Western Foodservice & Hospitality Expo, co-located with Coffee Fest, is back after a three-year hiatus. The two shows took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center from August 28-30, 2022. Sponsored by the California Restaurant Association, the Western Food Show features hundreds of vendors, educational sessions, industry awards, competitions, demonstrations, and networking opportunities. The Western Food Show is the largest food and beverage trade show on the West Coast.
Operations trumped new products and there were fewer food samples. We missed the Honey Smoked Fish Co. Fortunately, you could get lots of coffee.
We noticed two big themes this year that restaurants are concerned about: staffing and technology. Automation and robots represented the intersection of these two issues. Robots wandered the show floor. These robots can help with cleaning, ordering, food preparation, delivery, and more. There were so many POS vendors.
Sadly, we did not find any soft serve or frozen yogurt at the show. There was little ice cream as well. Oatly brought their non-dairy frozen dessert bars. Little Jasmine has a new strawberry boba ice cream.
A few other trends:
- International flavors: Boba ice cream, brown sugar milk tea and flavored boba were present. Torani had a salted egg yolk flavored syrup that caught our eye. Matcha was also well-represented.
- Plant-based snacks and alternative milks: We tried Golden Wing, the world’s first barley milk, made with shiitake mushrooms. It has 60% less sugar than regular whole milk, and more calcium and vitamin D3 than whole milk.
- Eco-friendly packaging: Lots of brown eco-friendly packaging and paper straws.
- Roasting machines and cold brew: Judging from all the roasting equipment, many coffee shops must be roasting their own coffee beans. They’re using new processing methods like double washed and cascara fermentation.
