I attended the first day of the Restaurant & Food Service Show at the Javits
Center in New York, yesterday. I'm not in the food business, but I was
there to sit in a booth for most of the day and talk with people.

During lunch break I walked around the exhibit hall and took in the sights.
Bought a broccoli tie. Ate lots of nibble samples. For the majority of
readers who don't live in New York, the Javits Center is a very very large
exhibit center. There are usually two shows there at once, each taking up
space equal to almost an entire NYC block, if not more. It took at least 90
minutes to walk the entire show.

In my wanderings I wanted to take in the whole cultural experience, the
celebration (ahem) of the retail food industry. I was also looking for teas
and ethnic foods.

A moderate disappointment, probably originating from the price of a booth
($3,000 - $5,000 and up). Local distributors for Stash, Tazo, Bromley and
Yogi teas were there, and a multi-multi-product distributor had a display of
Harney & Sons teas. The only vendor of bulk teas that I found was
Serendipitea (www.serendipitea.com) which I don't remember being aware of,
although they're located in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn.

The depressing side, there were a larger number of companies selling iced
tea liquid concentrates (Hiss, boo).

Warren