Foodservice Expo Looks at Nickels, Dimes

New restaurants getting ready for openings and old restaurants looking for a competitive edge in an increasingly tough economy accounted for most of the attendees Monday at the California Restaurant Assn.’s Southern Counties Foodservice Expo at the Convention Center.

Although past restaurant shows have highlighted major new culinary trends, the economic slowdown is forcing restaurateurs to comb the aisles “looking for the small items . . . something that will add nickels and dimes to the bottom line,” said Paul McIntyre, spokesman for the California Restaurant Assn.

The show, sponsored by the state restaurant association, includes 250 exhibits sponsored largely by produce companies and equipment suppliers.

San Diego Produce, for example, drew a good number of restaurateurs with its growing line of exotic mushrooms, including the giant portabella and the tiny enoki mushrooms. Exotics are proving to be “quite the number this year,” said Lou Ferrari, sales manager for the San Diego-based firm, which also sells traditional fresh produce to restaurants and food-service companies in San Diego County.

Restaurant owners also are on the lookout for “the exotic thing that’s not readily available to the at-home diner,” McIntyre said. “They need something that you can’t easily get at home.”

Christina Marruenda, vice president of Chula Vista-based Fiesta Pacific Products, spent Monday pitching the company’s specialty drinks, including horchata, limon, jamaica and pina. The 14-year-old firm is expanding out of its traditional market--taco stands and Latino restaurants--into broader markets, including some 7-Eleven food stores and Ralphs grocery stores.

The ethnic drinks are proving to be attractive additions for restaurant owners who “are all looking for new things,” Marruenda said. “All Americans want to taste our products,” Marruenda said. “They’re more refreshing than the colas.”

Vowles Farm Fresh Foods, an El Cajon-based wholesale food distributor, offered free sausages and waffles in a bid to advertise the fact that it now offers food products for restaurants that are expanding their menu to include breakfast items.

Increasingly, restaurants are expanding hours of operation “to run two shifts, between 6 a.m. and (night) so they can improve their margins,” said Dave Hartig, a sales representative for Vowles, which started as a chicken-processing firm 51 years ago.

The economic slowdown has forced buyers for restaurants to concentrate on “value and quality,” Hartig said. “Gimmicks don’t work anymore.”

While most exhibitors at the fifth annual Foodservice Expo were offering goods or services, David Narevsky was offering restaurant locations available through the Poway Redevelopment Agency.

“This is our first adventure into this type of venue,” said Narevsky, who pitched Poway’s potential to restaurant developers. “We’ve created a new corner at the intersection of Poway and Community roads that’s a great location.”

Poway’s appearance marked a first for (the Foodservice Expo, McIntrye said. “That’s unique. . . . we don’t usually see cities here.”

Cecilia Tidlund offered perhaps the most distinctive product: wooden clogs manufactured by Clog-Master of Sweden. “Our best customers are chefs, kitchen people and surgeons, people who are on their feet all day,” said Tidlund, who operates out of a shop on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles. “All the European chefs wear clogs.”

Chefs in attendance at the Foodservice Expo were shopping for new foods and related products.

Lino Rodarte, a chef at Bazaar del Mundo in Old Town, was interested in an Oklahoma-based food supplier that was offering jalapeno peppers stuffed with cream cheese. “You usually can find two or three things, either food items or some kind of restaurant products,” Rodarte said.