Food & Drink Expo 2010 – How was it for you?

I have always thought 4 days is too long for a food show, but the time simply flew by at the NEC last week.  It’s always the sign of a good show when the show finishes for the day and you realise that you haven’t eaten or been to the loo all day and haven’t noticed.  This happened to me on at least two days during the show.  Too much information, probably, but this show was the best we have been to (except Speciality Food Show) for a long time. There were plenty of visitors every day of the show, very few time-wasters and generally a sense of high optimism and excitement across visitors and exhibitors alike.

Cotswold Fayre had taken a stand half our normal size due to the poor time we had at this show 2 years ago – we could have done with the extra space as visitors were queuing up to get on our stand at certain times of day.

Now the hard work begins and it’s over to our sales team to follow up the 200+ leads we gained at the show.  This reminds me of how bad some companies are at this.  The show is the easy part; it is the following-up which is where the graft starts and finishes.  I met one company again at this show who we saw a year ago at IFE.  We were interested in their product and were going to feature them in our catalogue.  They never contacted us after the show, and my PA, made at least six attempts to call or e-mail them, and then gave up.  Incredible!  Why spend all that money on a stand at a show – and then not benefit from it.

The only disappointing part of the show was the ridiculous position of the Business Briefing Theatre in an adjacent hall so no-one could find it.  Disappointing for me and other speakers who had put in work preparing talks only to discover people after the talk that had been trying to find the venue and had got lost!  However, one of my two talks went ahead on “Supermarkets vs Independents”, and it seemed that this and another panel discussion on competing with Tesco’s were attracting the most interest.  Clearly this is a topic that would be good to write about and discuss further.  A pet subject of mine as you will know if you are a regular reader of this blog.  Coincidently, on my way to the NEC one day last week, I heard on the news that there was a protest involving riot police in Bristol, where Tesco’s are trying to get planning permission for their 18th store in this city of only 400,000 people.  That is clearly not what some Bristolians want, although violent protest is clearly going too far.

There is a clear opportunity for independents to grasp the opportunity of the disillusionment with the supermarkets and start competing more effectively with them.  Customers are crying out for good service, quality of product and good prices – all of which independents are in a great position to offer.  Oh, we can never compete with supermarkets on price, they cry!  Maybe not on some items, but independent retailers can do better promotions and offer good deals on some products that they are not doing at present.  The retailers that have done well over the last year are doing precisely that – and more of us need to learn from them.  Not everything has to be sold at lower margin, but by working with food suppliers and merchandising properly, a difference can be made.

The quiet months of the year are behind us; let’s step into spring with a spring in our step and create a positive vibe in speciality food retailing.