Dinner in the Sky hangs a restaurant from a crane — and franchises vertigo to 60 countries

In 2006–2007 David Ghysels, who ran a marketing and communications company, and Stefan Kerkhofs, a bungee-jumping organizer, were asked to stage an aerial dinner for the Jeunes Restaurateurs d'Europe chefs' association. Restaurateurs spend fortunes making dinners memorable; the two inverted that — make the venue itself the spectacle.

Hoist a dinner table, its chef and strapped-in guests 50 metres up a crane; charge fine-dining prices for vertigo, then franchise the crane formula worldwide.

A nine-ton platform with a table for guests, chefs cooking at the centre and servers strapped in is lifted 50 metres by crane, every seat belt-checked before service. Rather than scale it themselves, Ghysels and Kerkhofs licensed the format: local operators rent the crane and run events, mostly as marketing vehicles for cities, brands and festivals. In Las Vegas a franchisee even tried permanence — $5 million towers with FAA approval — while Ghysels kept the core product itinerant, warning the concept only works where the weather allows.

The format has been set up in some 60 countries since its 2006 launch, from Rio de Janeiro to Cape Town to Istanbul; Forbes named it one of the world's ten most unusual restaurants in 2006, and post-COVID seats still priced at €295 a head for dinner. The one-off stunt became a global occasion business with the crane as the kitchen's ceiling.

In 2007, David Ghysels, owner of a Belgian marketing and communications company, and Stefan Kerkhofs, who organized bungee-jumping events, staged a dinner suspended from a crane for the Jeunes Restaurateurs d'Europe chefs' association. The dinner itself was the brief; the phones started ringing afterwards. People around the world wanted to replicate the aerial dinner, and instead of taking the job city by city, the pair franchised the concept — Reuters dates the company's launch to 2006.

The format is brutally simple: a nine-ton structure, a table, guests strapped into seats, chefs and waiters working at height, all lifted about 50 metres by a crane. There is no building, no lease, no restaurant to staff between events. Local partners rent the crane and stage the dinner for festivals, product launches and city marketing — which is why a novelty that most operators stage a few nights a year could still land in 47 countries by 2014 and some 60 since launch.

The economics price the photograph, not the food: in Brussels' 2020 COVID-era relaunch, dinner cost €295 a head and weekend cocktails €150, for a socially distanced table where every diner sat in what co-CEO Kerkhof called a bubble. Forbes listed it among the world's ten most unusual restaurants the year it launched, and the stunt that could have been a one-off now outlives most themed restaurants precisely because it never signed a lease.

The spectacle replaced the decor budget: guests pay for the view, the height and the story they will tell, so the food only has to be good, not miraculous.

A crane rental is a variable cost — the business carries almost no fixed infrastructure between events, which is what let a two-man idea spread to sixty countries.

The images market themselves: every sitting produces press photos of diners dangling over a skyline, so the format's advertising is built into its operation.

Franchising to local operators solved the part the founders could not do — permits, cranes and customer relationships in dozens of countries at once.

When the product is a photograph, build the smallest machine that makes it — a table, a crane, a strap — and let licensees carry the capital. Novelty scales better as a formula than a chain.

Dinner in the Sky became the default example of extreme dining, copied and imitated but rarely equalled. Las Vegas franchisee Janeen Hinden pushed the concept toward permanence with multi-million-dollar towers — the brand's first fixed location — while Ghysels stayed cautious about permanent sites, saying the concept must follow local weather and commercial conditions. The 2020 COVID relaunch in Brussels even turned the table's built-in spacing into a selling point, seating diners two metres apart at €295 a head.