Fancy Food Show 2023: Primer

2,200 makers & manufacturers . . . . . more than 40 specialty food & beverage categories . . . . . 30,000 attendees . . . . . 250 first time exhibitors

The Specialty Food Association (SFA) runs two Fancy Food Shows each year.
The summer show is held at the Javits Center in Manhattan. 
As I started writing about 2023 Food Trends, I realized that the show layout helps tell the story.
So, here is a primer about the Fancy Food Show.

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Some Statistics
The summer show uses the entire Javits Convention Center, an impressive four-block long facility.

According to the SFA website:

• The 2023 show featured more than 2,200 makers & manufacturers from six continents.
• They offered products in more than 40 specialty food and beverage categories.
• More than 30,000 industry professionals registered to attend.
• In addition to makers and buyers, thousands of press, influencers, investors, industry affiliates, and trend-spotters attended. (Hey. That's me!)

In addition, my count indicates the show featured at least 250 first time exhibitors – about 10% – another indication that the industry continues to expand. 

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​How the Show is Laid Out
Walking onto the show floor can be confusing, intimidating, and overwhelming. Even if you attend for all three days, like I did this year, it’s impossible to see and taste everything. The show guide can help you find a specific vendor, but it doesn’t offer any advice about how to approach the show overall.

Until this year, there were a few official and unofficial divisions among the thousands of booths. Some countries and states are grouped into official “pavilions.” Larger countries have booths at the front; smaller international pavilions are at the back. Great Britain doesn’t sponsor an official pavilion, but most English and Irish companies are grouped together.
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Some of the largest distributors have huge booths; they straddle multiple aisles, creating a noticeable presence. They offer space within their booths to companies whose products they represent.

Geographical Pavilions
The international and state pavilions are funded by exporting or marketing institutes, which are sometimes, at least partly funded by governments. The rest of the funding comes from membership fees paid by participating companies. Membership confers benefits from marketing efforts and usually the right for products to boast some kind of “Made Here” logo.

For producers, there are advantages and disadvantages to being in a pavilion. Buyers looking for specific types of products may start in a pavilion where they are sure the product will be available. But smaller producers might feel overshadowed by being surrounded with so many other companies offering  similar products. Travelling to the show with quantities of product and staff, on top of the show entrance fee, is very expensive; participating in a pavilion with its prime booth locations is even more so.

The front half of the second floor – prime location – showcases the largest international food exporting countries - Italy, France, and Spain, with Italy outnumbering all the other countries. In recent years, the number of Asian companies has grown, including China, India, Japan, Korea, and Thailand. South America’s largest exporters are Argentina, Brazil, and Peru. Mediterranean-ish countries including Greece, Turkey, and more recently, Jordan also have a visible presence. Australia and Canada have significant pavilions along with, surprisingly, the Republic of Georgia. There are also some international pavilions representing smaller exporters including Finland, Poland, and Portugal.
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Some agriculture heavy US states also have pavilions including Michigan, New Jersey, and Virginia. Again, not all US companies take a booth in their state pavilion; they are scattered among the rest of the booths, and I bet that all 50 states are represented.

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Special Interest Pavilions (or What do the Experts think is Trending?)
In past years, some product categories also were grouped into pavilions, such as Confectionary, Snacks, and Sweets, and the Deli pavilion. But three new pavilions this year say a lot about trends in the specialty food industry and one of them has nothing to do with food itself.  They are the Beverage Pavilion, the Plant-Based Pavilion, and the Diversity Pavilion.

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Beverage Pavilion
As I mentioned, not all beverage producers took booths in the Beverage Pavilion. In fact, probably most did not; there were beverages of all kinds all over the show floors, including some in international or state pavilions. But the fact that the SFA created a special grouping for beverages is an important indicator that the beverage category is experiencing enormous growth.

Vendors offer every type of beverage you can imagine, especially coffee, tea, mineral water, and juice. This year I did not see a lot of wine or spirits outside the international pavilions; I’m sure they were there, but not in the obvious quantities I have seen in previous years.

The biggest trend this year, is in fact a relatively new beverage category that I’m calling Non-Alcoholic Adult Beverages.

I'll talk more about them in my next post.

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Plant-Based Pavilion
This category used to be called vegetarian and was never emphasized at the show. But many vegetarian products include animal-sourced ingredients such as dairy or dairy derivatives and, according to a more rigid definition of animal, insect-sourced ingredients such as honey or “natural color.”

Anyone who has been in a supermarket recently, surely has noticed a marked increase in plant-based products, especially products that try to mimic meat and cheese. It’s fascinating, because the number of Americans who identify as vegetarian or vegan has not changed much over the last 20 years. Nevertheless, the market for these products clearly has grown, or at least manufacturers think the market has grown or will grow in the future.

Either way, plant-based products are the second big trend I saw at the Fancy Food Show, as evidenced by the new Plant-Based Pavilion.

Look for more information about this in Part 3 of my Fancy Food Show Report.

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Diversity Pavilion
The third noticeable trend in the specialty food industry (and across other industries, as well), is Conscious Consumerism. Whether they are concerned with the environment and sustainability, employee treatment, political leanings, or supporting minorities, shoppers pay much more attention to WHO makes the products they buy. Consumers are beginning to put their money where their mouth is by considering their personal values in their purchasing decisions.

In the food industry, the explosion of the organic category over the last 20 years was one of the first indications of this phenomenon. While many shoppers who buy organic do so because they believe these products are better for their own health, more and more buy organic because it’s better for the environment.

The SFA obviously thinks Conscious Consumerism is here to stay (or at least here right now), as evidenced by the creation of the Diversity Pavilion. Vendors in this group are mostly people of color, although disabled folks, veterans, and even women are some of the other diverse makers at the show. I’ll talk more about it in Part 4 of my report.

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First Timers and Incubators
Although it technically was not a pavilion, a large space was dedicated to people who were at the show for the first time. The specialty food business is very hard to break into. Coming up with a good idea and a tasty product is just the beginning. Think about all the thousands of products out there. Now think about how to get one more tea or candy bar or chip onto the shelf.

Food Incubators are organizations that help new makers bring a product to market. In Cincinnati, The Findlay Kitchen is one. Associated with historic Findlay Market, The Kitchen partners with all kinds of programs and organizations to help folks bring their ideas and recipes to the marketplace. They offer access to commercial kitchen space, plus help with the product itself, business planning, financial advice, marketing, packaging, and more. Some incubators are associated with universities or culinary schools. This year, incubators had a space at the Fancy Food Show.
I won’t dedicate an entire story to first timers, but I will talk about some of their products in the rest of my Reports.

Wrap Up
So that’s it for the Fancy Food Show Primer. Stay tuned for more stories, starting with the next one: Part 2: Non-Alcoholic Adult Beverages. 

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