We Tasted 100+ Ingredients at North America’s Largest Ingredient Tradeshow

Last week, KChan and I went back to Las Vegas ✈️ to attend Supply Side West.

This time, the event was held at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center so we got to change up the scenery!

Similar to Pack Expo, Supply Side West is one of the largest ingredient 🌱 tradeshows in North America with 1,300 exhibitors, 20,000 attendees, and 10,000+ of the latest and most innovative ingredients in the market.

KChan and I came into the food industry from outsider tech & software backgrounds. We historically haven’t found most conferences or expos in the tech industry to be a productive use of time 🤔.

However, we’ve learned that in the food industry, it’s critical to attend these tradeshows to build in-person relationships 🤝 with supplier vendors and discover novel ingredients.

Much like how an engineer might study new programming languages or frameworks👩‍💻, or how a doctor or nutritionist might study the latest scientific research👩‍⚕️, KChan and I always want to be aware of the best and most innovative ingredients in the market.

In the food industry, suppliers and farmers create and breed ingredients to enable distinct functional capabilities. This leads to unique ingredients that could be better for blending, emulsification or constriction when heated, better macro-nutritional profiles, improved textures, and much more.

This conference represents an opportunity for us to keep up with new food technologies so we can continue pushing 🏃‍♂️ on our core company values and produce even better versions of our immi ramen 👨‍🍳.

At the show, we had a chance to finally meet some of our existing supplier vendors whom we’ve been working with for months.

We also tasted 😋 over 100+ varieties of different ingredients, took copious notes ✍️ on possible ingredients we want to use going forward, and spent time hanging out with one of our remote food scientists 👨‍🔬 who also came into town for the show.

And of course, we ate tons of noodles 🍜 and other Asian food!

Hope you’ve all been well and thanks for following along the journey 🙌!