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.’