Nothing beats meeting in person…
September marked the start of our face-to-face exhibition events for the Asia Pacific office after a sojourn of 3 years. It was a surreal experience entering the exhibition halls and walking in between the colourful and brightly lit booths, rubbing shoulders with visitors from all over the globe and tasting a wide array of samples on display.
Cosmopolitan Jakarta
BENEO had its first post pandemic booth at Food Ingredients Asia Jakarta. It was a shared booth with our trusty sales network partner, DPO who decided to go for a chill, café style booth concept.
Our counter served a variety of delicious samples with reduced sugar – iced gem biscuits and sweetened condensed milk in courtesy of our BENEO-Technology Center, and a traditional Indonesian layered cake called lapis surabaya. Many visitors were very impressed at how good the samples tasted despite having less sugar. It really demonstrated how the newer generation’s taste buds are changing as Indonesians are typically known to have a sweet tooth.
As with everyone at the event, it was also wonderful to be able to exchange warm hugs and handshakes with people we have not met in person for such a long time. No matter how many updates Microsoft Teams comes up with, it can definitely never replace the experience of having direct eye contact and hearing people with 3D surround sound!
Incredible show season in India
After a one week break, the team flew across the Bay of Bengal to arrive in the bustling Silicon Valley of India – Bangalore! It was the first time Food Ingredients India was held there and despite the distance from the bigger cities like New Delhi and Mumbai, the turnout was so encouraging that the organizers decided that it will be added to their rotation list of locations.
We had a shared booth with our long-time sales network partner, SFA. Doesn’t the booth colour match so well with the carpet to represent the Indian flag? It was totally intentional. 😊
The mostly local crowd thronged our booth as we were one of the few to offer tasting samples. The BENEO-Technology Center’s specially curated menu included high fibre digestive biscuits, no sugar added fig and mango ice cream, prebiotic flavoured milk and many others. The recipes were tweaked to the local palate so they were very well received, which further highlighted the importance of regionalized recipes.
Our SNP also presented reduced sugar traditional Indian sweets such as soan papdi and laddu, which served as a good inspiration for manufacturers preparing for the upcoming Diwali festival.
These two shows are just the beginning of our events in Asia, with several more coming up in Bangkok, Tokyo and Shanghai in the next few months. Keep track of our movement by following our social media channels and if you happen to be in town, don’t feel shy to say hi or snack on our samples during the show season!