King’s Catering owner Robert King and his team have been working for the past four months to ensure that everything goes to plan.

“We’ve been preparing food this week,” Mr King said. “It gets pretty serious from Saturday.

“It’s all happening here. There’s people out the back now. It’s critical to have the right equipment and holding facilities.

“Obviously having to have fresh food, there’s a lot you can do beforehand but there’s a lot you have to do in the last few days and on the day of course.” 

He has 18 chefs and 60 staff including waitresses, cooks and supervisors working across five different on course areas.

More than 560 women are expected to attend the annual ladies luncheon on Tuesday.

He said some of his staff took leave from their everyday jobs to work during May Race week.

“It’s is really good to have them back over and over again with the knowledge they’ve had the year before. They’re really excited and they get to see the same people.”

Mr King said it was a great feeling to pack up on Friday after the event knowing the week had gone well.

In charge of keeping drinks cold for punters is Warrnambool Racing Club major events operations manager Glenn Scott.

He said more than 22,000 plastic champagne flutes and five tonnes of ice would be used to serve beverages.

Mr Scott said 1000 litres of complimentary drinking water would be available in the bars and 50 televisions would be installed before Tuesday. 

“The club strives to improve,” Mr Scott said. “We’re constantly checking how we’re going and where we can improve and changes we can make to bars to help things flow better.

“We’re constantly evolving things. It gets bigger every year and we as a team have to grow with it.”

Mr Scott said about 150 beverage servers would work on Thursday.

“I love it. It’s one of those jobs. It’s a great industry to be in. When things are going well, there’s no better place to be,” he said. “We’ll hopefully have it all packed up to host a wedding on Saturday (May 6) on course.”