Behind the Food Table: Bella&Bona's Summer of Events in Berlin

This summer we ran three very different events in Berlin — and all three reminded us of the same thing: when you put the right people in a room with good food and no agenda, something real happens.

We fed 100 HR professionals painting portraits of strangers on a rooftop in Schöneberg. We kept 150 builders fuelled from morning to evening while they shipped real products in a single day. And we opened our new Berlin office to the extended Bella&Bona family — clients, partners, and people we had been meaning to bring together for months.

Here is what each one looked like from behind the food table.

Thursday 16 July · Space Shack Coworking, Schöneberg · 100 guests

The idea behind Beyond Benefits was simple and honestly overdue. HR and People & Culture professionals spend their entire working lives thinking about how to make other people feel valued. We wanted to give them an evening where someone was thinking about them for a change.
We built the event with three partners — thevalyoubox, PaintNow, and Space Shack Coworking Berlin — on the rooftop terrace in the heart of Schöneberg. By the evening of 16 July, we were fully booked. 100 people registered from communities including Employed.world, Talent Crunch Berlin, The Secret HR Society, and Generalist World.

What happened on the night

The Bella&Bona team ran a live grill — burgers, sausages, veggie skewers, and a buffet full of cold bites. Drinks kept moving all evening, sponsored by RAUCH Fruchtsäfte. PaintNow's artist Ilinca Barbato ran a speed portrait session where guests were paired with someone they had just met and asked to paint them. thevalyoubox sent every one of the 100 guests home with a curated box — snacks, inspiration, and a little surprise inside.
We also sat down with three guests for something a bit different — honest on-camera conversations about what people get wrong about their jobs: Elis Gardiole, founder of Comfident Workouts, Neha Agrawal, HR professional and career coach, and Richard from our own team. Three honest answers. Three different worlds. Exactly the kind of conversation this evening was designed to make happen.
As one attendee reflected afterwards: "The mix was foolproof: good food and fresh drinks, interesting creative activities moderated by Ilinca, a scenic rooftop in the heart of Schöneberg, and beautiful boxes put together with care for each of the 100 guests — what felt like an effortless summer party among old friends. So many thoughtful, like-minded people I'd never have crossed paths with otherwise."

Richard, who ran the food that evening alongside Tasneem, put it plainly afterwards: "People don't remember the benefits package. They remember how you make them feel. For me, it was about something simple — bringing people together and creating a community where everyone feels valued. Where people take the time to actually talk to each other, listen to each other and, importantly, have fun together. And that's exactly what I saw."
By the time the evening was technically over, most people were still on the terrace, mid-conversation.
What's next: Beyond Benefits is becoming a recurring event. Its next stop is Munich.

Friday 1 August · The Delta, Berlin · 150 participants

On 1 August, we partnered with 8x for a Mobile Hackathon in Berlin. 150 developers and builders. One day to build real products that solve real problems. The sharpest builders in the room, the latest AI tools, and a bit of San Francisco energy — brought to Berlin.

Our job was simple: make sure nobody had to think about food. Fresh meals and drinks from morning to evening, so the only thing on anyone's mind was what they were building.

By the end of the day, the room had produced apps across health, creativity, and the AI economy:

🥇 1st place — Hue Are You by Ruslan Vorobev. A selfie-based app that gives you a personal colour palette and outfit feedback.
🥈 2nd place — Story Snap by Joži Satler. A creative photo app for generating, applying, and sharing visual effects.
🥉 3rd place — Tokend by Myron Sydorov and Yashveer Sookun. A mobile casino concept turning AI credits into a universal token for the AI economy.

There is a version of event catering that treats a full-day hackathon as a logistics problem — drop off the food, collect the containers, invoice and move on. That is not how we approach it.

For a room of 150 people shipping under pressure, the food has to arrive on time. It has to cover dietary requirements without anyone having to ask twice. It has to be good enough that people actually step away from their screens for 20 minutes and eat properly.

We got it right. The builders ate, refuelled, and shipped. That is the job.

Thanks to Darijan Ducic for helping pull it together, 8x for bringing the hackathon to Berlin, The Delta for the space, and to bilt.me, ElevenLabs, and OpenAI for making it happen.

Already looking forward to the next one.

Thursday 27 August · Space Shack Coworking, Berlin Rooftop

A few weeks after Beyond Benefits, we opened the terrace again — this time for ourselves.

The new Bella&Bona Berlin office was ready. We had been working out of Space Shack Coworking for a while, and when the space came together properly, we wanted to mark it with the people who had been part of building what we are building: clients, suppliers, partners, founders, HR leaders, office managers, GTM experts, operators, AI builders, and the entire Bella&Bona team.

Richard summed up the invite: "Warm welcome. Warm weather. Cold drinks."

We treated it exactly as we would a client booking — a full spread out all evening, drinks topped up before anyone had to ask, and nothing left for a colleague to manage mid-party. The food ran itself so the people running it could actually be present.

Niccolò, walking the rooftop that evening, described what he saw: "Customers talking to suppliers, founders exchanging ideas with HR leaders, operators meeting operators and people making introductions for one another."

"Looking back at the last few years," he reflected afterwards, "some of our best hires came from people we met at events. Some of our biggest customers were introduced by someone in our network. Some of our strongest partnerships started with a casual conversation over lunch."

Richard added his own take: "The best investment we've made at Bella&Bona over the last 12 months wasn't AI. It was renting an office."

This was not the last event on that rooftop. Niccolò confirmed it after the party: more events are coming — around startups, GTM, HR, and Office Managers. "This was only the beginning."

We are already catering the GTM Hackathon Berlin on 3 October, in partnership with Co-Learning Club. 100 people across GTM, growth, tech, and data, spending the day using AI to explore new ways to find and reach customers.

Our job, as always: keep everyone fed while they figure it out.

Good food is not the point — it is the foundation. Every conversation at Beyond Benefits, every product shipped at the hackathon, every introduction made at the Office Warming Party was enabled by the fact that people were fed well and did not have to think about logistics. That is what professional catering actually does. It removes friction so the real thing — the connection, the conversation, the work — can happen.

The best events do not feel like events. The feedback we heard most after Beyond Benefits was some version of "it felt like a party among friends." That does not happen by accident. It happens when the food is right, the setting is right, and nobody is watching the clock.

Community compounds. A conference call does not start a partnership. A LinkedIn message does not build trust. A shared meal on a Berlin rooftop sometimes does both in 20 minutes.