Casual Dining, Commercial Kitchen & lunch! return to face-to-face business

Casual Dining, lunch! and Commercial Kitchen returned to ExCeL London earlier this month for face-to-face events.

Food and drink industry leaders, trailblazers, and senior decision makers came in their thousands across the two days, with a strong and positive appetite business.

Lunch! welcomed 5561 visitors, Casual Dining welcomed 4707 visitors, and Commercial Kitchen saw a huge increase, welcoming 4295 visitors at its debut London show.

“We’re so delighted to see that the industry has returned to face-to-face trade events in no uncertain terms,” says Chris Brazier, Group Event Director. “The brilliant exhibitors were back, the buyers were back and the buzz was back at our biggest show yet. We won’t rest on our laurels and have already started preparing for an even better lunch!, Casual Dining & Commercial Kitchen for 14 and 15 September 2022. A huge thank you to all our exhibitors, visitors, speakers, media and association partners for their help and support in getting these much-needed shows open again.”

Visitors who attended included senior decision makers and professionals from: The Alchemist, BaxterStorey, Bill’s Restaurants, Burger King, Caffè Nero, Center Parcs, Coffee Republic, Compass Group, Co-op, Crussh, Dishoom, Five Guys, Greggs,  Heathrow, Hilton Group, Honest Burgers, KFC, Las Iguanas & Turtle Bay Restaurants, Legoland, Leon, Merlin Entertainments, New World Trading Company, Nando’s, NHS, PizzaExpress, Pret A Manger, The Restaurant Group,  Sainsburys, Tesco, Waitrose, WH Smith, and many more.

The positive buzz across the show-floor didn’t go unnoticed as exhibitor testimonials echoed the quality of contacts they met and “genuine enquiries” they made – concluding that the co-located ‘supershow’ was the “best show yet!”

“We had really positive conversations with our regular customers as well as with new business at Casual Dining 2021,” comments Lucy Blythe, Senior Customer Activation Manager at Molson. “We have some great leads and it was brilliant to have conversations with premium suppliers.”

“The quality has been high at Commercial Kitchen,” explains Iain Phillips, Deputy Managing Director at Regale. “We’ve taken genuine enquiries and orders across a range of our products. It was great to engage with large accounts and it has allowed us to reconnect with customers. Possibly, the best show we have done!”