01 Sep Work Christmas Party Ideas for Newcastle Businesses
Most work Christmas parties in Newcastle end up the same shape. A room booked at a venue, a set menu, and everyone sitting with the people they already sit with all week. It does the job, but nobody is still talking about it in February.
A tour is a different structure. People are on their feet, moving between venues, and they end up in conversation with colleagues they barely cross paths with. There is no seating plan to get wrong, no speeches unless you want them, and nobody has to nominate a driver.
We run tours for Newcastle teams all year, and two of them come up again and again for end of year functions. One is a half afternoon in the city. The other is a full day out in wine country. Both run privately for your group only.
The short one: Newcastle Food & Street Art Tour
Three hours on foot through Newcastle East, taking in four to five venues along the way.
Your team eats and drinks their way through five seasonal tastings. A recent line-up ran to a craft beer paddle, a gourmet Italian panini, handmade dumplings, panko crumbed prawns and Newcastle made ice cream. Venues rotate through the year, partly to keep it seasonal and partly because we would rather spread the work across local businesses than send every group to the same four doors.
Between the food, your guide walks the group through the street art. Newcastle East is full of large scale murals, public sculpture and small creative details most people walk past every day without noticing, and there is a story behind nearly all of it. Staff who have lived here for twenty years routinely finish the tour having learned something about their own city.
Why it works for a work function:
- It is short. Three hours, so it fits inside an afternoon rather than swallowing a whole day of billable time.
- It is in town. The tour finishes near the Newcastle Beach light rail stop, so people can carry on to dinner and drinks afterwards, or go straight home.
- Walking pace keeps the group moving and reshuffling, which is the bit a seated function never quite manages.
See the full Newcastle Food & Street Art Tour
The big one: Hunter Valley Wine Tour
A full day, door to door, with pickup from your office or from home addresses across Newcastle. It is about an hour each way, out in the morning and back around five.
The day takes in three cellar doors with seated tastings, which matters more than it sounds. A seated tasting means your group is looked after at a table with someone talking them through what is in the glass, rather than jostling at a counter behind a bus load of strangers. Alongside the wine there is an artisan vodka and gin tasting and a cheese or chocolate tasting.
Our regular partners include Audrey Wilkinson, Hungerford Hill, Saltire Estate, Bonvilla Estate, Jac & Jones, Hunter Wine Lab, Degen Wines and Fat Cow Hunter Valley. If someone on your team has a favourite, tell us and we will build the day around it.
Lunch is not bundled into the tour. We book it separately at a venue that suits the group, which keeps you in control of that part of the budget rather than paying for a set menu nobody chose.
Why it works for a work function:
- It is the proper reward version. If the team has had a big year, this is what that looks like.
- Everyone is collected and returned. No one is driving, no one is working out how to get home.
- A full day together does something a two hour function cannot, particularly for teams that are spread across sites or working remotely.
See the full Private Hunter Valley Wine Tour
Group sizes, from a management team to the whole company
Both tours run for groups of almost any size, with the vehicle matched to the number:
- 2 to 7 guests: luxury Mercedes 8 seater
- 8 to 11 guests: 12 seater Toyota HiAce
- 12 to 22 guests: boutique mini-coach with guide
- 23 to 50 guests: full size coach, or a multi vehicle convoy
- 50 guests and over: multi coach programs running parallel routes
The largest group we have hosted so far is 65 guests across two coaches.
Small does not mean lesser here. A management team of six gets the same guide, the same cellar doors and the same planning as a department of sixty. If anything the small groups get the better version of the day, because the whole thing can be shaped around six people’s preferences.
What we can change to suit your team
This is where a private tour earns its keep. The itinerary is not fixed.
Start or finish at the office. We can collect the team from your workplace and drop them back there, or finish somewhere else entirely if the plan is to continue on to dinner. For the city tour, we can start at your door and walk from there.
Move the timing. Private departures do not have to run at the scheduled public times. Start late morning, run across the afternoon, or time it so the tour finishes at knock off rather than eating into the working day.
Run it lighter, or without alcohol at all. The Hunter Valley tour has a full non-alcoholic version at no extra cost, using premium dealcoholised wines from McGuigan Zero and Tamburlaine. It can apply to the whole group or to individuals, so the people who are not drinking are doing the same tastings as everyone else instead of holding a glass of water in the corner. On the food tour we can swap the beer paddle for something else. This matters more than most planners expect, because a work function is exactly the setting where nobody wants to explain why they are not drinking.
Cater for dietary requirements. Tell us what your team needs and we brief the venues in advance. Coeliac, vegetarian, vegan, allergies and everything else are all workable with notice, and the earlier we know the better the substitutions are.
Mix it. Plenty of teams have a few people who want the full wine experience and a few who do not, and both can happen on the same day without anyone having a lesser time.
Which one should you pick?
If you want something contained that fits inside an afternoon and leaves the evening open, take the Food & Street Art tour. If the Christmas party is the thank you for the year and you want a proper day out of the office, take the Hunter Valley.
If you genuinely cannot choose, a fair few Newcastle businesses do the city tour with the wider team and save the Hunter Valley day for a smaller group, or alternate them year to year.
How to organise it
Send us your group size, preferred date and anything specific you are trying to achieve, and we will come back with a draft itinerary and a straight quote within two business days.
As a guide on lead times, groups of 30 or more are best locked in around six weeks ahead so we can hold the vehicles and the cellar door bookings. Smaller charters need about two weeks.
