In-Booth Kitchen and Sampling Station
Condit partnered with Bluegrass Ingredients on a 10×20 custom inline exhibit featuring an in-booth kitchen and sampling station at Natural Products Expo West 2026.
Live food preparation at tradeshows is a powerful way to bring products to life, turning passive displays into engaging, sensory-driven experiences. Cooking or assembling food on-site allows brands to showcase quality, freshness, and ease of use in real time, while drawing attendees in with aroma, motion, and interaction. These features also create natural opportunities for storytelling and direct engagement, giving staff a platform to explain ingredients, preparation methods, and brand values!
To execute successfully, it’s essential to plan around venue and show regulations, including local health codes, permits, and fire safety requirements. This often involves coordinating with show management for approvals, ensuring proper food handling certifications, maintaining safe temperatures, and using approved equipment. When done thoughtfully and compliantly, live food prep not only elevates booth traffic but builds trust and credibility by demonstrating products exactly as they are meant to be experienced.
About Bluegrass Ingredients
Bluegrass Ingredients, a global leader in turnkey and custom dairy flavor powders, concentrates and seasoning blends, partners with leading food brands, manufacturers and flavor houses to create the custom ingredient solutions that power today’s most successful products. Bluegrass Ingredients offers a broad, application-driven portfolio of dairy flavor powders, concentrates, dairy seasoning blends, specialty powders and ingredient solutions, backed by best-in-class processing and application capabilities.
Through its Bluegrass Agile Ingredient Innovation® service model and The Agile Kitchen at Bluegrass™, the company’s collaborative, partner-driven approach and deep technical expertise help startups and global brands rapidly concept, test and scale breakthrough flavors and formulations that keep pace with evolving consumer tastes. Serving B2B food manufacturers across retail, private label, convenience, bakery, meat and foodservice channels, Bluegrass Ingredients supports more than 30 grocery categories with solutions spanning snacks, sauces, dressings, entrees, sides and other on-trend applications.
The Agile Kitchen at Bluegrass is a creative space that blends innovation and insights to deliver formulations and products that align with pressing consumer trends. It’s an incubator for advancing flavor, form, and function, staffed with food scientists and culinary experts with a proven track record for success.
About Natural Products Expo West
Natural Products Expo West, produced by the New Hope Network, is one of the largest and most influential trade shows in the natural and organic products industry, held annually at the Anaheim Convention Center. Now celebrating more than 45 years, the event has grown from a niche gathering into a global platform for innovation, attracting tens of thousands of attendees and over 3,000 exhibiting brands each year.
The event showcases a wide range of products, including natural and specialty food and beverage, supplements, clean beauty, personal care, and sustainable lifestyle goods, making it a key destination for retailers, distributors, and emerging brands alike. With its focus on discovery, sampling, and trend forecasting, Expo West serves as a launchpad for new products and a pulse check on where the better-for-you CPG market is headed.
Goal
Peter Losee, VP of Marketing at Bluegrass Ingredients, described the organization’s trade event marketing goals as follows:
“The Bluegrass trade event marketing strategy is predominantly focused on ‘brand exposure/expansion’ and ‘capabilities awareness.’ Secondarily, our trade events serve as an opportunity to engage new prospects and to re-connect with existing customers and contacts in a neutral environment. Our trade events provide opportunities for prospects and customers to witness our ingredients in applications which stimulates innovation and expands capabilities awareness.”
For most brands and businesses, Expo West is all about visibility, connection, and momentum. Exhibitors aim to introduce new products, build brand awareness, and get in front of key buyers, retailers, and distributors in a highly competitive, discovery-driven environment. It is also a prime opportunity to generate qualified leads, gather real-time feedback, and strengthen relationships with existing partners. At its core, the goal is simple: stand out on a crowded show floor and leave with meaningful connections that drive growth well beyond the trade event.
Peter summarized the vision and logistics for Expo West:
“Bluegrass manufactures and sells four primary categories of food ingredients:
- Dry Cheese and Dairy Powders
- Dry Citrus Powders
- Concentrated Dairy Ingredients
- Seasonings
We demonstrated ‘Flavor,’ ‘Form,’ and ‘Function’ of these ingredients in application. (For example, cheddar cheese powder is used to make a cheese sauce that elbow macaroni are added into to make macaroni & cheese.)
We use culinary sample applications as a vehicle to exemplify how our ingredients deliver what consumers expect from food they purchase. Our culinary samples also provide ‘support’ capability to food manufacturers looking for New Product Development. Additionally, we closely monitor consumer trends and food manufacturers’ needs. Our culinary samples demonstrate solutions that can deliver both consumer and manufacturing needs like improved flavor, cost reduction, and shelf-life benefits.
For Expo West 26, we were focused on promoting ‘Clean Label’ and ‘Flavor Forward,’ applications that met consumer needs for ‘experiential eating,’ ‘comfort food,’ and ‘global flavor’ experiences. Additionally, we seasonally focus promotion on certain categories that we manufacture. At Expo West, our focus was on Seasonings and Citrus Powders. The sample applications contained these specific ingredients.
For each trade event, we prepare a custom menu of applications targeted at the audience, aligned with our promotion calendar and designed to deliver ‘gold standard,’ restaurant-quality appeal. This creates an opportunity to engage with anyone who visits the booth about their sampling experience and business needs. It works since we regularly see show attendees return to the booth multiple times to re-sample what they tried on their first visit or to sample other applications they did not sample on their first visit.
Each trade event custom menu may require unique equipment. For example, at Expo West this year, the chef’s needed:
- A pot of boiling water
- A two-burner induction unit with fry pans
- A two-cubic food convection oven
- Two refrigerators
- One freezer
- One Cambro hot-food storage box
Most of the applications and accompaniments like sauces are partially prepared at our Innovation Kitchen in Bowling Green Kentucky, frozen, and then transported frozen to the trade event. Upon arrival, the chef’s purchase finishing ingredients from local grocery stores. This may include micro greens, garnish vegetables, etc.. Then, as is the case in many restaurant kitchens, the food is finished during show hours in the booth kitchen and served.”
Live food prep and sampling at Natural Products Expo West and the Anaheim Convention Center are highly regulated to ensure safety, compliance, and product integrity. Exhibitors must follow Expo West sampling rules, including serving only products they manufacture or distribute, limiting portion sizes, and using approved (and often sustainable) serving materials.
At the venue level, Anaheim Convention Center guidelines require strict food safety practices such as handwashing stations, no bare-hand contact, proper temperature control for hot and cold foods, and protection from contamination using sneeze guards or covers. Cooking equipment and open food prep typically require permits, fire safety approvals, and physical barriers between the public and appliances.
Together, these layers of regulation ensure that live food experiences are not only engaging, but executed safely, professionally, and in full compliance with health and fire codes.
Result
Peter reviewed Bluegrass Ingredients’ experience at Expo West:
“Expo West is one of several trade events Bluegrass participates in. Our attendance at Expo West has a few goals, one of which also exhibiting at the Southern California IFT (SCIFTS) regional show during the same approximate time period. SoCal IFT is a smaller more cohesive audience of Food R&D and Manufacturing professionals, our more common audience. The second goal at Expo West was to increase our brand exposure and capabilities awareness to West Coast prospects and customers. We have not spent enough time promoting our company on the West Coast and recently added two professional West Coast Account Managers. Expo West assisted with their ability to attract new business. Third, we wanted to make our company visible to investors who attend Expo West.
The Expo West audience is very diverse, mostly retailers and food service operators. Other trade events where we exhibit have a more desired target audience. Many attendees at Expo West attend with ‘intent to buy’ finished goods. Unfortunately, we do not market ‘ready to eat’ (RTE) food products. As a result, for some of our engagements at Expo West, booth time was consumed explaining what we do and how our products are used and how to source the samples we were exhibiting.
Expo West 2026 was a success. Our Sales Team generated over 90+ Badge Scans. Several large national brands who saw our booth requested additional information. A good number of our West Coast customers were invited and visited the booth. We distributed over 2,000 culinary samples to attendees, exhibitors and venue staff, and we received numerous compliments and positive comments about the applications, taste, and presentation of the samples. We also received multiple compliments on the booth appearance and functionality.”
Overall, Natural Products Expo West 2026 brought together more than 60,000 to 80,000 industry professionals and over 3,000 exhibiting brands, filling more than 500,000 square feet of exhibit space at the Anaheim Convention Center. With attendees representing over 100 countries, the show continues to be one of the largest and most influential gatherings in the natural and organic products industry.
Value
Peter outlined the value of working with Condit on this project and on the long-term collaborative partnership:
“The relationship between Bluegrass and CONDIT is valuable in a few different ways. Arriving to the venue and having the booth constructed and ready for activity is a major productivity boost for Bluegrass. Trade events where Bluegrass employees have to construct and post-event strike a booth, even only an 8×10 popup, takes time and experience.
Second, having CONDIT staff available during any trade event is a benefit. We’ve experienced fork trucks damaging our booth, doors breaking, missing components, electrical challenges among other issues when exhibiting. Having CONDIT staff on-site, at the ready, solves problems like these quickly, and more importantly, it removes worry and anxiety from Bluegrass leadership and staff. Finally, pre and post activity with CONDIT assists in assuring a successful trade event. CONDIT managing contracting electric, booth logistics, repairs and maintenance, and booth enhancements relieves stress and workload on Bluegrass trade event management staff allowing us to focus on what we do – manufacturing and selling food ingredients and talking to food manufacturers.
Over the past two years, working with the CONDIT team has been a positive, progressive experience. Whether dealing with pre, post-event activities, booth upgrades, repairs and maintenance between trade events, or fixing issues in real-time on the show floor, the CONDIT team has been responsive, caring and proactive in addressing Bluegrass’ needs and wants.”
Condit Exhibits brings unmatched experience to Natural Products Expo West, supporting dozens of clients at the show, including more than 60 exhibitors at the show in 2026. As the most active exhibit house on the floor, the Condit team understands the nuances of the Anaheim Convention Center, show regulations, and the fast-paced, sampling-driven environment that defines Expo West. From early strategy and design through fabrication, logistics, and on-site execution, we help brands stand out in a highly competitive space while ensuring every detail runs smoothly. Our scale and familiarity with Expo West allow us to anticipate challenges, streamline processes, and deliver a consistent, high-quality presence across multiple booths.
With deep roots in the food and beverage industry, Condit further elevates that experience. We design and build custom exhibit environments that support product sampling, live demonstrations, and high-volume engagement, all while maintaining strict adherence to food safety and show requirements. From specialty foods and beverages to better-for-you and emerging CPG brands, we understand how to create spaces that highlight taste, quality, and brand story. With thoughtful layouts, durable materials, and a focus on both functionality and exhibit sustainability behind the scenes, we help clients create memorable, efficient experiences that resonate with attendees and drive meaningful connections on the show floor.
Let’s Get Cooking on Your Next Exhibit
Whether you’re preparing for Expo West or another food-focused event, our team is ready to support you at every stage. From early strategy and design through design, fabrication, logistics, and on-site execution, we’ll help you create an exhibit that stands out and performs. Start your project today and explore what’s possible through our portfolio.