The 2-day Fastfood, Cafe and Restaurant Show in Lillestrom near Oslo is a small regional show. The show combined a number of sectors appealling to foodservice: food, beverages, food packaging, POS software, ecommerce software and furniture. The whole show fit into one medium-sized hall in the Lillestrom exhibition facility.
We met with the show organisers, EasyFair. Based in Belgium, the company puts together exhibitions throughout northern Europe in a broad range of sectors. Their objective is to provide simple stands for smaller companies; they do not target larger companies and, hence, very few larger companies exhibit at their shows.
The largest Norwegian foodservice distributors, Norges Gruppen and Service Grossistene, did not have booths at the show. Our contacts in these foodservice companies were nowhere to be seen. We asked around for for category buyers from these two distributors but had no luck.
Norway has a number of buyer groups and cooperatives; these are organisations which handle bulk buying, procurement and logistics on behalf of their independent foodservice and retail clients. Compared to the likes of Norges Gruppen, they are small. Two of these oganisations exhibited at the trade fair: Samkjops Gruppen are strongest with cafés and fastfood chains, and Restaurant & Café Gruppen are more focused on restaurants.
There were very few exhibitors from outside Scandinavia at this show. The show is too small for most international exhibtors. The exception could be if an exporter wanted specific exposure to the Norwegian restaurant sector
.