Last month Pasta Concepts and The Sauce Room exhibited at the Casual Dining 2018 expo in London. Our Team love getting out on the road and meeting up with our customers and having the chance to network with new businesses. Three of our chefs, Derek, Liz and Alan, were cooking up some culinary delights for two days at the exhibition.
Almost 5000 people attended the event and with over 200 exhibitors there was a great buzz and lots to see and more importantly – lots to taste!!
Check out the short highlights video of the event……
The Expo
Casual Dining itself is the largest expo in the UK that is aimed at the casual dining sector. For anyone in the restaurant, hotel or pub sector and looking for new and exciting food ideas it’s a great event to head along to. With such a high calibre list of exhibitors there’s always tonnes of new food trends, food technology and innovation on display.
There was also an excellent line up of speakers throughout the 2 days. We thoroughly enjoyed Jonathan Knight’s presentation ‘Food for Thought.’ Jonathan is CEO of the Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group and he gave great insights into how to revive a global business.
Hot Trends at the Expo
There were lots of the latest food trends on display at Casual Dining. Here’s a few that caught our eye over the 2 day event…..
Vegan Food
There was a huge vegan influence on many of the stands. Our chefs were cooking some samples of Pasta Concept’s delicious vegan stuffed pasta and it went down a treat with the crowd. Jackfruit was very prevalent in a lot of the sauces, finished product and even on the fruit/veg supplier stands.
Jackfruit comes from India and it’s popular in both South and Southeast Asian dishes. When the fruit is ripe it’s naturally sweet (think apple, pineapple, banana) so it’s a delicious natural product for making custards, cakes and the famous halo-halo from the Philippines.
Gluten Free Pasta
A lot of the attendees we spoke with were interested in our high-quality gluten free pasta. They were very impressed that the pasta has the same texture and taste as regular wheat pasta, something we’ve been working hard on.
BBQ Food Products
With summer just around the corner, it’s no surprise that BBQ products were well represented at the expo. There was a particular interest in healthy, reduced-sugar BBQ products to suit a more health conscious consumer. Our Chefs are BBQ lovers, so it was great to chat to so many other BBQ fans at the Expo.
Learn More About Fabulous BBQ Food Ingredients:
Baby Food Products
There was a lot of interest from attendees in our baby food products, particularly the hotel sector.
Casual Dining 2019
We’re already planning for Casual Dining next year in its new location at the ExCel in London! If you’re going along we’d love to see you there so pop over to our stand and say hello!