IBIE 2022

We are back from the 2022 National Baking Industry Expo in Las Vegas. And for all the news coverage of delayed and cancelled flights in the last few months, we were prepared for the Wild Wild West of the skies. Thankfully though, it was smooth sailing through calm seas (or, I guess, turbulent free flying through clear skies?).

This was my second visit to the expo - Jeanne and I went in 2017 - so this was the first for Jason and the kids. It wasn’t their first trip to Las Vegas though, so anticipation was high for a good time over the long weekend. We started our adventures early in the morning and stayed busy until the late night. Obviously there is so much I love and admire about my kids, but their willingness to explore and try new things could be in the top five things. We worked all day at the conference, but then ventured up and down the strip, tried a lot of new things, and met a lot of new people.

As for the conference, I’ll start by saying that the very best part is meeting so many people do what we do every day. Bakeries of all sizes attended and so it is comforting to see people working so hard to improve, expand, and generally better their business. When Ellery and I go to gift market, we are always the outliers because pies and retail don’t often mix in the way we approach it. We always joke that we flip our lanyards so we don’t automatically get screened by vendors as not worth their time. But at a baking convention, we all want to talk about ingredients, packaging, equipment, and efficiencies. That almost makes the trip worth it.

We had some big goals on our list - mostly things that would improve what we do now - but then also a walk through expensive large scale production items for a little inspiration. We’ve been on the hunt for custom pie boxes, but it is a hard thing to figure out via email to random production companies. But now we have three potential companies to work with and custom branded pie boxes would be 10/10 to help our brand as we continue to grow. We also really would like a custom box for our Epic Pie Tastings that keep the tarts securely in their spot so they don’t shift in transport. That’s a hard thing to explain via email to a company, or really even a hard thing to Google search for because what do you even call that? (And if you haven’t done one of our tastings, then you are probably just as confused as Google by now.). Anyway, we met some new people and we have samples on the way.

In other fun developments, we met with a company that can help us with extracts for more fun pie flavors like lavender, passion fruit, and matcha. We also learned a lot and ate a lot from the vendors showcasing their products. Do we make chocolate croissants? Nope. Did we eat the best chocolate croissants of our lives from a flour company that flew a French pastry chef in to make them at the conference? Yep.

We missed Jeanne, but we Facetimed her a lot. When we were having drinks and dessert at 10:30 at night after 6.5 miles logged on our Apple watches with a mile left before we returned to our hotel rooms, we agreed she would literally cut us to be out seven hours past her bedtime with miles of walking on the agenda. But she would like the croissants, so it was a mixed bag of emotion…