This year’s Western Foodservice & Hospitality Expo (Western Food Expo) was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on August 25-27, 2019. This year’s expo was co-located with two other shows, Coffee Fest and the Healthy Food Expo.
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. It is the largest foodservice show on the West Coast. Members of the foodservice industry attend the expo to learn about new menu, design, and decor trends, learn best practices from experts at education sessions, network, watch culinary demonstrations, and talk directly to producers and manufacturers.
Frozen Desserts at the Show
We attended to look for frozen yogurt and froyo relevant trends.
MOCAFE brought two flavors of soft serve, Charcoal Mocha and Matcha.
40 Below Joe is a new product from the creator of Dippin’ Dots. The quick frozen beads of arabica coffee and creamer look like Dippin’ Dots. The product is dairy-free and comes in different flavors. The grab n go cups make it very convenient. The beads can be enjoyed frozen or add hot water to enjoy a hot coffee beverage.
Churned Creamery was present with their freshly churned ice cream served directly from the churning machine. They recently added ice cream cakes.
Joe Froyo continues to expand its offerings beyond functional beverages. Their sister brand, Crema Smart, offers lactose-free milk, half & half, and (hard scoop) ice cream. The vanilla ice cream was firm and didn’t have that much vanilla flavor. The lactose-free ice cream has prebiotics and protein.
Ellenos of Seattle brought their Greek yogurt to the show. It’s not frozen yogurt but it has been gaining wider distribution on the West Coast.
There was a shaved ice or shaved snow vendor towards the back of the exhibition hall.
Other Food Trends
There were a few CBD vendors and more plant-based foods. It seemed like there were more lactose-free products this year. Pizza wasn’t everywhere this year. We didn’t see much that was boba related even though boba shops are opening up like crazy. There was a boba cooking machine though, and frozen boba.
Coffee Fest featured competitions, education sessions, and lots of vendors. There were many coffee roasters and tea companies, but also several kinds of coffee roasting machines, including an eco-friendly smokeless roaster.
Ripple now has a version of their pea-protein plant-based product for coffeehouses, Ripple Barista Style, which is soy-free, nut-free, dairy-free, gluten-free, lactose-free, and GMO-free. North American Spicy Company developed the first spicy coffee with Thai chilies as a key ingredient – sounds interesting.
