CMP SERIES CERTIFICATION MADE POSSIBLE W
hen members of Jen Cafferty’s family were diagnosed with health conditions that required that they eat a gluten-free diet more than a decade ago, Cafferty was glad that she knew how
to cook. Gluten-free prepared foods weren’t widely available at the time, Cafferty said, and even so, they were expensive. She had access to them, she said, but not everyone was so lucky. “If you were on a very limited budget, or if you didn’t know how to cook, it was very difficult.” The desire to share her knowledge about gluten-free cooking led
Cafferty, who is based in the Chicago area, to begin producing live cooking shows at shopping centers on the weekends. Chefs participated in the shows, which drew 200 or so people, along with one or two gluten-free product vendors, who were invited to help Cafferty cover her costs. Five years ago, with the number of vendors who wanted to sponsor the cooking demonstrations expanding rapidly, Cafferty flipped the model. A health and wellness exhibition, featuring vendors offering gluten- and other allergen-free products, became the main attraction, with cooking demonstrations as the sideshow. In the last couple of years, “business has exploded,” Cafferty said.
This year, Cafferty will present the Gluten & Allergen Free Expo in five different cities — Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Des Moines, and Secaucus, N.J. — where she expects between 30,000 to 40,000 people to attend. Her rate of growth is “easily 100 percent a year,” she said. “It’s crazy what’s going on out there.” A similar story is being reported throughout the meetings and events
industry by those in the front lines of food preparation: convention-center chefs and catering services managers. Just five to seven years ago, there were very few requests for special meals, said André Beauchamp, general manager at Capital HRS, which provides catering service at the Quebec City Convention Centre. Today, special requests make up 10 to 15 percent of meals, he said. Similarly, at the Vancouver Convention Centre, there’s been a
“dramatic” increase in the number of requests for special meals, said Executive Chef Blair Rasmussen, who has been cooking at the center since 1993. Requests for peanut-free meals have doubled and orders for vegan meals have doubled or tripled, he said, and requests for gluten-free meals have outstripped both. All together, Rasmussen estimates that special dietary requests have increased tenfold. Gary Prell, vice president for culinary development at Centerplate,
which runs more than 45 convention and exposition centers across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, uses a dining-related metaphor to describe the phenomenon: food trucks. “Once they were an anomaly, then they were a fad, and then a trend,” Prell said. “And now they are the norm.”
52 PCMA CONVENE JULY 2013
PCMA.ORG
Jen Cafferty ‘If you treat [dietary restrictions] like a fad, you could end up killing someone.’
Chef Robert Gilbert Dietary restrictions
‘actually make us bet- ter at what we do.’
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116