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EVENTS A SHOW OF QUALITY OVER QUANTITY The event promoted as South Australia’s one-stop shop for retail, foodservice, catering, bakery, butchery and convenience buyers and decision makers attracted positive feedback for its inaugural presentation last month. BTy Nicholas Rider. he South Australia Food- Beverage-Tech Trade Show was held over two days in early March at the Goyder Pavilion, Adelaide Showgrounds, showcasing “the best of SA’s food and beverage products alongside leading technologies and solutions for food processing”. Jointly hosted by Food SA and POS software and hardware provider GaP Solutions, it presented close to 80 exhibitors. When Retail World spoke to Food South Australia CEO Catherine Sayer on day one of the show, she was pleased to have already received feedback that a number of exhibitors had already signed up with new distributors and the like. “You can’t ask for much more than that,” she said. “You only need a couple to come through to make it worthwhile.” In terms of the show’s success, Ms Sayer says this isn’t, and shouldn’t be, determined by the quantity of visitors. “It’s about the quality of the numbers,” she said. “In a lot of the bigger trade shows, consumers get in; the ‘seagulls’ are there. But people are actually here \\\[at this trade show\\\] as genuine buyers, or as media, colleagues or government representatives. “This enables you to have those quality, longer term conversations that you can’t necessarily have when you’re not sure who’s a genuine buyer or not.” The interest, however, isn’t just from a South Australian audience. “We’ve got buyers \\\[here\\\] from interstate,” Ms Sayer said, “but because of our international program, we’re doing some video brand spotlights, so we’ve packaged up video ready to go to buyers overseas that we engage with.” Post-show, Ms Sayer told Retail World: “We found that some companies met buyers they’ve been dealing with for a number of years, for the first time – and putting names to faces continues to develop the relationship. “From the feedback received, everyone so far has said they’d recommend this trade show to others, which is a great result for us as this was the first time we’d undertaken the show in this format. From this, and from the emails we’re receiving that report success in achieving new sales and customers, we’re now firmly focused on getting planning underway for the next South Australia Food-Beverage-Tech Trade Show in March 2022.” Rebecca Paris, Managing Director of Australian Native Food Co, described the show as “eye opening”. “During the show we learnt so much and made invaluable connections,” she said. “Being part of the SA Food-Beverage- Tech Trade Show will change our whole business moving forward because it’s given us a stronger understanding of what our potential customers need from us, provided us with direct feedback on our products, and helped us put our products in front of so many people over a short space of time.” 20 RETAIL WORLD APR, 2021