It's Chocolate FEVER!

The Food Safari

Introduction

I attended The Food Safari & Home Electronics Fair 2008 which was held at Suntec City from November 14 to 16 . The mega food carnival was held in Singapore for the first time.

The objective of this report was to find how successful The Food Safari could contribute to the success for the tourism industry through it's marketing strategies. A field trip was done to evaluate how effective it's use of marketing mix and how it could be improved further.

My methodology of research was through personal observation, brochures, newspaper articles, and resources from websites.

Background

It was organised by Sphere Exhibits, an events management company which is a subsidiary of Singapore Press Holdings. This premier food event showcased different cuisines from 15 countries such as Turkey, Spain, France and Thailand. Hawker fare and desserts were showcased as well.

Food Safari's aim was to break new ground in a free-to-all mega-fiesta, where there is enough to feed more than 100,000 people over three days. Its objective was to bring different and unique cuisines into one arena for people to sample without the need to stepping outside Singapore.

Event organiser, Sphere Exhibits has coined Food Safari as a 'lifestyle exhibition' which integrated the three favourite pastimes of Singaporeans - eating, drinking and shopping - on one occasion.

At the event, there were live music, wine, beer and cocktails, pizzas and even premium Spanish jamon iberico (cured ham) for people to sample and buy directly from the suppliers.

Altogether there were a total of five stations namely: The Cookout, The Watering Holes, Sweet Temptations, In The Kitchen and Food Safari Cooking Workshops.

(Map of the 5 stations)

The Home Electronics Fair featured the latest home appliances, electronics and kitchenware from around the world which were on sale at special Food Safari prices.

On top of that, there was The Safari King Culinary Challenge - a cooking competition for Singapore's young culinary talents for those who were 30 years and below. Twelve chefs were competed during the semi-finals for the six places for the grand finals on the last day of the event.

The Marketing Mix

1) Product

Sphere Exhibits, had featured Food Safari as a jungle for foodies and gourmands to explore the Asian and overseas cuisines in a safari-style. Their product would be the experience of combination of eating, drinking and shopping - all at one place at the visitors' convenience.

I felt that Sphere Exhibits has done a wonderful job by inviting 'blue-chip' exhibitors showcasing their latest products and dining concepts to attract the crowd. In othe words, they were 'persuading' and encouraging visitors to visit each booth to try the food. In most cases, I saw most of the visitors usually bought the food items after sampling them much to their satisfaction.

(Serving ice-cream on palette had attracted long queues of visitors)

In addition, new concoctions of drinks were introduced at the food carnival. For example, the famous local Yeo was promoting its new Green Bean Soy Milk and Black Soy Milk, while Heritage Brew unveiled its brand - Iconic new Singapore Sling in premixed and bottled . Their design of drinks booth was both captivating and eye-catching especially for Yeo's booth.

Futhermore, the Home Electronics Fair was bustling with crowds as well due to the wide variety of household brands for home appliances and selling at affordable price.

I felt more could be done to further ehances the theme of the Food Safari even though they did added a few palm trees and decorated the main stage to make it look more natural as though the audience could feel that they were in a jungle instead. However, for the five stations showcasing the food products they looked like any normal exhibitions with different booths. There was not any special effects of safari-style props to make the whole food carnival look more authentic.

(The route that leads to the stage)

2) Programming

This is an essential part that event organiser has to marry the event program with its physical environment or site. Adding on, it is also a marketing decision which is a way of creating targeting benefits.

For Food Safari event programme and schedule, they offered a variety of Foodies' Workshop for people who want to learn about entertaining, gourment tasting and whipping up good food. In this aspect, they had done exceptionally well because all the workshops were fully booked. Their educational workshops such as French Dessert Making & Tasting and Singaporean Chicken Rice had attracted many people. This showed that the event organiser had done their research well on on finding the trend of what interest people to attend such workshops.

Not only that, free cooking demonstrations were held at the main stage by cooks from five ethnic groups. These groups consist of five cuisines - Peranakan, Korean, Vietnamese, Spanish and Tangra Chinese from Bengal. They were meant to be a platform for these cooks to share their cultural insights and cooking tips with the audience. The audience seemed to enjoy the cooking demonstrations and were rather enthusiastic as quite a few voluntered to be as assistants to help the cooks. Thus, this further enhances visitors' overall experience.

(Ms Helen Lim demonstrating how to make Nonya rice dumplings)

(Madam Yun Bo Yong teaching how to make a dish of bibimbap)

Furthermore, there was the highly anticipated The Safari King Culinary Challenge for young aspiring young chefs. Visitors were able to see how the chefs prepared their food.

The Safari King Culinary Challenge is a useful platform to showcase our food industry's diverse talent and product offerings. The exciting dishes and flavours that our young chefs have created is testament to Singapore's quality food product offerings and culinary talents,' as quoted by Mr Tan Soon Kim, Deputy Director, Lifestyle & Business Services of International Enterprise Singapore.

Hence, the programmes they offered was a huge success as they had managed to attract large crowd and the fact that such an event was held first time in Singapore.

Personally, I had a marvellous time there as the food carnival was bustling with so many programmes and activities that there was not any moment of boredom but excitement to see everything at one go.

Overall, there was a consistency flow of programmes to keep the visitors occupied for those who did not want to patronise the booths.

3) Place

Place refers to the physical place and how it is created through design and programming. It also refers to the distribution of event products and how they are sold to customers.

As the the food carnival was held indoors at Suntec City which was a strategic location for accessibility, regardless of rain or shine, people could still attend it and enjoy themselves. Furthermore, there is always heavy human traffic at Suntec City and shuttle bus to Suntec City is provided as well.

The whole exhibition floor was widely spaced with enough room for people to walk from booth to booth as such event always attract large crowd especially on weekends.

(Floorplan for Food Safari)

A floorplan was found outside on the bulletin board near the entrance of the event for visitors to locate where were the booths they wanted to visit and a list of the names of companies who would be exhibiting at the event.

However, due to the large crowds, certain booths had long queues of visitors waiting to be served and paid for their food items.

(For example, this donut booth had attracted a long queue, my friend had waited at least twenty minutes in the queue before it was her turn)

I felt the exhibitors should try to minimize the queue as I found a few of the visitors left the queue due to long waiting time to be served. This could had resulted a loss of some sales for some of the more popular booths. They should come up with some solutions to solve the problem such as opening one more cashier counter to reduce waiting time and to maximise the flow of people queueing.

4) Promotion (Communications)

Promotion refers to the full range of 'communication mix' including: advertising, public relations and sales promotions.

For three consecutive Sundays, an article was featured about the Food Safari was found in The Sunday Times. The first week was about the introduction of The Food Safari and what were the highlights of the carnival. Second week was about the free cooking demonstrations from five ethnic groups and lastly the third week, they featured Sunday Times food writers who would be holding free cooking demonstrations.

I thought this was a well-ahead planning of marketing and launching the event to the public through the The Sunday Times Food Section as most Singaporeans love to read the weekly food section and this segment was well targeted.

On top of that, there were pre-advertisments of The Food Safari Workshops asking people to sign up for an affordable price of five dollars. They had done this way ahead and as a result, they gotten a full house for all the workshops. In other words, their marketing techniques were put to good use and organising of the whole event was well-executed.

Tourism & Economic Roles

Place Marketing:

It creates positive image and improve quality of life.

The Food Safari represented Singapore as a food paradise for food-lovers and gourmands. Even though this event was held the first time in Singapore, it was a huge success and the event organiser thought of holding the event regionally and then internationally. I think this would contribute effectively for our tourism industry as well as economic as it could generate revenue for our country.

Not only that, as there were a variety of cuisines from around the world, we could learn their different culture through their traditional food and thus, improving our quality of life.

Image Maker:

It helps to create and enhance themes and block away negative imagery.

Through this event, we are able to bring in more tourists to embrace our three favourite pastimes - eating, drinking and shopping all at one place at The Food Safari. Furthermore, most exhibitors are local fare and from local famous restaurants where the tourists could sample the food to their satisfaction.

Conclusion

I have concluded that The Food Safari has used its marketing mix successfully to achieve the aim of providing enough entertainment and food for about 100,000 people from the four Ps I have mentioned earlier on.

I feel that this event is able to educate the young and old about the different cultures from French, Spanish to Asian culture. Through their unique and distinctly, specialty food cuisines, we can know so much about their culture and their country of origins. Through the cooking demonstrations, I thought that part was fascinating and interesting at the same time, as people seldom cook such traditional food these days.

Hence, overall, the food carnival was a success and I hope in the future, they will organise this event in Singapore again.

References:

http://www.thefoodsafari.com/media.asp

http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_303409.html

I ate you

on Saturday, November 22, 2008; 12:11 AM