Simon Super Chefs Live! To Tour Simon Malls Coast-To-Coast
April 12, 2004
'Food-As-Entertainment' Celebration to Feature Popular TV Chefs
Alton Brown, Mary Ann Esposito, Sara Moulton, Jacques Pepin and Others
INDIANAPOLIS, April 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Start your spatulas! Simon Property Group (NYSE: SPG) is inviting food fans across the country to get up close and personal with some of today's most popular TV chefs during Simon Super Chefs Live! - a unique culinary experience aimed at Americans' ever-growing fascination with food as an entertainment and lifestyle activity. The exclusive coast-to-coast mall tour will tap into this food phenomenon, featuring day-long, in-mall celebrations of food, wine, cooking and shopping to satisfy eager food fans.
Kicking off April 17 in West Palm Beach, FL, each tour stop will serve up a renowned celebrity chef as headliner, including such chef "stars" as:
* Curtis Aikens - author of several cookbooks and host of Calling All Cooks and Pick of the Day, as seen on Food Network, in addition to appearances on numerous top-rated network entertainment and national evening news programs
* Lidia Bastianich - author of three cookbooks, popular restaurateur and star of Lidia's Italian American Kitchen and Lidia's Italian Table as seen on PBS
* Michelle Bernstein - popular restaurateur and co-host of Melting Pot as seen on Food Network
* Alton Brown - author of several top-selling cookbooks and star of Good Eats as seen on Food Network
* Mary Ann Esposito - author of eight cookbooks and host of Ciao Italia, the longest running cooking series on PBS
* Sara Moulton - cookbook author, host of Sara's Secrets as seen on Food Network, chef of the executive dining room at Gourmet Magazine and Food Editor for ABC-TV's Good Morning America
* Jacques Pepin - legendary TV chef and Emmy Award-winning host and co- host of several cooking shows on PBS
* Martin Yan - celebrated host of more than 1,900 TV cooking shows and author of 26 cookbooks
* Each Simon Super Chefs Live! event is hosted by food and lifestyle authority, stage performer and four-time Emmy Award-winning TV host Bill Boggs.
Unlike most culinary events, Simon Super Chefs Live! will be free and open to the public. Each event will showcase live cooking performances by the featured celebrity chef, cooking demonstrations by popular local chefs, wine seminars, sponsor pavilions, cookbook sales, custom event merchandise sales, and culinary activities with participating retailers and restaurants. Audience members will also have opportunities to 'meet and greet' the celebrities and obtain autographs.
Participating sponsors, retailers and restaurants are integral to the event concept. For example, each event culminates with the Simon Super Chefs Live! Cookoff, presented by Oster(R) Products, where local food fans will have the opportunity to serve as sous chefs during a live-action on-stage cookoff. Australian wine brand Jacob's Creek will host a post-event celebrity 'meet and greet' at several Simon Super Chefs Live! tour locations.
"The Simon Super Chefs Live! tour creates a unique lifestyle entertainment experience for our shoppers and relevant lifestyle programming for our participating home category retailers, restaurants and sponsor partners," said Stewart Stockdale, chief marketing officer of Simon Property Group and president of Simon Brand Ventures. Mr. Stockdale added that Simon Super Chefs Live! is Simon's newest proprietary program targeting a specific demographic - in this case young adults and Boomers ages 25-54, and reinforcing Simon Malls' appeal as a home category shopping destination.
Simon Super Chefs Live! is being produced exclusively for Simon Malls by NY-based Culinary Entertainment Group, under the direction of Richard Gore, former president of Food Network Live! The national mall tour will end in late August in Seattle, WA, after stopping in major markets across the country: Orlando, Tampa, Atlanta, Charlotte, Philadelphia, New York/New Jersey, Washington D.C., Boston, Chicago, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Kansas City, Dallas, Austin, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.
For further information on the Simon Super Chefs Live! tour and schedule, visit www.simon.com .
About Simon Property Group
Simon Property Group, Inc. (NYSE: SPG), headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, is a real estate investment trust engaged in the ownership, development and management of income-producing properties, primarily regional malls and community shopping centers. Through its subsidiary partnerships, it currently owns or has an interest in 246 properties in North America containing an aggregate of 191 million square feet of gross leasable area in 37 states plus Canada. The Company holds interests in 47 assets in Europe (in France, Italy, Poland and Portugal). Additional Simon Property Group information is available at www.simon.com .
About Simon Brand Ventures Simon Brand Ventures (SBV), Simon's business-to-consumer arm, has pioneered the transformation of shopping malls into a medium where consumer brands can build one-on-one relationships with more than 100 million shoppers who make approximately two billion visits to Simon Malls each year. Simon's vast franchise of market-leading shopping centers nationwide provides SBV the foundation to monetize the enterprise through numerous consumer ventures. SBV has engaged in a number of consumer business initiatives, including nationwide roll-out of the Simon Visa Giftcard, launch of the Simon platform programs (Simon Kidgits Club and Simon DTour Live), national media delivery channel including experiential marketing methods, and multiple national and local marketing alliances including Coca-Cola, VISA U.S.A., and Cingular, among others.
SOURCE Simon Property Group
/CONTACT: Sarah Heffernan of Fleishman Hillard, +1-314-982-8680, [email protected] ; or Billie Scott of Simon Property Group, +1-317-263-7148, [email protected] /