Paul Potts flew to Auckland to the huge party at Ellerslie. Photo / supplied
British opera star Paul Potts entertained 3800 people at an Auckland sit-down black-tie dinner last night in what is said to be New Zealand’s largest seated dinner party.
Potts is the tenor who won ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent with his performance of Nessun Dorma and he performed at Ellerslie under a giant marquee with fellow Kiwi opera star Kiwi Lizzie Marvelly.
Peter Thompson, Barfoot & Thompson managing director, said the stars entertained “New Zealand’s biggest party” in a marquee the size of three rugby fields which was erected at the Ellerslie Events Centre for the sit-down three-course dinner.
“It’s most probably the biggest marquee in New Zealand,” he said, adding that it was approximately the same size as the Waikato’s Fieldays.
Marvelly also sang at the agency’s 90th birthday party at Alexandra Park, performing a rousing version of Tarakihi (The Locust), also sung famously by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa.
Thompson said 2800 staff and managers from the agency’s 80 outlets in Northland, Auckland, Hamilton and Tauranga attended.
Guests from the sporting world where the agency has extensive sponsorships and people from other businesses it deals with also went.
“We also had Sir Dave Dobbyn singing Loyal before playing at our after-party function and three bands performed before the function,” he said. Brotherhood, Yulia, Jackie Clarke, Lavina Williams and Annie Crummer also performed.
But how much it cost to host that many people he couldn’t say.
“The families have put money away for the last five years to recognise where Barfoot & Thompson got to today,” Thompson said.
Few businesses founded in 1923 were in operation today, he said.
“The saying is that the first generation opens it, the second generation builds on it and the third generation messes it up. But we’ve been able to keep it all together,” he said.
Yet now the agency had its fourth generation of family members: Thompson’s daughter Paula, 26, is a sales agent in the agency’s Grey Lynn office and his nephew Matt Thompson, aged in his early 30s, is a relieving manager, Peter Thompson said.
Other family members within the business include Garth Barfoot and daughter Kiri who heads the property management division as well as Stephen Barfoot.
The agency is owned by the two families. In 1923, Val Barfoot bought a tiny, run-down Newmarket land agency for £75 and called the company “V. Barfoot Land Agent”.
A year later he was joined by older brother Kelland Barfoot. In 1934, Maurice Thompson joined and in 1940 the business became Barfoot & Thompson.
Thompson said Saturday’s marquee was erected off to one side of the main Ellerslie racecourse grandstand and part of that grandstand was used for the after-dinner event. The marquee entranceway was fitted out with memorabilia marking the agency’s foundation and history.
“It was something very spectacular,” Thompson said of the venue, telling how it was a number of marquees joined and all sourced from within New Zealand. Nothing was imported.
Three kitchens were created to get the food out hot and on time and chefs from Wellington and Auckland were in attendance, Thompson said.
Martin Smith, director of The Great Catering Company, was in charge of the menu and all food. Smith’s business has catered to Meredith Connell and many other businesses and it specialises in big events.
He was featured in the Herald in 2015, telling how he managed massive events but he worked for another firm then.
“It’s all about the preparation and timing. It’s not as daunting as it seems. You need a great team around you,” Smith said of planning for Saturday night’s party.
Around 350 front-of-house staff and 155 back-of-house staff - chefs, plating hands, kitchen hands - worked at the event.
“In this environment with labour shortages and food price rises, it’s been challenging to put something as big as this together. Getting good-quality products is tough these days to ensure consistency,” he said.
“We have our own team who we can call on but we also leaned on six different hospitality labour providers who we know and trust,” he said.
“I think this is the largest plated dinner event in a temporary structure - i.e., marquees. There’s no venue that can hold that number of people existing in New Zealand currently,” Smith said of sit-down dinner venues.
However, not everyone in the real estate sales sector is celebrating, with a slump in prices and volumes particularly sharp in Auckland.
The agency has reported some of its lowest sales figures lately and agents are suffering huge commission drops lately.
However, the business is somewhat inured from the downturn due to a trump card: it owns many of its 80 branch offices and therefore doesn’t have to pay rent to landlords to trade.
Sales have been so slow in some of its branches lately that some managers on profit-share schemes are suffering financially yet the agency has been in an expansion phase, spreading south in the last few years.
The firm’s agents endured the slowest February sales in a quarter of a century, just as Aucklanders brace to pay $900/fortnight more on mortgages and mortgage defaults are on the rise.
“Two months of the most intense and extreme weather Auckland has ever experienced hobbled the property market during February, leading to the slowest month’s trading in a February for at least a quarter of a century,” the agency said on March 2.
Only 410 properties were sold in February in the four regions. The only month in the past 20 years when it has sold less was in April 2020, when virtually all commercial activity was suppressed as a result of Covid.
Auckland crane numbers fell to an eight-year low.