ATO Shanghai Reverse Trade Mission to the Fancy Food Show

In early July, ATO Shanghai's Susan Zhang accompanied a ten-member delegation including representatives of several influential Chinese supermarkets and key food & beverage importers targeting both retail and food-service sectors to the Fancy Food Show. The delegation spent two days at the show and had intensive meetings with exhibitors carrying products with good potential in the China market thanks to outstanding support from Food Export, SUSTA, NC DOA, VA DOA, NY DOA and PA Commerce.  The delegation also had the opportunity to meet with food export wholesalers, food manufacturers and consolidators that carry US retail packaged food & beverage of famous brands, and visited several food processing plants and retailers during their stay in NY after the show including Whole Foods, Dean & Deluca,and Chobani, which generated lots of interest from the group. 

Thanks to support from the PA Dept of Commerce and the DOA, the group had the opportunity to visit the Reading Market Place Port Authority with over 100 years history and still enjoying great prosperity. They also met food exporters/consolidators and manufacturers in Philadelphia. The group was very impressed by the visit and expressed strong interest in peanut and other tree nut products, bottled water, cheese, frozen cakes, yoghurt and yoghurt bar products, bagels and sauces. ATO will follow up with the group members and the US food exporters that we met during the trip to facilitate their efforts to bring more high quality and innovative products to China.  A blogger and famous chef from eastern China who joined the group through an Emerging Markets Program grant published 12 blogs, 25 micro-blogs and a large quantity of photos to introduce the food, cuisine culture and lifestyles of the United States which generated lots of discussions and inquiries with his 10,000+ followers.