12 Best Team Building Activities in New Orleans
New Orleans is one of the friendliest and most culturally diverse places in the U.S. There’s no reason your team building activities can’t incorporate that NOLA passion for living the good life. This free New Orleans team building activities guide features 12 companies that create personalized experiences for some of the biggest companies in the U.S. Keep your crew motivated, happy and connected with interactive challenges and culture.
Sidewalk Food Tours of New Orleans Team Building Activity
1.Sidewalk Food Tours of New Orleans
New Orleans residents are irrevocably linked by the food that fused European, indigenous and African cultures. From the Vietnamese pho shops of Little Vietnam in Eastern Orleans Parish to the mom-and-pop poor boy shops, you can see French and indigenous culture in just about all the food in this city.
What better way to bond your team than with the food that binds us all together? Let’s face it, we’re all the same when our noses are covered in powdered sugar after eating beignets.
Most of our team building activities include four food stops, where your team will learn about the neighborhood’s history, culture and points of interest. Share a meal with your co-workers, and you’ll find that you share much more in common than the food between you. For more info on Sidewalk Food Tours of New Orleans delicious and fun food tours visit them at https://sidewalkfoodtours.com/new-orleans/
Past clients have included Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, American Express, MTV, Sotheby’s, Cisco, HP, eBay, Jamba Juice and match.com.
*Available in several U.S. cities.
2. AdVenture Games Team Building New Orleans
Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to get to know your co-workers on a deeper level. Adventure Games breathes life into your favorite spy games to create a team building experience that will help you find common ground with your cubicle neighbors.
Choose from a variety of different team building activities, such as:
- Strategy and leadership
- Creative and visionary
- Puzzles and solutions
- Active and performance
Adventure Games can recommend a variety of games and challenges based on your team. They have challenges created specifically for C-level executives, leadership teams and sales teams. Think of these guys as the “Choose Your Own Adventure” of the team building community.
TeamBonding is a nationwide team building company that creates tailored activities for major corporations, such as IBM, American Express, Nike and Pandora.
These guys focus on fun. Each activity combines creativity, cooperation and camaraderie. Activities are organized by group size. Got a larger group? No problem. Their ‘Play the Blues’ activity can accommodate over 4,000 participants.
Want an activity that’s more creative? You can build your own mini-golf course or play a game — like ‘Escape From Werewolf Village.’ If you want to be a little more philanthropic, you can build bicycles for charity. Or, build bridges to help your team create a structurally sound bridge that’s strong enough to hold a golf cart.
If you want a more NOLA-specific activity, check out Mardi Gras World. This company specializes in Mardi Gras-themed team building activities, such as float building and mask making. Even if your team isn’t swinging by the Big Easy during festival season, you’ll be able to absorb all the culture this city is known for.
Mardi Gras World has been featured on the Discovery Channel, History Channel and Travel Channel. They’ve worked with companies, such as Walt Disney and Universal Studios.
5. New Orleans School of Cooking
Is your team super hands-on? Do you think spectator sports are for softies? If you’re itching to get in on the cooking action, check out the New Orleans School of Cooking. Not only will your team be able to learn about NOLA food and culture, but you’ll learn how to make a dish to share with the rest of your team.
Got an even bigger competitive streak? Your teams can break out into groups and compete against each other to see who can execute the most perfect meal.
Your department even gets to sip some vino and local beer while you work (and eat).
Outback offers more than 50 different team building activities. In addition to team building activities, they also offer team coaching, management and development training.
If you’re looking specifically for team building, you can choose from a wide variety of activities, including indoor, outdoor, social and charitable activities.
Indoor and social activities include tests of mental and physical skill, icebreakers for new team members, escape rooms and custom activities. Outdoor activities include field day games, a ‘wild goose chase’ and even a pool-based boat building challenge.
They even get super creative by building fake crime scenes and asking your team to figure out whodunnit in their CSI challenge.
Philanthropic activities include building bookshelves and bikes for kids in need.
Past clients have included Coca Cola, eBay and Deloitte.
New Orleans Glassworks offers one of the most specialized team building programs on this list. If your team feels like their creativity has stagnated, help them get unstuck in a glass blowing workshop.
Teammates work together to create a collaborative piece of art that can hang as a reminder of their artistic and cooperation skills.
New Orleans Glassworks has over 30 years of training and artistic development experience. At the end of your session, you’ll have visual evidence of your team’s ability to work together. Not into glassblowing? No worries. You can choose between screen-printing, printmaking, metalworking and torchworking, too.
Strayboots offers some of the most unique team building activities in New Orleans. Specializing in scavenger hunts, you can duck, dive, create and puzzle your way past well-known historic landmarks. Just some of the tasks your team will be asked to complete include:
- Solving riddles
- Strengthening problem-solving skills
- Complete photo challenges
- Make timed decisions
- Build relationships and rapport with new team members
- Increase product knowledge
- Learn about company culture
Scavenger hunts can be tailored to take place in the city or your office building. You can even hire Strayboots to train new hires for orientation. Location-based hunts take place in the French Quarter and Garden District. You can even book a mobile trivia game if placing an OOO sign on your desk just isn’t an option.
Strayboots is constantly adding new games, activities and scavenger hunts to their roster, so reach out to them if you don’t see one that suits your team.
When it comes to getting to know your co-workers, sometimes you need to steer clear of anything that could possibly mimic the office dynamic. If you really need to get out of the office, ACCESS New Orleans has a menu of activities that are far from your typical team building ideas. Some of their challenges include:
- Build-your-own Mardi Gras float
- Ballroom Olympics
- Cajun cooking class
- Superdome training day
- 9th Ward community service
- Scavenger hunt through the French Quarter
No matter what type of goals your team needs to crush this quarter, ACCESS can personally create an activity to help you get there.
Have a hard time getting your crew behind the idea of icebreakers and trust falls? The Go Game removes the fear factor from social team building activities. Your team won’t even realize they’re bonding while they’re running through the French Quarter, sipping on Sazeracs and exploring voodoo temples.
These games combine the strategy building skills of scavenger hunts, the challenges of mystery puzzles and the camaraderie of lawn games. You can even star in your own music video.
Past clients have included Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, Dell, HP, Yahoo, Oracle and Adobe (in other words, they’re kind of a big deal in the software and tech world).
Watson Adventures is one of the biggest names in team scavenger hunts in the U.S.* Your team can follow clues, unearth hidden clues and work together to win games in the French Quarter and beyond.
Choose from seven different categories of hunts — or, ask Watson Adventure to build a personalized hunt for your team. Themes include murder mystery, food tours, charity work, office games, neighborhoods and culture, office games and trivia.
Watson Adventures originally started offering private hunts in museums, like MoMA, and eventually expanded to offer hunts of neighborhoods and historic points of interest.
*Available in several U.S. cities.
If your team happens to enjoy physical challenges, you need to head to LOOP NOLA. This is the only team building company on this list with their very own obstacle courses. You can choose between high ropes and low ropes courses or a canoe course.
These courses help teammates learn to trust each other and work together. While these aren’t life-or-death situations, your teammates will work under the ‘illusion’ that if one member fails at the course, they all fail. These high-stakes games help them share in successes and victories.
Got more questions? We’re here to help. Fill out our activity form to find out which team building activities will help your team crush their goals this year.