February 2005
Best Practices: Secret ingredient

Food Network’s Great Big Food Show recipe combines celebrity chefs, food tasting and kitchen gadgets

By Cathy Chatfield-Taylor

It’s a known fact among cookbook authors. Change a single ingredient in a favorite recipe and, viola!, it’s a new and improved recipe. So it’s no surprise that the Food Network’s Great Big Food Show (www.greatbigfoodshow.com) hit it big by borrowing the concept for a consumer event from organizers of the BBC Good Food Show (www.bbcgoodfoodshow.co.uk), produced for 14 years in Birmingham and London, U.K.

The recipe for success was simple: Promote celebrity chef appearances, sell tickets for reserved seats at theater shows and give away free food samples in the exhibit hall. But the Great Big Food Show added one new ingredient — Food Network talent, including superstar chefs Mario Batali, Rachael Ray and Bobby Flay.

“The idea was to take the combination of best-known celebrity chefs and an exhibit floor focused on food,” says Tom Baugh, Vice President, Consumer Food Shows, dmg world media (www.dmgworldmedia.com), which partnered with the Food Network to produce the new show. “When people come, they’ll see the same chefs they see on TV, buy cookbooks and gadgets, watch the theater shows, and make lifestyle decisions around cooking and food preparation.”

Two U.S. markets tested the concept. Philadelphia had strong cable TV market penetration with Comcast Cable, and a history of supporting consumer shows at the Fort Washington Expo Center. Cleveland had the event-savvy ABC affiliate News Channel 5, Adelphia Cable and the I-X Center, one of the largest consumer show venues in the country.

To organize the event, the partners split responsibilities along clear lines of expertise, with dmg world media assuming show management functions and Food Network handling programming. One dmg world media employee officed at the Food Network for nearly a year to coordinate the logistics of equipping three stages for cooking demonstrations.

Market research tested the price point for seeing Food Network celebrities up close and personal. In Philadelphia, it was $19 advance and $22 at the door. In Cleveland, it was $17 advance and $20 at the door. Advance sales surpassed expectations, hitting about 37 percent of total ticket sales in both markets.

When the show launched in Philadelphia, Nov. 5–7, 2004, 24,318 people came to see 23 celebrity shows, get autographs and buy branded merchandise. With a seating capacity of 1,000, the theater was sold out for every show, and organizers admitted another 400–800 people in standing-room only areas approved by the fire marshal.

Attendees swarmed the show floor, where 141 exhibiting companies offered free samples and demonstrated the latest kitchen gadgets and equipment. Even at an extra-wide 20-feet, aisles were jammed, with people staying on the floor an average of five hours. Crowd control was a major challenge.

“It was a huge mass of people to get from point A to B to C,” Baugh says. “I’d be fooling if I said it was as smooth as we would have liked.”
For the second event in Cleveland, Nov. 12–14, 2004, show management staffed a standby line for sold-out theater performances and prepared the 160 exhibitors to restock samples frequently. Attendance surpassed the 24,000 goal, hitting 38,204.

“In the Cleveland market, we saw our rating double over the Great Big Food Show weekend,” says Susie Fogelson, Vice President of Marketing for the Food Network. “There was tremendous buzz.”

The partners are planning up to three more events in 2005. Changes to improve the brand experience will include a floor plan layout that gives every exhibitor at least one corner selling area, a celebrity theater with nearly double the capacity, and improved communications to explain that admission tickets include reserved theater seats and free food samples.

A surprising 10 percent of revenue derived from branded merchandise sales, suggesting the potential to capitalize further on the Food Network ingredient.