Expo West 2017

Two weeks ago, the ONDA team traveled to sunny Anaheim to attend Expo West, 2017. This was our third food show, and by far the biggest. We were wow’d by the sheer number of attendees, and some of the companies elaborate displays.

Each morning we would grab an Uber to the Anaheim Convention center, drink Siggis’s Icelandic yogurt for breakfast (life saver!), and head into a room full of booths. In the evenings we sampled the best and worst of Anaheim cuisine. We left four days later inspired, tuckered out, and way more knowledgable about probiotics.

Here are some of the trends we noticed at the show.

• TONS of probiotics. Drinks, powders, yogurt, kombucha, sauerkraut, even chips. You name it, we ate a version of it loaded with probiotics. There’s no denying that the probiotic trend is here to stay, and is producing some delicious, healthy products.
• Savory bars – a trend we found ourselves somewhat less excited about. Somehow ground meat product in shelf stable bar form just wasn’t doing it for us. The number of savory bars seems to keep growing though, so perhaps our trend radar is weak on this front…
• Paleo brands were out in force as well. It seems everyone wants to eat like a caveman these days.
  Alternative milks are holding strong, with everything from the traditional nuts milks, to oat milk and banana milk adding to the mix.

One of the coolest things we saw was an awesome Bluegrass band playing at the Reeds booth, made up entirely of members of the company, including the founder/CEO!

All up, we had an informative four days, and look forward to returning next year, if it pleases the Cactus of Wisdom…