This year’s Western Food Expo was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on August 19-21, 2018. This year’s expo was co-located with two other shows, Coffee Fest and the Healthy Food Expo. The show moved from the North Hall to the larger South Hall.
Members of the foodservice industry meet at the Western Food Expo every August to learn about new menu, design, and decor trends, learn best practices from experts, network, watch culinary demonstrations, and talk directly to producers and manufacturers. The show is sponsored by the California Restaurant Association and attended by over 9,000 industry professionals. The trade show featured more than 500 leading vendors.
Froyo/Soft Serve at the Show
We attended to look for frozen yogurt and froyo relevant trends. Unfortunately, there was little frozen yogurt or even soft serve to be found. This is what we spotted:
- Tribest/Presidential Foodservice brought Honey Hill Farms soft serve, soft serve machines, spoons, and cups. They didn’t have a toppings bar this year.
- Sweet Chills distributes Rainbow’s End and Miss Karen’s frozen yogurt. They were part of the
California Milk area. - Fosselman’s was back with their vanilla and chocolate soft serve ice cream.
Coffee Fest Trends
The Coffee Fest side looked livelier than the Western Food Expo. There were several competitions, including for best cold brew and the Latte Art World Championship. The latte art competition attracted a large crowd.
We noticed nitro cold brew coffee, tea, tumblers, equipment to brew and roast coffee, green coffee beans, chai (we liked Tipu’s Chai, the recipe is based on the founder’s grandmother’s recipe), turmeric lattes, different creamers (including a probiotic version), superfood powders, water filtration systems, and add ins (e.g., collagen). Kombucha was conspicuously absent, despite its popularity.
We were intrigued by the new single serving steeped coffee bag. The technology was developed by Steeped, Inc. of Scotts Valley, CA. It’s so new that they’re still raising funds on Kickstarter. Frozen Bean had an interesting purple lemonade with glitter called Galaxy Lemonade.
Western Food Expo Trends
On the Western Food Expo side, we noticed many sauces, drinks, slushes, and plant-based foods. We didn’t see much that was boba related even though boba shops are opening up like crazy. However, there was one vendor from Taiwan, Possmei, with boba and Hong Kong egg waffle makers. Pizza was everywhere.
All in all, the Western Food Expo was a disappointment from a frozen yogurt perspective, but we really enjoyed the energy and products at Coffee Fest.
