San Francisco - These days we get to know the context of our food; it's important to us what farm our apple comes from, the provenance of the seeds and whether or not the apple was organically grown. Another less discussed context to our food is the business behind the food...for better or for worse, and no matter if you’re an organic farmer or making microwaveable donuts, you must figure out a way to sell your product to people who will buy it. That’s what the Fancy Food Show is all about. Held three times a year in San Francisco, Chicago and New York, this is the marketplace of food, where artisans staff booths alongside food and sales distributors in the hopes of appealing to wholesalers and retailers who bring the product to the consumer.
I’ve been to a few conventions but nothing approaching the magnitude of this event (and apparently the New York show is even bigger). Officially, the show featured 80,000 specialty food products shown by 1,100 exhibiting companies. Imagine row upon row upon row upon row of booths and then several thousand more representing every type of food or drink you can think of, and then about 50 different vendors for each product, and then about 25 more international vendors of that product from Germany and Italy and Spain and Singapore. There were cookies upon cookies (Walkers Shortbread must have spent a mint on its sales booth/lounge) and teas (from Stash to Harney) and chocolates. Chocolates over and over and over again. At first it was fun to sample the chocolate and the tortilla chips and the salsa and the mint flavored water but soon enough sample fatigue set in (show veterans surely knew this already) and it was not long before I could not bring myself to even look at another cheese sample or juice sample or Australian honey sample, let alone pick up a toothpick full of Italian prosciutto.
There were a few artisan cheesemakers in attendance. From the Northwest, the Rogue Creamery booth was always mobbed; Beecher’s was also at the show sampling its packaged Macaroni and Cheese. Rogue Creamery won an award for Outstanding New Product for its Smokey Blue cheese. Several Vermont and California cheesemakers also had booths; I tasted some really nice goat’s milk yogurt from Redwood Hill Farm , available in Portland at New Seasons. But generally speaking, the cost of this kind of show is prohibitive for a small artisan producer. Nevertheless, the price of admission to the FFS is also the ticket to the big time. Retailers and distributors from all over the world were running around, their color coded convention badges swinging wildly around their necks, wielding cell phones and yellow pads. I could see negotiations under way and sales deals being made on the spot.
I’ve come away from this experience with a few trends to report. Red tea and chocolate are in. Tea and tea drinks are in – tea mixed with juice, bottled tea, all matter of flavored teas; even Jones Soda is branching out into tea drinks. Drinking chocolate seemed to be all over the place at this show; one has to wonder if the industry has noticed that Starbucks has phased out its own version. A woman at the British “pavilion” (as it was termed) tried to convince me that flavored cheese was the next big thing – that is, neutral cheese packed with such things as dried apricots or cranberries. Personally, I’m not buying that.
That the business of food brings tofu and vegetables and lamb and sopressata to our tables is a given. How this all occurs is a little more mysterious; having spent a few days in a giant convention hall with glaring fluorescent lights I can say that I found that the business of food is more than a little exhausting. Nevertheless, it was a good education. As a result of all of this I can also say that I am even more inspired than I already was to support my local farmer’s markets and place my money directly into the hands of my local orchard owner or chocolatier or breadmaker.
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