Culinary Adventures with Chef Luiz
(Chef Silverio Luiz Tecedor is a chef consultant for IDF, who has spent the past 40+
years cooking and traveling around the world. Through the years, he typically flew
more than 100,000 miles annually, while cooking, teaching and learning about food
for CPC/Best Foods/Unilever. Here at IDF, we’re delighted that Chef Luiz has agreed
to share some of his global food-lore.)

IFT 2010 CHICAGO

Everyone’s town
It seems to me that Chicago is the best IFT venue. Other attendees and vendors commented often on how much they liked the location too, everything from the venue to the local food to the transportation options. And the attendance level proves it—there were almost 21,500 participants, exhibitors and visitors, a record for the last few years!

I look forward to attending the IFT trade show every year and always enjoy it. I’ve been coming for many, many years, the last seven to work at the IDF booth, and it is always a pleasure to be part of the food business. It’s thrilling to see my old friends and colleagues each year at this gathering. This year I saw a group of Argentinian friends that I had not seen in many years, whom I knew from many projects we had worked on together when I lived in Buenos Aires. If it hadn’t been for the show, I certainly wouldn’t have had a chance to reconnect with them.

I think that this year, the IFT show was the most international of any of the trade shows that I attended. The Chinese, no longer confined to their pavilion, were everywhere. They were generally aggressive salesmen, not waiting for clients to come to their booths, but going around offering their products to whomever they thought could be a customer. I was impressed with their attitude! There were also many Chinese and Indian businessmen without booths who were walking the floor looking for contacts to export their products. The show had exhibitors and attendees from many countries, the majority of them being Asian, with Europeans a close second.

I was also impressed by the number of Latin American attendees and vendors. I heard Portuguese and Spanish spoken all over the show. The majority of Latin Americans were from Argentina, Brazil and Chile, and for many it was their first time attending the show to look for companies to represent in their countries. Interestingly though, I did not see many visitors from Mexico.

In contrast, there was a surprising lack of attendance from the large multinational food companies’ R&D and supply chain departments, who usually come in groups to see the show. American products have become more competitive abroad due to the devaluing of the U.S. dollar. I heard from lots of other exhibitors that they are capitalizing on this opportunity to export more.

Fiscal restraint
Just like last year, this year’s show had fewer food samples offered to attendees. We used to say that we could have a meal just walking through the aisles and tasting the food, but this is no longer the truth at the show. Many companies still had tastings, but with fewer offerings, so I have nothing to report, because I missed that part of show!

One thing I did notice about the samples is that some companies were, for the first time, trying to charge for their product samples. I’ve never seen that before with ingredients. I also saw that organic products are back as an important force after being mostly absent last year, and that new companies are entering this segment of the market.

Generally, it seems that everyone is still in savings mode due to the recession, but overall the exhibitors were in a better mood about the future than they were last year. Many even catered parties for their better customers and brokers this year.

In September, I will be visiting the food trade show in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the largest ingredients food show in Latin America. The show keeps getting larger every year, and I look forward to reporting back on what I see.

Until then, tchau!

Chef Luiz