From The Mise En Place Point of View
Every two years, professionals in the food and beverage and hospitality industry make it a point to visit Malaysia for the Food Hotel Malaysia exhibition. Mise En Place definitely made a trip there to keep abreast with the current happenings and latest innovations from both malaysian and international manufacturers of food, kitchen equipment and furniture.
Walking through the 7 halls, it is obvious that food is the dominant sector due to Malaysia’s status as one of the best places in the world to experience gastronomy. With its vast variety of cuisines stemmed from the multi-cultural demographics, citizens grew up being exposed to various foods, resulting in a sense of adventure that always seeks for new pleasures on their taste buds. Naturally, it is a perfect platform for food manufacturers to showcase their specialties and we were introduced to a range of interesting items from Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Turkey, USA and not forgetting our homegrown brands. We watched celebrity chefs wield their knives and sizzle pans with confidence during live cooking
demonstrations; affording us quick lessons to expertly prepare meals at home with accessible products and enjoyed the intensity at Culinaire Malaysia as budding chefs showed us that the industry is not lacking in talent.For us, time was mostly spent at the equipment halls where big brands deemed the FHM important and were all out in presenting their tools of the trade. We noticed that combination ovens took centerstage, an affirmation that our comprehensive coverage of this machinery evolution in the previous issue was on the right track. While many were familiar names, there were manufacturers from Taiwan and China exhibiting for the first time, offering more options for aspiring and existing business owners and hopefully an indication of a wider market segment and healthy competition. And as we sat down with managers of various companies, we gleaned insight on their business angles, history of the company and their future plans; and we look forward to possible collaborations with them for Mise En Place.
Venturing into the hall of furniture; colours and interesting shapes of furniture and layout concepts greeted us. We are not only referring to complementing cuisines with the right furniture designs or tableware, there were also companies providing customised solutions in guest amenities for the hotel line. It is definitely an important area to strengthen FHM’s position as a chosen one-stop solution for all things
regarding the setting up and operations of any business in the hospitality industry. The show has grown in leaps and bounds since its inception 10 years ago and this year’s “Hot & Spicy” show ended with resounding success and many learning curves for us. We also found the Business-2-Business (B2B) effort to be constructive because it opened opportunities for us to meet our target visitors and exhibitors alike; and the B2B sessions can be seen as one of the endeavour to begin the work on FHM 2015, appropriately themed “A PERFECT SETTING FOR YOUR BUSINESS”.
After taking in and slowly digesting the education (and delicious foods!) from workshops, conferences, demonstrations, manufacturers’ explanations and sit-down discussions, we are already anticipating our visit at the next edition!