About Sweets & Snacks
On May 23-25, Black Jewell Popcorn exhibited at the Sweets & Snacks Expo in Chicago. With over 800 vendors covering approximately 4 acres of exhibit space, Sweets & Snacks is a “must attend” event for the food industry. This year marked the 20th anniversary of the show and was attended by over 17,000 people. For Black Jewell Popcorn, after a successful debut in 2016, this marked our 2nd time exhibiting at the event.
What do attendees see at the show? Well, Sweets & Snacks pretty much sums it up. From the largest candy and chocolate companies like Hershey, M&M/Mars, and Wrigley, to jerky, snack bars, and, of course, popcorn. Actually, there were over 80 popcorn companies at the expo this year! Can you believe it? That means 1 in every 10 vendors at the show was showing and sampling some form of popcorn.
Showtime
Black Jewell set-up shop in a 10×10 booth that highlighted all of our brands and items. Once the expo opened I had non-stop activity, and, because you never know when a large company buyer might come by, I was in the booth presenting the entire time. To most people, 3 solid days of being on your feet presenting your product repeatedly sounds awful. But, honestly, it was a lot of fun (though I did go to bed exhausted every night). I met tons of great people, spread our story, and got a chance to watch their reactions after tasting the difference of Black Jewell.
As usual, our most popular popcorn was our Original Black heirloom popcorn. Seems word of our unique popcorn that starts as a small black kernel and pops up pure white, with a crunchy texture, is getting out to more and more people. Plus, we were sampling our new Null Hull ready-to-eat popcorn in both Sea Salt and White Cheddar flavors. It was close but I think more people opted for the White Cheddar at this particular show. We were in very close proximity to some other popcorn companies handing out samples and it was always very satisfying to get a response from someone who happened to be trying our Null Hull along with someone else’s popcorn. Responses of “wow,” and “oh wow,” and “wow, just wow” are not uncommon. Of course, if you have eaten our popcorn, you know this already.
Stacking Up
Some of you probably wonder how a company like Black Jewell could gain attention at a show this large, with so many large companies presenting, and such a large number of popcorn options. Well, here’s an interesting stat. The folks who run the show tell the exhibitors in advance how many attendees searched for their brand, and rank you overall and in your category. Black Jewell ranked 144th overall out of the over 800 companies in terms of attendee interest in the brand and we ranked 20th out of the over 80 popcorn brands in attendance! So, yeah…I’d say we did pretty good.
After the show, we started conversations with some new national retailers who recognize the difference of our popcorn, and it’s something they believe their customers will be interested in. We also met with some of our existing retailers, who have been a huge help spreading the popularity of our products. In fact, just after the show one of our retailers placed an order with us that will represent our largest order of the year so far! So, the growth of Black Jewell continues.
Where To Find Us Next
Now we are getting ready for the Holiday Show with our largest distributor, KeHE. We will be in Minneapolis on June 12-13, 2017 telling our story, and sampling our popcorn for buyers.
Keep following the blog to see where I’ll pop up next!
-Barry
(Barry Johnson, President & COO of Black Jewell, regularly attends industry events, shows, expos, conventions, and so on to promote Black Jewell popcorn and spread the story of our unique kernels.)