How long does it take to set up a virtual food show?

We recommend giving your team at least four weeks to set up a vFairs food show. This includes everything from event planning and software onboarding to event design and content upload.

How many booths can I have for my virtual food show?

You can have unlimited booths at your vFairs virtual food show and our team works with you every step of the way to set them up. We’ve successfully hosted events with over 1000 booths.

What kind of content can exhibitors add to their food show booths?

They can add company info, product listings, menus, recipe videos, external links, and even custom HTML content. Additionally, each booth is virtually administered by a rep from the exhibiting company.

How many attendees can vFairs virtual food show support?

vFairs supports unlimited registrations and 25,000 users logged in at a time.

How long can the food show stay live for?

It can stay live for as long as you want. That means that you can also get a yearly license to keep your event live for the entire year and even longer.

Virtual Food Show Platform (2023)

Benefits of Hosting a Virtual Food Show

Global Accessibility

Take your products to a global audience

Generate Leads

Access new markets and identify new prospects

Network and Connect

Start conversations and book meetings with key contacts

Demo Your Offerings

Meet with prospects to demo your products and discuss services

Measure Success

Measure event attendance, engagement and ROI with reports

What is a Virtual Food Exhibition and Why Should You Host One?

Over the last 12 months, we’ve seen a dramatic shift in the global food industry. One of the world's most lucrative industries - food service - saw delays in manufacturing, disrupted supply chains and shutdowns in dining establishments. On top of that, in-person food expos aren't feasible or safe. Many companies rely on such events to expand their networks, get products into new markets, and offer the best in food and beverage to their customers. However, is a way forward that might just be more effective than in-person events: virtual food exhibitions.

What is a virtual food exhibition?

Virtual food exhibitions offer food manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and vendors a place to strengthen global sales channels. The virtual event offers many spaces for all participants across the supply chain to meet, learn more, and build leads. Virtual auditoriums host virtual webinars and live demos, and companies can sell products on a virtual trade show floor. Buyers can learn about new product and service offerings quickly and efficiently by browsing through providers’ resources. Likewise, sellers can easily provide pricing sheets and product information. Food exhibitions are sensory experiences by nature. Part of the draw is that people can interact with products in real time. This doesn’t have to go away at a virtual food exhibition. Attendees can still interact with products through live demos, interactive audio and video chat, and product info sheets. In short, a virtual exhibition platform offers a fully immersive experience. This includes a 3D virtual venue that feels just like an in-person event. Best of all, virtual events are a fraction of the cost to host, increasing potential revenue!

You might also like: Why Food Shows Are Going Online

Who does it serve?

Food suppliers, manufacturers and producers

If you're a foodservice supplier looking to expand your customer base, a virtual food exhibition is a great option. You can showcase your products, build new leads, and strengthen your networks all within the platform. Virtual exhibit booths let you post your own video demos, pricing sheets, and links to your products' landing pages. Use the live chat feature to speak with booth visitors, answer questions about your products, and schedule meetings with new distributors and buyers. You can even host live webinars to demonstrate your offerings and interact live with potential customers. Each of these options help create a rich and immersive way to get the word out about your products.

Foodservice providers, retailers and dining establishments

If you're ready to find new suppliers and manufacturers, attend a virtual food exhibition. You can watch live, semi-live, or pre-recorded webinars in the virtual auditorium. Live presentations allow you to interact with the speaker as they present, and pre-recorded webinars allow you to ask questions in the chat feature as the video plays. Then, you can head to the virtual exhibit hall to browse suppliers. Learn about their products through product sheets, demo videos, and live chat. Additionally, you can request samples from suppliers as needed.

Global distributors

If you're ready to be the distributor of choice for suppliers and buyers worldwide, make connections at a virtual food exhibition. You can view virtual webinars where you can interact with presenters live, or through the webinar chat. When you're ready to build connections, visit the virtual exhibit hall to browse exhibitors. Virtual exhibit booths will provide everything you need to understand what each company has to offer. You can also search the database to connect with restaurants, retailers, or any other foodservice providers you're looking for. Then, you can chat with suppliers and buyers using our live chat feature, and even conduct audio and video calls within the platform.

How have others used virtual food exhibitions?

Virtual food exhibitions aren't a new concept. In fact, we've been hosting them with innovative organizations for quite some time. In 2019, Centennial Foodservice hosted their Annual Seafood Extravaganza with vFairs, featuring exhibit booths from each service area's branch. Attendees could interact with their respective area representative, browse product and pricing sheets and learn more about the branch. This allowed attendees to understand which branch to reach out to for their region, familiarize themselves with the team, and see what products they had to offer. As well, Jake’s Finer Foods hosted a virtual food exhibition where attendees could watch webinars by industry experts, touching on topics from social media to restaurant licensing protocols. They also hosted an exhibition floor where brands like Campbell’s and McCain showcased their products and allowed attendees to create order sheets. Similarly, Harbour Wholesale used their virtual event to connect their target retailers, convenience stores, with large suppliers such as Coca Cola and General Mills.

Takeaways

Virtual food exhibits are a safe, cost-effective, impactful way to promote your products, find new providers, or help the two establish stronger distribution channels. If you’ve been hesitant to take your show online, our team at vFairs is here to make the transition easy, effective, and enjoyable. To learn more, check out our Virtual Food Exhibition page here.

Want to learn more about Virtual Food Exhibitions?

A vFairs team member can help! Contact Us

4 Tips to Make the Most of Your Virtual Food Show

Are you thinking of hosting a food expo online? Are you unsure if you’ll be able to have that same wow factor that you had with in-person events? Worry no more! We’ve hosted our share of virtual food shows with some of the world’s leading foodservice distributors, wholesalers and retail suppliers. So we have some great tips to share with you. Read on if you’re ready to blow your attendees out of the water with our best tried-and-tested tips.

Create immersive marketing content for your virtual food show

First thing’s first. You should have a plan that entices your audience to sign up, gets them interested and excited leading up to the event, keeps them engaged during the event and gives them food for thought once the event is over. Beyond this, you have so many opportunities to create an experience for your audience across channels. People love seeing content about food and beverage! According to Condiment Marketing, of all brands mentioned on Twitter, food and drink brands made up 32% of those tweets. That’s just one channel you should be using to communicate before, during and after the event.

Pre-Event

Put in some time upfront to understand who you’re targeting. Then, create a miniature mood board that encompasses all of the event branding and content that could capture your audiences’ attention. You undoubtedly have a repository of eye-catching imagery available to you. If you don’t already have high-quality video to share, think about creating some short video clips to share across channels. Infographics, product showcases, and other highly visual content are all great options too. Once you have everything ready, think about the messaging you want to share on each channel before, during and after the event. Pre-event communications will likely include a lot of promotional content, an event landing page and special sneak peeks to those who have registered. [caption id="attachment_12736" align="alignnone" width="806"] Harbor Wholesale's Event Landing Page

Harbor Wholesale created visually appealing branding, which they included on their event landing page pre-event, as shown here.[/caption]

During Event

During the event, leverage the social media content your attendees are posting. Set up a unique hashtag. Include a social wall, like walls.io, to encourage attendees to share their own posts. Additionally, have automated emails on hand for registrants who haven’t logged in to the event by a certain time. vFairs offers this with our email builder tool in the virtual event backend. [caption id="attachment_12737" align="alignnone" width="600"] Sample of walls.io social wall at a vFairs event

Sample of walls.io social wall at a vFairs event

walls.io offers highly visual user-generated content from across social channels[/caption]

Post-Event

Don’t forget the value of follow-up communications after your virtual food show. Send an automated ‘thank you’ email to those who logged in to your event, asking them to complete your feedback survey, covering key takeaways, and providing useful documents for more information. You can also send a separate email to those who didn’t log in, providing recordings of the webinars, infographics with key concepts covered and inviting them to reach out to your team to learn more. Additionally, repurpose your content to create an unlimited amount of new material for social media, newsletters and your website. Content such as highlight reels, infographics and downloadable PDFs can be created from your webinars, Q&As and event statistics.

Diversify content in your virtual food show's exhibit booth

Extend the immersive approach to your virtual exhibit booth by matching your offerings to unique content types. Share product spec sheets that attendees can download. Show off your products with 360-degree views. Share a behind-the-scenes look at your production facilities with an HD video. There are so many types of content you can share or link to within a virtual exhibit booth, brainstorming what to showcase is the easy part. Include similar designs, content types and products you’ve been using in your event promotion to create a seamless experience for your audience. Consistency in design will help make your exhibit booth easily recognizable in the exhibit hall to those who have seen your promo materials as well. And eye-catching imagery will help entice those browsing the exhibit hall who aren’t familiar with your branding.

Conduct product demos with target attendees

Product demos are a valuable sales tactic you can use right within the virtual event. There are two ways you can go about this, depending on your level of involvement in the event. If you have the opportunity, you could host a webinar presentation outlining your best products and services. This is usually reserved for the event host, or high level sponsors. If you’re participating as a sponsor, look into whether this is an option, or reach out to the host organization to see if it’s a possibility to add a webinar slot on to your sponsorship. As an exhibitor, you also have the opportunity to search attendee profiles and request meetings. If you have a target persona that you’re looking to connect with at the event, this is a great opportunity to do so. You can search by any field they’ve filled out on their registration form. So, for example, you may be able to search by industry, job title or location. Once you’ve found the contact you want to speak with, send them a meeting invitation and let them know you’d like to discuss how your products could help them!

Collect orders with our shopping cart

Let’s talk about features. One of the most valuable features you can include in your exhibition booths are shopping carts. You’ve spent all this time marketing your products online and within the event. Now it’s time to close those sales. Upload your product inventory to the virtual platform so that your booth visitors can place orders with you. Alternatively, you can always link to your websites ‘Shop’ page to collect orders. Offering an option to place orders within the event will round out the experience for your visitors. By this point they’ve seen all the best you have to offer, heard from you through meetings or webinars, and scrolled through your product sheets. They’ve got a ton of information to make a highly informed decision, and they’re caught up in the excitement of the event. When given the opportunity to easily place an order, they’re much more likely to.

Considering a virtual food show?

vFairs Can Help Schedule a Demo

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to set up a virtual food show?
We recommend giving your team at least four weeks to set up a vFairs food show. This includes everything from event planning and software onboarding to event design and content upload.
How many booths can I have for my virtual food show?
You can have unlimited booths at your vFairs virtual food show and our team works with you every step of the way to set them up. We’ve successfully hosted events with over 1000 booths.
What kind of content can exhibitors add to their food show booths?
They can add company info, product listings, menus, recipe videos, external links, and even custom HTML content. Additionally, each booth is virtually administered by a rep from the exhibiting company.
How many attendees can vFairs virtual food show support?
vFairs supports unlimited registrations.
How long can the food show stay live for?
It can stay live for as long as you want. That means that you can also get a yearly license to keep your event live for the entire year and even longer.

Virtual Food Show Platform

Access Global Buyers & Suppliers at a Virtual Food Show

Why Host a Virtual Food Show?

Virtual Food Show Features

Virtual Environment

Interactive Booths

Engagement

Customer Support

Event Marketing

Reporting & Analytics

Top Features of a Virtual Food Show

Showcase Products

Collect Orders

Captivate Your Audience

Host Interactive Presentations

Connect with Prospects