Made to Grow: the World's Foods

Diversified Business Communications may have finally gotten the formula right for a successful specialty food show collocation. For the first time this year, All Asia Food Expo, Expo Comida Latina — New York and Kosherfest were held in the same place, at the same time: Nov. 14–15 at New York's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

Although the three shows took place side by side in 2004, they only overlapped by one day and were held in separate halls with separate registration, said Brian Randall, group vice president for Diversified.

This year, the shows occurred on the same days in one hall.

"Attendees were able to walk from one side of the showfloor to the other," Randall said.

Kosherfest was founded in 1988 by Menachem Lubinsky, editor in chief of KosherToday.com and president of Lubicomm Marketing Consulting.

Realizing the synergy around Diversified's ethnic events, Lubicom, which still co-produces Kosherfest, paired with Diversified in 2003 in an effort to give the kosher industry a chance to reach more people. "Supermarkets see the value in having Kosher," Lubinsky said. "Once it was accessible, many new consumers came into the fold.

It's always been Diversified's goal to hold the events together. The biggest challenge was finding the right time. "We had to look at Jewish, Asian, U.S. and Hispanic holidays for dates to have the show," Randall said.

The combined event targets category buyers from retail and food service who are looking to expand into the Hispanic, Asian and kosher markets.

But what do Hispanic, Asian and kosher products have in common? According to Randall, from a menu standpoint, it's fusion. Restaurants are changing their menus to attract these audiences by combining such traditional flavors as Chinese and Latin to create Chino Latino. As for kosher products, the "definition of kosher isn't your grandparents' definition anymore. There's Asian, Hispanic, organic and kids' kosher," Randall said.

More importantly perhaps, the common denominator is the changing American landscape. "If you're thinking of breaking into the U.S. market in a niche (food) category, make sure you've covered all your bases to sell to all Americans," Randall said.

Ventana Health exhibited at both the New York and Los Angeles editions of All Asia Food Expo for the first time this year. The company was promoting its all-natural, zero-calorie sweetener called ZSweet.

"The key reason we did this show was because of the traffic, and it encompassed all three shows," said Ventana Event Director Suzy Shortt. "Our product is kosher-approved, so we had a huge response from that community."

In addition to being held together at Javits in mid-November, the trio also had one overlapping day with George Little Management's Intl. Hotel/Motel & Restaurant Show. Although the specialty food and restaurant shows have little exhibitor crossover, IHMRS attendees run hotels and restaurants, some of which are themed or cultural venues looking for new products. Management's theory was that these attendees could benefit from the quadruple collocation.

"If the opportunity presents itself to offer more resources, then it makes sense to do so," said Christian Falkenberg, IHMRS show manager.

The collocation is a way for attendees to view products not offered by any single show.

Randall said the event was "tremendous." The 5,800 buyers, including 250 from IHMRS, "more than met and exceeded our expectations."

In addition, Diversified tracked 1,900 buyers going back and forth across the aisles from one show to the next on the first day of the event. Attendance also was up 15 percent from 2004, when the shows were last held together, according to Randall.

Exhibitors seemed pleased as well. At press time, more than 65 percent of this year's exhibitors had signed up for next year's event.

"It was better than last year," said Claire Hong, general manager of T-Up Trading, an All Asia Food Expo exhibitor. "We made our first sale this year. It's hard to make a sale with food; it's really rare."

"It went really well," Shortt said. "At the shows we've been doing recently we've had 80- to 85-percent booth response from top-level buyers in companies, and the leads (at All Asia Food) averaged what we've been doing at other shows."

The three shows are scheduled to take place together at the Javits center each November through 2010.