We are based in Jersey City, and a large share of our work is across the river in Manhattan. But a corporate event in Bergen, Essex or Hudson County is a different job in ways that have nothing to do with the music: the venues are different, the load-in is easier, the guests drive, and the night usually ends earlier. This post is about what changes when the party is in North Jersey, organized by the kind of room you are likely to book.
The four kinds of North Jersey corporate venue
Almost every corporate event we play in Bergen, Essex and Hudson County is in one of four kinds of room. Each has its own habits.
Country clubs and golf clubs. Bergen and Essex have a lot of them, and they are popular for holiday parties and client dinners because the rooms are handsome and the parking is free. Two things to know. First, most clubs have a member-facing rule about noise and end time, because there are members dining in the next room or houses along the fairway; ask what time the music has to come down and whether the terrace doors have to stay closed after a certain hour. Second, the ballroom is often a long room with the bar at one end and the dance area at the other, which means the speakers need to cover a rectangle, not a square, and the booth goes on the long wall. Clubs usually have a side entrance for vendors near the kitchen. There is rarely a dock and never a freight elevator, and that is fine.
Hotel ballrooms. Along the highways there are hotels with divisible ballrooms that do a steady corporate business. These rooms are carpeted, low-ceilinged compared to a Manhattan hotel, and split by air walls, which leak sound into the next section. Many have a house sound system with ceiling speakers that is good for a presenter and not for a dance floor, and a banquet manager who will want to know whether we are patching in. The hotel will also want a certificate of insurance, and increasingly the same additional-insured wording a Manhattan venue asks for.
Converted mills, factories and loft spaces. Older industrial towns along the rivers and rail lines have buildings that were something else for a century and are event spaces now. These are the rooms people book when they want the party to look like it is not in an office park. Brick, timber, tall windows, hard floors. They sound live: a long reverb tail that makes speeches hard to understand if the volume goes up. The fix is speaker placement and restraint, not more power. The load-in is usually good, through a wide ground-floor door, sometimes a roll-up. Power can be the surprise; ask where the outlets are and whether they are on one circuit.
Corporate campuses. Pharmaceutical, finance and technology companies in the suburbs often hold the party on site, in a cafeteria, an atrium, or a conference center attached to the headquarters. This is a very different room. Security is a badge desk with a vendor list; the loading dock has hours; the space is glass and tile and was designed to be bright at noon. The atrium in particular is a tall, hard box that will carry a subwoofer to every floor of the building. We have a full post on holding the party in your own office that covers circuits, alarms and building rules.
Travel, parking, and load-in from Jersey City
Compared with Manhattan, the logistics are simpler and the distances are longer. Most of Bergen and Essex County is 25 to 50 minutes from Jersey City outside rush hour, and we schedule the drive around it. Hudson County venues in Hoboken, Weehawken and along the Gold Coast are close but bring back some Manhattan-style problems, which we cover in the Jersey City and Hoboken post.
Parking is usually a lot. That sounds trivial and it is the single biggest difference from working in the city: the vehicle is thirty feet from the door, there is no dock window, no COI check at a security cage, and no wait for a freight elevator that is also serving the caterer. Setup in a suburban venue is often quicker than the 90 minutes to two hours we plan for, because the walk is short and the path is level.
What suburban venues do have is a specific door. Clubs and restaurants want vendors through the kitchen or a side entrance, not the front, and the manager will tell you which. Campuses want the dock, and the dock closes at a stated time, so a party that starts at seven in a building whose dock closes at five needs to be arranged with facilities. Ask the venue for the vendor entrance and the earliest access time, and send both to us. If there are steps between the parking lot and the room, say so; the cases roll, and stairs are the only thing that slows them.
One more practical point: we carry commercial general liability insurance and issue a certificate to any venue at no charge. New Jersey venues asked for this less than Manhattan ones a decade ago. Now most of the hotels, clubs and campuses do, and a campus will sometimes want the certificate a week or more ahead so the vendor is on the security list before load-in day.
Guests who drive, and what that does to the night
In Manhattan, the party ends when the venue says so and people take a train. In North Jersey most of the room drove, some of them from an hour away, and it changes the shape of the evening.
The end time is real. A ballroom contracted to eleven will empty from about ten-fifteen, because people are thinking about the drive. The best last hour is a strong one that starts early, not a slow build to a finish nobody sees. We plan the dance segment to peak before the drift starts, and we tell you when we think the drift will start, based on the room and the day of the week. Weeknight parties in the suburbs go earlier still, and are often the better event for it: more of the team attends, and the people who came stay for the program.
There is also the question of who is in the room. A suburban headquarters party has a wider age range than a Manhattan launch, with people who have been at the company for twenty years sitting next to people hired in the spring. That is a music programming problem, not a location one. The location point is that this room is more likely to be seated at rounds for a full dinner with a program, so the speech and toast handling matters as much as the dance set.
What to ask a North Jersey venue before you book the DJ
These are the questions that save a phone call later.
- What is the music curfew, and is it different for the terrace or patio? Clubs and restaurants with neighbors have one. Campuses may have one set by facilities rather than by law.
- Which door do vendors use, and when is it open? Especially for campuses with a dock, and clubs with a members' entrance we should not use.
- Is there a house sound system we are required to use? In most clubs and mills, no. In hotel ballrooms, sometimes. On a campus, the conference center may have a fixed system and an AV person who runs it.
- Where is the power, and is anything else on it? In older buildings the answer is worth having in writing.
- Who is the venue contact on the night? Not the sales manager who booked the room, but the person on site at six.
Send us the answers with the date, the venue, and the headcount, and we will tell you which package fits and whether the room needs anything beyond it. Our three corporate packages are the same in New Jersey and New York, and the prices are on the pricing page; for the broader picture of what we do across the state, see our New Jersey corporate event DJ page. Reach us through the contact page and we reply within 24 hours.