Food & Drink Expo 2010 – How Was It For You?

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

• Becoming a B Corp
• Top trend predictions for Christmas 2021
• Self-sacrifice: The importance of building a leadership legacy centred on others
• Undercover Boss
• Can/should bosses really be close friends with their staff?

I have always thought four 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 it finishes for the day and you realise you haven’t eaten or been to the loo all day. 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 since the Speciality & Fine Food Fair. There were plenty of visitors, very few time-wasters and a general sense of high optimism and excitement across visitors and exhibitors alike.

We took a stand half our normal size due to the poor time we had at the show two years ago – but 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 is where some companies fall short. The show itself is the easy part – it’s the following-up which is where the graft starts and finishes. I met one company 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 and e-mail them before giving up. Incredible!  Why spend all that money on a stand at a show and 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. It was disappointing, for me and other speakers who had put in work preparing talks, to discover that people 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 the supermarkets were attracting the most interest. It’s a pet subject of mine, as you will know if you are a regular reader of this blog, and is clearly a topic that would be good to discuss further.

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. It seems Tesco is trying to get planning permission for its 18th store in a 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 make the most of consumer 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. Many say they can never compete on price. Maybe not on some items, but independent retailers can do better promotions and offer good deals on products that the supermarkets aren’t. 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 a 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 the new season with a spring in our step and create a positive vibe in speciality food retailing.