More than 3,000 people gathered on May 28 outside the Mercedes Benz Superdome—the closely guarded secret location of the 2016 Diner en Blanc New Orleans—for the fourth year of the posh, pop-up picnic in the Big Easy.
Produced by the Spears Group, which also produces the annual Millennial Awards and is set to introduce the city’s first Fried Chicken Festival later this year, the first Diner en Blanc New Orleans was held in 2013, with hundreds of people converging at the New Orleans’ riverfront underneath the Crescent City Connection. The 2014 event took place at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans to avoid forecasted rain that year. Last year, nearly 2,000 people filled Spanish Plaza for Diner en Blanc New Orleans 2015.
Cleveland Spears is pleased that the local event continues to grow each year and looks forward to next year’s milestone fifth anniversary. His firm has also been tapped to produce Diner en Blanc events in Houston and Atlanta.
First held in Paris nearly 30 years ago, the concept of Diner end Blanc was introduced by François Pasquier, who invited a handful of friends to a fancy outdoor dinner at Paris’ second largest park, Bois de Boulogne, and asked them to dress in white so they could find each other. Today Le Dîner en Blanc® de Paris assembles over 10,000 guests every year, with a record 15,000 people attending the 25th anniversary in 2013. Additionally, the event has grown to more than 50 cities across the globe.