Venues play a key role in the recovery of the events industry. By implementing built-in physical distancing practices at your property and taking every precaution, it lowers the risk for the event planner and adds an extra layer of security for all attendees and stakeholders. With restaurants being open for the past few weeks, our team got creative and brought the restaurant regulation concepts to a large-scale venue in the hopes that this may expedite your opening (timeline depending on your local government and current guidelines/regulations in place). Although this ‘Inside the Box’ concept may be out of the norm and not as financially rewarding as a packed house, it could be a step in the right direction for your venue or help spark some creativity for something new!

The Inside the Box experience consists of having designated boxes marked out with appropriate square footage for holding your desired amount of people per box (which at the time of writing this seems to be groups of up to 6 people).You could mark these boxes off with 4 ft fence, rope, stanchions, risers, tape or marking paint - depending on your venue, what you have easily available and what is cost effective for you.

Each box would consist of the following:

• Table & chairs appropriate for attendee amount
• Hand sanitizer
• Food & drinks menu (laminated/plastic for easy cleaning, or single use paper)
• Rules & regulations sheet for attendees to read over, stating appropriate COVID19 policies
• 2 x roaming cards
• Masks for the appropriate number of attendees (to be worn when leaving their box)

Stay in the Box!

The key to this concept is to minimize the amount of traffic throughout the venue.

• All food & drinks will be ordered through a server that checks in periodically to your box, just like a restaurant
• All food & drinks will be delivered to your box after ordering
• Your bill will be paid near the end of the show using a POS system or online via an app, no cash.
• There will be two roaming cards per box: attendees must take these when leaving the box to go to the bathroom or for a smoke! This will ensure that only two people are gone at a time, and will help regulate the amount of people moving throughout the venue. Think of it like a bathroom pass or hall pass back in the day.
• Masks provided are to be worn when leaving their box.

Purchasing a Box

We recommend that boxes are sold as one price. This will help ensure that people are bringing only those in their cohort group, and they can deal with splitting the cost amongst themselves. This will also eliminate the chance of people reselling single tickets and will help with contact tracing.

Each box will have a number assigned to it which will play a very important part to you as the event planner!

Box #’s and How to Use Them

With each box having its own designated number, there are a few ways you can use these to aid in the overall safety of your event experience.

• Ingress: Have specific times allotted for each box to show up to decrease lines. Each box can be escorted in as they arrive straight and shown their path(s) of travel to get where they need to go efficiently.
• Egress: Having an emcee for your event is highly recommended. Once the show has ended the emcee can release boxes by number in an appropriate manner to avoid any bottlenecks forming.
• Bathrooms: You may not have the proper amount of bathrooms if you are an indoor venue. BUT if you are using this concept for an outdoor event, having a portable toilet for each box and numbering your portable toilets could be a good way of regulating cross contamination.
• Behind the scenes: Box #’s can be used for order tracking and communication between staff members doing table service, and contact tracing in the event of any issues.

Now Go Adapt!

This is very generalized idea and there are many more details and obstacles to still be worked through, but take it and adapt to fit your venue or event! At Trixstar we specialize in making ideas like this come to life and would be thrilled to explore it in much greater detail in accordance with your specific venue and provincial/state guidelines. Feel free to reach out to Tayler (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) if you want to discuss any ideas further! 

Not sure where to start? Download this free Event Strategy Guide!