Well. I am officially overwhelmed by the quantity of cheese produces in the UK. And chocolate. And pickles. And marinades. And, good lord there are a lot of jam producers. I mean, they could start an army. A very sticky army.
These realisations have come as I wander the crowded halls of Olympia Exhibition Centre (conveniently located quite near The Top Floor Flat) during the BBC Good Food Show which features, as one might guess, good food and lots of it.
Instead of attempting to run through all of my favourite parts of the show, I’m going to split up my afternoon at the Good Food Show into several smaller posts where I can talk about some of the great stalls and companies I saw and I’ll be posting those over the next few days along with pictures from the event.
To get the ball rolling, here’s a clip from the Nintendo DS cooking show demonstration. They are promoting their new electronic cooking guide for the Nintendo DS and have the benefit of showcasing the cooking guide in a specially designed kitchen with giant screens for the guide and showing what’s on the stove top. I have no idea who this chef was, which is a shame as he was incredibly entertaining, but here he is speaking about spices and showing off the Nintendo system. Who would have thought that Nintendo, a system I pretty much associate with Super Mario and MarioKart, would be teaching us how to cook?
There are a number of cooking shows throughout the exhibition hall and some are definitely more engaging and useful than others. As a general rule, of course, all of the shows are meant to promote a product or food and I find myself getting drawn into what are really live infomercials. It’s only twenty minutes after stopping to stare in fascination at a blender demonstration that I realise I am effectively getting a sales pitch given by a very smiley woman trying to sell me a 400 Vitamix Blender quid blender. I do manage to get a cup of smoothie out of it so I don’t feel completely suckered in. Of course, that’s probably what they want me to think.
The BBC Good Food Show is still running at Olympia Exhibition Hall through Sunday, 16 November so if you’re in the area I highly recommend you take a look. As an added bonus, you can buy 2-for-1 tickets online with the promo code ERP for tomorrow’s show which makes the price much more reasonable. As a general rule I don’t like paying L19 for a sales pitch… but a free ticket and a smoothie always sweeten the deal.
More updates from the BBC Good Food Show, including my top picks from the event, coming soon.
Meaghan Fitzgerald is a marketer and entrepreneur building and growing consumer and gaming products and experiences. A Silicon Valley native, she started her first company, DormWise, in 2006 which she later sold in 2009. Meaghan spent 7 years in London in early stage consumer startups, two years at Xbox as a product marketer for Minecraft, and is currently the head of product marketing for VR experiences at Facebook and Oculus. Meaghan writes here about business, technology, gaming, and marketing. She has been named a top