Four shows. Three days. One venue…
Team William Murray and Category Wins visited the Food & Drink Expo, the number one show where the UK food and drink industry meets. Co-located with The National Convenience Show, The Farm Shop and Deli Show and Foodex Manufacturing Solutions, visitors had the opportunity to connect with a great mix of brands and to learn about the latest thinking in technology, health & nutrition and sustainability and people.
Here is just a selection of some of the stand out products we encountered:
Bio & Me’s brilliant Gut-Loving & Prebiotic range of granola’s and healthy yoghurts
Bio & Me is a leading light in the growing functional health food category – developed by experts in nutrition and gut health, the Bio & Me range is designed to support healthy bacteria in the gut (prebiotic). Plant based, healthy and delicious, the brand has proved popular with consumers, with the brand reaching £3m retail sales in 2022, and with its cereals growing by 389% (Nielsen 2022). The mango prebiotic yoghurt was a hands down favourite especially when mixed with the Cashew & Almond Granola.
Music to our ears and the vines! Spotlight on Greek cuisine
Health, variety, taste, and how delicious the food looks are just a few reasons why Greek cuisine is so popular. And we had the fortune of tasting a number of wonderful Mediterranean delicacies, from the finest wines & olives to stuffed vine leaves and Halva, the Greek speciality dessert, as well as some utterly moreish feta, spinach, and filo pastries.
A particular favourite was from craft winemakers Kakoulidis Winery , a Greek winery that is taking on the world. We enjoyed a beautiful medium/dry white muscat with wonderful floral notes, a delight for the palette and a deep single vineyard red from the Greek Varietal Xinomavro, aged in oak for 12 months and which delivered notes of raspberry, plum and allspice.
And the secret to achieving the perfect wine notes … playing classical music to the vines of course! Believe it or not this has made a notable difference in the grape quality!
Welcome to Olly’s – Oven Baked Pretzels reinvented and olives in mouthwatering marinades
An innovative addition to the health snacking category (worth £3bn in the UK, Euromonitor, 2023). Olly’s displayed two ranges, its snack marinated olives, perfect for those looking for delicious olives on the go in easy to open pouches and their oven-baked Pretzel range, complete with five mouth-watering flavours from sour cream & onion to salted original.
Olly’s is available in most major retailers with over 10,000 stocking points and with a business now valued at £10m. We’re already fans and will be picking up a pretzel or two on our next supermarket visit.
Overall, the Food & Drink Expo was a jampacked show showcasing the best the industry has to offer. We left informed and feeling utterly inspired having connected with so many fantastic brands and suppliers.
