To create a highly immersive, exclusive experience for thirty valued clients to participate in a three-day long Navy SEAL experience, with simulated exercises, to conduct realistic training in conjunction with US Navy SEALs, to prepare for future missions and as a culmination to each day, design immersive, multi-sensory, authentic SEAL dinners.

We explored all it takes to become an elite Navy SEAL, the history of this extraordinary special force and what bonds them together as brothers in the field and in battle. As we journeyed terrains from the Middle East to the Vietnam, through the ties of camaraderie, danger and triumph, told over three days of design, history, food and storytelling, the immersion touchpoints triggered escape and evade, gear and equipment, physical training, tactical pursuit and recovery. This was a multi-sensory journey like no other, in association with Panerai, combining emotion, drama, soundscapes, texture and olfactory intrigue. From visual design, bespoke set design and gastronomy, The Events Mill wound a full creative solution to bring alive this highly physical and emotional journey to bring the guest closer to the experience of becoming an authentic Navy SEAL, whilst reinforcing Panerai’s brand ethos.

Our design studio developed the visual identity across all touchpoints, from transport vinyl wraps to bespoke training guides, props and SEAL aides. Our challenge was to curate three distinctly unique dining experiences to round-off each day:

1) The Camaraderie Dinner – a meal for the coming together and being there as a team; the comradeship of the SEALs, in service, and the mutual trust and real sense of camaraderie among those involved. We referenced the time spent outside of the training; the mess tent; the banter; the passing of time; and the stories of the brotherhood.

2) The Wilderness Dinner – Here we took guests out into the Floridian wilderness for more of a rustic, but by no means less sophisticated multi-course meal. Here, we decided to base the menu around the acronym SEAL: Sea, Air and Land which awarded us a wealth of creative freedom. Still with the intention of promoting the formation of relationships between guests and veterans in mind, we took the idea of breaking bread to a whole new level.

3) The Historic Navy SEALs — Three days of gruelling simulated exercises and forged relationships would always lead to this moment: a finale, multi-course dining experience set in The Navy SEAL Museum, Fort Pierce. We took a moment to honour the very location and the extraordinary history of the US Navy SEALs. We opted to have mirror-topped tables to represent the idea of self-reflection, and exotic florals interspersed, with authentic ‘mission’ props from the museum’s archive, representing the jungles of Vietnam. Each course, from ‘Captain Phillip’s’ rescue to the ‘Apollo 13’ recovery, represented a different legendary mission as we told different stories from SEAL history through gastronomy.

The Camaraderie Dinner, a concept on sharing, was executed by an offering of different chef stations celebrating different geographic and environments of the four main group teams within the SEALs, for example, swamp scape representing ‘riverine’ with floating timber rafts holding four different global desserts. Our cadre dined upon a table of immersive terrain constructed of materials to represent the harsh environs the SEALs are often forced to operate in.

For Wilderness, we celebrated the work of the SEALs by creating a unique four-course celebration with each moment representing one of the unique habitats that the SEALs operate in, by fusing the terrain and habitat with the presentation of the course itself, for example, a whole alligator was brought into the middle of the table carved live by our chef, eaten with long spears carved from foraged wood.

The food adventure climaxed at The Navy SEAL Museum in a 360-degree immersion, taking guests to the heart and centre of each profiled historic mission. We used props, sound, texture and scent. Our lunch consists of a four-course tasting lunch with suggested beverage pairing, and a side plate; an object from an actual mission from a real Navy SEAL mission.