Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
Autumn Fair International 2009 is launching a new Speciality Food sector in response to the increasing consumer trend of giving and receiving premium, gourmet, fine and speciality foods.
According to research by Datamonitor, the speciality food market is set to be worth £4.2bn by 2011, up 16% since 2007. The survey also found that the UK has Europe’s largest speciality food market outside of France, with people spending on average £56 a year on products such as gourmet coffee and handmade chocolates.
Group exhibition director Louise Young commented: “Over the last year we’ve seen a number of factors influencing increased consumer spending on speciality food. When times are tough, people tend to reward themselves with luxury food as a treat. Add to this that people are no longer thinking about dining out, but are inviting people into their homes.
“All of these combined with the popularity of the new breed of cook-along cookery programmes has meant that buying or gifting is increasing on speciality and gourmet items.
“Creating a Speciality Food sector will bring together speciality food suppliers with existing and potential retailers at the most important time to source and stock up for those important Christmas and seasonal sales.”
Autumn Fair runs between September 6 to 9 2009 at the NEC, Birmingham.
