Historic

The Gourmet Invent of today is the direct result of the creative vision, hard work and unrelenting attention to client care of two leaders and the excellent teams they built around them. The marriage of these companies has fused their powers, combining the famous creativity, innovation and hyper-personalized approach of Henk Verhaest’s Gourmet Invent with the solid structures, impressive organizational capacities and the logistical mastery required for events of great size achieved by Jean-Claude Boyer’s Horeto. With their merger, these two gentlemen have guaranteed their clients sensational, unique, emotion-filled celebrations on any scale.

 

Meanwhile, a Frenchman named Jean-Claude Boyer was just as busily occupied building another impressive catering company based in Paris. Having begun Horeto in 1976, after 25 years of working with important companies such as Paribas, Alstom, Wagons-Lits Cook, Kodak and Sofitel, M. Boyer targeted large events from the start, beginning with serving the Parc des Expositions de la Porte de Versailles in Paris, with all its catering and restaurant needs. By 2002, Horeto had expanded into the Belgian market, and was installed in the Parc des Expositions du Heysel in Brussels, bringing the French company into contact with Gourmet Invent.

 

After a start in life as a professor of philosophy and theology, in the mid-1980’s, Henk Verhaest took his first steps into the catering world servicing events and concerts organized by his brother-in-law, Geert Allaert. What followed were 20 years of building his business through various partnerships and expansions. Along the way, the company name evolved from Gourmet Events to its present incarnation, Gourmet Invent, which was adopted in 2004. Since that time, the company has nearly doubled the volume of its business, and become one of the Top 3 caterers in Belgium.

 

 

Each leader recognized the unique strengths the other had built into his business, and on December 16, 2009, the two companies officially created a new common catering company, retaining the name Gourmet Invent.