Best conference for learning and meeting vendors

[gfron1]

What options are out there in the US for meeting various pastry vendors and attending workshops? I'm more interested in nicer pastries than Wilton type stuff. I know the pastry championships are one option, but some of the others I've seen are more geared toward grocery stores. Am I missing anything? Thanks.

[tmriga]

You're missing a lot.

*The Pastry Championships will be returning to Phoenix in 2009. Lots of workshops there.

*The New York Chocolate Show, held in November every year, has dozens of chocolate and chocolate product vendors, along with two theaters where popular chefs demonstrate their best recipes made with chocolate. Tastings and recipes are provided.

www.chocolateshow.com

*Pastry Scoop, the newsletter from the French Culinary Institute, sponsors a bi-annual Pastry Conference in New York City. Go to

www.pastryscoop.com and register for their newsletter.

*The Fancy Food Shows offer ingredient vendors as well as some workshops.

www.fancyfoodshow.com

*Then there's the American Bakery Expo in Atlantic City, NJ

http://www.americanbakeryexpo.com

*The Great American Dessert Expo in Atlanta, GA

I don't know how much there is in workshops, but pre-mades and ingredients abound there.

http://www.dessertexpo.com

*The French Pastry School in Chicago also offers professional development courses.

www.frenchpastryschool.com

And if you do decide to leave the warmth of NM to travel to New York City, send me a PM and let me know. If I'm not booked for that time, we'll do a meet-up.

Theresa

[gfron1]

*The Pastry Championships will be returning to Phoenix in 2009.  Lots of workshops there.

*The New York Chocolate Show

*Pastry Scoop

*The Fancy Food Shows offer ingredient vendors as well as some workshops.

*Then there's the American Bakery Expo in Atlantic City, NJ

*The Great American Dessert Expo in Atlanta, GA

*The French Pastry School in Chicago also offers professional development courses.

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That's what I'm talking about! Thank you. I saw that the championships were coming back so I need to carve out a long 4th of July holiday if I can afford to close the cafè down for a week. Pastry Scoop sounds like a really good option too and I've never made it the NYC (you big city folk scare me ). I'll actually be presenting at the Fancy Food Show this weekend in San Fran - they don't have much in the way of pastry workshops, but I've met a few import distributors that have good stuff. Amoretti and the like tend not to go to them - wrong market. I'll check out the others. Again - a big thanks!

[RobertM]

How about the American Bakers Association?

http://www.americanbakers.org/calendar/AnnualConvention.htm

and then there is Retyail Bakers Associatin:

http://www.rbanet.com/

For dues paying members, they operate a "how to" web site for questions and answers and also provide assistance with different formulas.

[RobertM]

Apologies, I'm trying to work and type at the same time and for some reason, it's just not working right

It's the RETAIL Bakers Association.

I've attended the RBA trade show several times and was amazed at the information presented. Granted, it's suppliers that are "showing" at the show, but there are seminars going on throughout and bottom line, the suppliers are there for us, if we fail, they fail, so our success if paramount to theirs. What a wonderful circle -

[CanadianBakin']

Not to hi-jack the thread but is there anything similar in Canada?