I went to my first international trade show outside of the United States at the beginning of the month and it was pretty fun and to be honest, not super different than a variety of trade shows I’ve been in.

To level-set, the food industry’s expo circuit is not only international but there are not many players that differentiate from the core expo experience. The Food and Hotel Asia (FHA) Expo is among a bunch of other trade shows such as Expo West/East, Supply Side West/East, and others, which are all owned by the expo maker behemoth Informa (who are awesome operators. How do they do it?)

The FHA Expo is important for every country to get into Asia. I will say that this has a similar vibe to the Fancy Food Show with a mix of a few other trade shows like the International Baking Expo, and of course, the plant-based world expo.

Singapore seems to be this gateway to get your product distributed around Asia so you have everyone around the world from Italy to Turkiye, to the United States sharing their products in hopes that buyers will incorporate them into their grocery stores or restaurants.

About half of this article will focus on the alternative protein section of the show because I have a vested interest in it, and this was the first time this event hosted something like this.

Some Interesting Focuses

Did you know that the Taiwanese are machine experts? Or did you know the Australian meat industry is gigantic? Or that Iceland sells amazing gin and wine? In the FHA, you experience all of that. Though the fancy food show does an ok job expressing that (ie they section by countries, hot products, etc.), FHA does it a lot better. It’s easy to tell what country specializes in what.

One of the newer sections at the show was the alternative protein industry. Spearheaded by Big Idea Ventures, the squarish section that took up about 1/6^th of the expo shared a bunch of companies, from Impossible Foods to Tindle, to new players I’ve never heard of like Green Rebel and Zero Egg.

What I do think is interesting is that alt-proteins internationally follow a similar path to the United States. It’s hard to say if retailers actually care about plant-based products versus the industry kind of self-congratulating itself and just having enthusiasts circulate around the section (like me). I’ve heard this was a problem in the past. It’s hard to say what’s going on.

Enough Nuggets

When you have literally every other booth in the Alt-protein section have a chicken nugget, it becomes a comparison game rather than an innovation game.

Tyson’s booth was also sticking out of there (because they had to combine their booth with their plant-based brand which by the way is DIFFERENT from their United States plant-based brand and guess what, their animal-based chicken nugget was honestly the best. To say we have a long way to go just to get a chicken nugget down is an understatement.

The biggest issue I have is? Out of the 10 chicken nuggets I’ve tried, none were very unique. They were all soy and/or wheat extruded nuggets deep fried in oil. No one has made a health differentiator claim, and to be honest, you can taste the salt on these things. This has been a huge issue but an interesting case study on the viewpoint of plant-based meat, which is essentially a race to the bottom in terms of cost, innovation, and investors telling the companies to feed more kids junk food. Ironically, the first plant-based product I developed was a chicken nugget, and guess what, chicken flesh was cheaper than the oil they fried it in. I also worked in a poultry processing plant. You are dealing with a waste product in the chicken carcass industry.

Look I know, chicken nuggets have a high Total Addressable Market and they are really easy to cook but seriously? The plant-based industry says they are making healthier products, but this is a prime example of an industry bending to volumes and investor demands rather than innovation.

I do think this is a bit of an opportunity for other players in the space. However, I guarantee you the players in the space have already thought of their next product that they think is going to be so innovative: fish sticks (using konjac) and steak (using shear cell). Expect to see a lot more of those next year. Generally, everyone converges to the same thought if their main goal is to capture the biggest market share.

Great Stage Presence

Singapore’s united mission and great community really allow the stages and talks to flourish as you get up-to-date industry news, amazing studies from local universities, and live demos from ambitious upstarts.

I really enjoyed some of the statistics regarding how Singaporeans view alternative meat such as that they place a higher emphasis on sustainability than other countries and that they have different reactions to the product depending if it’s a nugget or an ethnic dish. Singaporean’s desire to get ahead or Kiasuism was shown to also be an underlying factor in pushing alternative proteins.

The wording also plays a key role in how we communicate. Though it seems like the word cultivated meat is now the winner of the naming game (runner-ups: cell-based, cultured, clean meat, slaughter-free, lab grown, etc) studies show that this is a relatively new naming convention as most data was outdated because they used a different name.

However, at the end of the day, it is still clear that there is a lot more work to do for every country to educate people on alternative meat. Most consumers don’t understand why this is important because 1. Meat is tasty, and consumers believe they deserve to buy it, and 2. Alternative protein communication still freaks people out.

Food with More Context  

We don’t have enough data points to believe we can make different types of plant-based foods and because we don’t have enough data points, everyone is scared to dive into new forms.

Companies like Green Rebel, Meat Avatar, Only Egg, and a few others were able to express a few unique plant-based formats. These guys are pretty new but I expect a lot more players to introduce new forms. There is always a point in a company’s life cycle where new product concepts switch from intuition to data and luckily, some of these new guys will be able to funnel out new products instead of just another burger or nugget.

What is also interesting to note is another type of player seems to be entering the plant-based space: manufacturers who have developed their meat-like products for years, and making plant-based SKUs. Several tofu, fishball, and RTE manufacturers in Singapore showcased their plant-based products at the show. Because of their years of research, development, and processing knowledge, their products show a decently impressive similarity to their meat counterpart.

The new wave of plant-based players entering with be differentiated. It’s too late for the older brands who have a formulated product already set, but with what seems like a wave of new seed money entering the scene, expect to see the space a lot more differentiated. Though the United States lead with burgers, sausages and chicken nuggets, the rest of the world will dive in more contextually. 

Not Everyone Together

Some of the best plant-based brands in the show were not in the alternative protein section. No fault of the organizers, I think the booth mapping is just designed on your distributor or parent company’s placement. For example, non-soy tofu brand Big Mountain was in the Canadian section and Hoshay in the Singapore section did the best plant-based Unagi eel I ever had. They were so good, I brought my friends to their booth (with more clout than I have) so they can explore and try it.

Companies that are tied to their distributors like Omnipork and Next Gen Beef also couldn’t join in the plant-based section and they were very hard to find at the show.

Not sure how they’ll do it in the future but it was a good first try. Rumor has it that the event went well and will be a permanent stay in future FHA expos.

I find the global experience of understanding the state of play in food an enlightening experience. With this, it makes things easier to compare the common issues the world is facing and dispels some of the doom and gloom that maybe only we in the United States care about.