“The Golden Chef (Der Goldene Koch)” is the most important live cooking event in Switzerland and it is held every two years. Habegger has been designing and realising the event in cooperation with KADI since 2008, and also in a hybrid version since 2016. The pandemic forced the Golden Chef organisation to cancel the physical semi-final event in 2020 and to have a radical rethink: the cooking competition was “reinvented” and digitalised. A completely new TV format was created – all phases were conceived and produced in-house and then released as six episodes and a final show. Storytelling was greatly expanded, and we also created comprehensive video content for social media use.
Thanks to the broadcast of the programmes in May 2021 on Blick TV and YouTube, as well as the media partnership with Ringier, the event moved forward and took on a completely new dimension. The final reached over 124,000 viewers instead of the previous 5,000. An industry event became a TV format for a much wider audience. It was not only KADI but its partners and sponsors who also benefited from this enormous increase in coverage.
The semi-final: Six TV episodes
The semi-final event, which was originally planned to be held in the Glatt shopping centre, where eight participants would put their culinary skills to the test, became six 20-minute episodes. The recordings were made in October 2020 at the Trafo Baden and in full compliance with the health safety plan. The episodes were broadcast between the 3rd and 20th May, 2021 on both Blick TV and YouTube.
The final: Prime time TV broadcast
The four best chefs who made it into the final were allowed to cook for the coveted trophy in front of a top-class jury in the Kursaal Bern on 31st May, 2021. Because of the pandemic, the guests were received entirely virtually and the show was also made accessible to the general public. From 3 p.m. onward, anyone interested could follow the ongoing competition, hosted by Sven Epiney, on both Blick TV and YouTube. The highlight was the final broadcast from 8 p.m. with host Marco Fritsche and an exclusive first broadcast on Blick TV. The viewers were treated to live interviews, exciting background reports, a compilation of the best scenes and the award ceremony with the presentation of the Golden Chef Statue 2021.
You can watch all of the episodes at:
YouTube “The Golden Chef 2021”
Learn more about the hybrid presentation of the 2018 cooking event at:
The Golden Chef
