their tracks the moment they walked in. We made a deliberate choice from the start about how this event would feel. AI conferences tend toward the cold and metallic — grey palettes, hard surfaces, the aesthetic of a data center. We wanted the opposite. We wanted 1,000 people to walk in and feel safe, creative, and human. So we chose vibrant, saturated color. We brought in living things. The plants weren't decoration — they were a design philosophy. The AI art installation wasn't a gimmick — it was a statement about what artificial intelligence can create when it's given beauty as a prompt. Every element was chosen to make people feel something before a single session began.
And then it means curating every food and beverage experience from the ground up. Working with our culinary partners to design a farm-to-table menu that matched the ambition of the event. Sourcing intentionally. Designing stations that were destinations, not afterthoughts. Because food at this scale isn't a logistical problem to solve — it's part of the story you're telling your guests. And it has to be as considered as everything else in the room.
The upper floor was a user conference — theater seating, a serious stage, a program that ran all day. The lower floor was where the community lived. Lounge space. Energy. Movement.
For the morning break we kept it clean and energizing — seasonal fruit, nut-free trail mix with dried berries and dark chocolate. Simple. Good. The kind of thing that actually sustains you through a morning of sessions.
Lunch was six stations, each duplicated so 1,000 people could move through without waiting. Ramen with smoky kombu dashi and shoyu tamago. Salt-crusted beets with housemade ricotta and citrus. Winter mushroom lasagna with parm frico. Cider-brined grilled chicken with green garlic potatoes and fermented farm chiles. Passed warm chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles. This wasn't conference food. This was a restaurant experience at conference scale.
Happy hour brought grazing stations — raw, roasted and pickled farm vegetables with chipotle hummus and green goddess, artisanal cheese with farm honey and Acme baguettes — and passed bites: Ruby Beet Arancini with Truffled Pecorino. Kombu Cured Kampachi with Oro Blanco Grapefruit. Cold Smoked Salmon Tartare with Meyer Lemon Crème Fraîche and Purple Potato Chips. Blood Orange Tartlets with Toasted Meringue Tuile to close.
All day we ran a coffee cart and beverage stations — Winter Citrus Spa Water, Green Apple Yerba Mate, Lemon Verbena Iced Tea. Every detail considered. Every dietary need accommodated. Every station staffed by people who knew what they were serving and why.
What made this day work wasn't any single element. It was the fact that one team held the whole picture — from the power infrastructure to the plant wall to the passed bites to the live broadcast. When everything comes from one vision, everything feels cohesive. The food fits the room. The room fits the event. The event feels inevitable rather than assembled.
That's what we do. At any scale.
If you're planning a corporate conference, summit, product launch, or full-scale production in San Francisco or the Bay Area — this is the kind of work we love most. Reach out. Let's talk about what's possible. Contact us here.