New startups flocked to the Fancy Food Show this year despite strapped budgets
Newly-launched startup brands got scrappy to exhibit at the 2025 Summer Fancy Food Show.
The Fancy Food Show, which dates back to the 1950s, has become an attractive place for startup brands to splurge on an exhibit booth, especially if they are based in New York City and don’t have to spend on airfare and accommodations. The Fancy Food Show has historically two shows each year — one in the winter, in Las Vegas (though that is being sunsetted in 2026 in favor of a new format in San Diego) and one in the summer, in New York City. The summer edition has become the more popular one, drawing more than 29,000 attendees this year.
A number of brands that launched within the past year are exhibiting at this summer’s conference, which took place June 29 to July 1. According to one founder, the average medium-sized booth at the show costs around $5,000, which can be a big undertaking for bootstrapped brands just starting out, especially in this tough economy. Still, some brands found ways to make it to the Javits Center this year through sponsorship and contests — and it’s a better rate than other shows. At Expo West, for instance, a basic 10×10 inline booth in the main halls starts at around $9,110. That’s before the true associated costs, such as the booth’s production design, merch, and other ancillary components.
Brooklyn-based salad toppings brand SaladSprinkles launched in July 2024, making this Fancy Food Show edition its first official trade show exhibition.
Co-founder Jordan Wannemacher said the team “has walked trade shows before,” including attending last year’s Fancy Food Show to get ideas. “But this is our first time with an actual booth exhibiting,” Wannemacher said.
As a smaller brand with a limited budget, Wannemacher said being local was the big draw. “This is a little smaller and more manageable than Expo West,” she said. The founders were able to offset the booth cost by saving on travel and accommodations. “It was just much easier to manage logistics from the comfort of my own home,” she explained. That also allowed the founders to come up with easy-lift sampling sessions. For example, serving breakfast donuts courtesy of Brooklyn-based bakery Pistachio Studio, topped with SaladSpinkles’ maple sea salt flavor.
With her graphic design background, Wannemacher was also able to take on the booth design. She decided to use bold colors to make the display approachable without being too overwhelming. “We DIY’ed a lot of it,” she said.
“As a New Yorker, it’s fun to have a hometown show where there are a lot of local brands present,” Wannemacher said. “It’s more accessible and affordable to attend as a smaller brand.”
Scoring a display booth for free is another way for a small company to exhibit at the Fancy Food Show.
The founders of Pistakio, a pistachio spread brand that launched in 2024, received a sponsored booth through Oregon State University’s Food Innovation Center, which sponsored other local brands to attend. Rutgers University’s Food Innovation Center was another food brand incubator that sponsored partner brands to attend.
The Portland, Ore.-based startup is bootstrapped and recently ran a crowdfunding campaign. Pistakio co-founder Francine Voit said she and co-founder Nicola Buffo still had to cover travel and accommodations, but the waved display fee was a major help. “We probably wouldn’t have come if we didn’t get a free booth,” Voit said.
Meanwhile, the Fancy Food Show also marks the first-ever trade show exhibit for the stuffed frozen pasta brand Ripi, which launched in February. Ripi founder and CEO Ian Tecklin also walked the show’s halls last year, during Ripi’s pre-launch phase, to get a sense of the exhibitors and attendees in action. But the timing of this year’s show coincided well with Ripi’s quest to get into more retail doors as a new brand and its DTC site launch later this month. “It’s very rare to get in front of hundreds, if not thousands, of potential partners,” he said.
“We launched four months ago and now we’re in over 120 stores,” Tecklin said — he expects the brand to hit over 1,000 doors by the end of the year. Ripi currently sells at specialty shops like Pop Up Grocer and regional chains like Fairway Market and Morton Williams. “This being our first year, I thought it was important to have a booth as a reflection of the brand,” he said. “It’s great to get products in people’s hands and get immediate feedback.”
Interest from passersby attendees had been high, Tecklin said, with the brand doing consistent sampling throughout the day.
“Every company and every founder’s situation is different,” said Tecklin, who has heard mixed responses from other founders on whether paying for a Fancy Food Show booth is worth it. “So it will be very interesting to see what the ROI is here.”
This story has been updated with more details about the Winter iteration of the Fancy Food Show.