Billed as “the largest frozen yogurt, ice cream and topping show in the nation,” Southwest Traders 2018 Product Show was held at the Universal City Hilton on March 1-2, 2018. This year’s theme was “Globally Connected, Locally Invested.” Southwest Traders chose the theme to highlight its global sourcing of new and innovative products. The keynote speaker, Andrew Carlson, is a foodservice industry expert and Amazon best-selling author. Mr. Carlson led the workshop on how to grow your sales.
Southwest Traders and the vendors were very generous. The show was a great place to pick up free products and samples. Many shops won prizes like toppings, gift cards, spoons, and more. Attendees also received $50 in SWT show bucks, other show specials, and a free dinner (the Customer Appreciation Reception). Some of the vendors sponsored contests of their own.
We spotted attendees from all over the country, including shop owners from Arizona, Utah, and Iowa. Most attendees were current frozen yogurt shop owners, though there were a good number of ice cream shop owners and people who are in the process of opening up their first shop. Many people brought their family members, including lots of young kids. Many people spent hours at the show and ate their fill of free froyo.
Product Show
There were over 60 suppliers in attendance, including frozen yogurt mix/frozen dessert suppliers, frozen yogurt machine vendors, packaging companies, toppings suppliers, cone mix providers, beverage vendors, baked goods suppliers, and fruit/produce distributors. Some of the new products we spotted included:
- Ambrosia: Greek Honey frozen yogurt was a hit at the show with its creamy texture and subtly sweet honey flavor
- Break A Whey: New, all natural, high protein soft serve frozen yogurt available in Vanilla and Chocolate and shake mix. Look for an equipment program in the future.
- Bossen/Bursting Boba: The first veggie juice bobas are now available. The VeggieMonster Bursting Boba flavors are Cucumber Pineapple and Carrot Lemon. Bursting Boba is made with 25% real fruit juice and their bobas are 40% larger. Also, they’ll be making a major new product announcement at the NRA Show.
- Frozen Bean/The Gelato Lab: Frozen Bean had the most creative new soft serve gelato flavors, including Mermaid, Unicorn, and Black Belgian Chocolate (made with activated charcoal). The unicorn flavor started out tasting like bubblegum and then ended up tasting like cotton candy. These were flavors mad
e with millennials in mind. They also had flavored salts and sugars, including glittery ones. - Frozen Solutions: St. Patrick’s Day and Easter were well-represented at the booth. They’re selling MAGIC color changing Easter spoons and Easter printed froyo cups. Kids also loved the dinosaur color changing spoons.
- Honey Hill Farms/Sugar Creek: They brought lots of flavors, including the new Rocket Pop Sorbet and Home Churn Vanilla.
- Juice Poppers: There were three new boba flavors: Passion Fruit, Lemonade, and Bubblegum.
- Kent Precision: The new Key Lime dairy-free soft serve was surprisingly tangy and delicious.
- Summit Premium: Thanks to the partnership with Nabisco, Summit now offers so
ft serve ice cream and frozen yogurt made with Oreo cookies, Mother’s Circus Animals, Nutter Butter cookies, and Rice Krispie Treats. And the non-dairy line continues to do well with almond milk, coconut milk, and cashew milk soft serve offerings. - Sweet Chills/Rainbow’s End: There were so many new flavors, including Banana Wafer Yogurt, Strawberry Shortcake Yogurt, Snickerdoodle Cookie Butter Yogurt, Strawberry NSA Yogurt, and Blood Orange Sorbet. Also, they now offer froyo for dogs; the line is called Puppy Frogurtlicious.
- TR Toppers: Holiday gummies for Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, Christmas and 4th of July/Memorial Day
Other attendees included Dreyer’s, Gelati Celesti, Bakersland/Graeters, Pacific Foods, Taylor, Mustache Mikes, Lollicup, Greeno, Ice Husky, Rickaroons, Euro Snack/Le Waf, Dart, Pichuberry, Joy Cone, Hershey’s, Helados Veros, Oregon Ice Cream, Dr. Smoothie, Lyons Magnus, Gelato Classico, Double Rainbow, Krusteaz, Electrofreeze, Acai Roots, etc.
Frozen Yogurt Shop Owners/Southwest Traders Survey
We were at the show to see what was new but also to collect responses for our froyo shop owners survey. We wanted to thank Southwest Traders for their support of the survey (special shout out to Ryan Camara) and Honey Hill Farms/Sugar Creek for letting us hang out in your booth. It’s always fun to meet froyo shop owners, especially the owners of shops we’ve visited and the ones we’ve known for years (e.g., Tuttimelon, Yotopia) and the ones that are IFYA members.
Some of the survey questions that were included were the same as the ones we included in our fall survey for frozen yogurt store owners. We wanted to see if the results would be similar or not. Stay tuned for updates.
