A ticket to Expo West costs about $1000 dollars on a bad day and the hotel and other extravagancies make this a pretty big investment when you send 10-20 people there. In terms of market research, businesses with venture capital, consultants, and rich companies that like to steal… I mean be inspired by others, this can be an amazing investment… if done right.

With over 85,000 attendees, about 6-10 expo halls, a new floor opening up every day, and being overwhelmed by walking, Expo West can crush you with the sheer amount of stimulus and content.

Being it my first time there, I’ve heard the horror stories about the swarms of people in the expo, and they were right, the amount of people in these halls is super scary. However, I think my past experience in expos combined with the game plan our team developed made the expo digestible. Don’t get me wrong, I’m, absolutely exhausted, but I got what I wanted out of the expo. I met friends, got ingredients,  formed new bonds, and ate a lot.

So here are my tips for navigating through Expo West.

Relationships first

As many of you know, I sent a mass email about being at Expo West, not only that, but old friends, vendors, and all of that noise made it so I had a hugely packed schedule. I met friends on the road, in the hallways, at the booths, and everywhere else.

For example, I met a couple of people from my University, from the year above me, and the year below me. Some were exhibitors, others were hunters.

Then I randomly met people I work with in Cactus IFT and in other areas either through philanthropy or business areas.

I also had a chance to meet a lot of my former guests on the podcast. Both Julie Bernarski from Healthy Crunch and Philip Saneski from Regrained were both in the Hot Products part of the show and it was a blast talking to them!

And then I had to eat with my vendors. A lot of our vendor lunches and dinners were set in pretty nice restaurants and it’s great to just sit down and relax.

But I do want to note, that I think you should only meet your vendors if it will not take time away from the show. One vendor wanted lunch 30 minutes away from the expo. So it would be a net loss of 2 hours, which is such a loss of valuable floor time.

Not only did I meet with people I’ve already met, but the magic of these expos is that you can meet people where you’ve only talked to online. It is amazingly valuable putting a face to a name and those connections can last a lifetime because of the effort both of you put into meeting at one place.

So I met with people with whom I helped with certain projects, I met people with whom I’ve only talked to on Linkedin, and people who send me documents to which I always forget their names. it’as amazing the possibilities when you meet face to face.

Have a game plan, do your research

If you don’t come to Expo West with a solid game plan, you’re going to get overwhelmed and cry in a corner. It’s highly important to really plan what you’ll be doing in the expo, accomplish that, then eat all the food. For example, is your purpose to find ingredients, hunt for innovative ideas or document the trends? Then do this first.

But how do you even go about doing this? Well, the Expo West website is actually the best way to find and plan your experience. Their search function is easy to use, and my coworkers had an easy time compiling a list to look into things.

I was assigned to print out the whole expo floor, and look through the list and look through every company that either had a strange name (because it might be something valuable) or look for an ingredient we need at the company. Though I enjoyed names like Boody and Bruce Tea, I found it very valuable doing this. However, be aware, it’s tiring look. It took me maybe 6 hours looking into all of this.

Another powerful tool you should use is the Expo West app. The biggest reason for this is because it has a search and save function. Not only can you search what you’re looking for, but you can save the booth number. The only issue is that it doesn’t really auto sort your favorites based on lecture hall but I’m one of those people who love running from Hall E to North Hall for a meeting.

Form new bonds

Meeting new people is really fun and I’m glad I have receptive superconnectors who can really surprise me with new ingredients. My main point man, Tim Avila gave me all sorts of innovative protein leads and in general, I’ve met some memorable people at the expo. Mainly thanks to referrals.

Though some connections were based off of LinkedIn chatter. I contacted Shannon Gomez to do an interview with me for My Food Job Rocks, and I also was contacted by Lizdel Smith from Dyad Labs when I posted an article on Pea Protein. In fact, that message timing was so on point, I called my CSO and begged him to go to this meeting. Glad to say, it went super well.

If you’re not at Expo West, or any conference to purely get shit done, then it’s not worth it. The decisions you make at Expo West pays dividends on what you spend to get there. Most people, especially in big corporations go for fun. I definitively do too, but your intent to go should benefit the people paying you to go at the end of the day.

Enjoy the show!

You will have plenty of time to enjoy Expo West after you’re done with “work stuff”.

Some of the events I recommend are the Thursday Pitch Slam (free beer), the Friday community breakfast (free breakfast. Actually, a GOOD breakfast.) See a trend? You’ll meet old friends and new friends and bump into people you haven’t seen in years. It’s a really fun show and I hope to find ways to go there every year.