Our First National Trade Show: The Still Bar at the Summer Fancy Food Show

Last week, The Still Bar had a booth at the Specialty Food Association's Summer Fancy Food Show, the largest specialty food and beverage trade show in North America, held at the Javits Center in New York. I've spent more than a year building this non-alcoholic cocktail brand out of a kitchen in Plymouth, Michigan and a folding table at Ann Arbor Farmers Markets. Walking into a hall with thousands of buyers, distributors, and food media was a different kind of pressure than a Saturday market shift.

I've refined our mission statement lately: we're on a mission to make sure Michigan's craft beverage scene is open to everyone. It sounds like a tagline, but it's closer to a promise I made myself before I ever bottled a single drink. Michigan is where I learned what a real craft cocktail should taste like, and I built The Still Bar because that craft shouldn't disappear just because someone stopped drinking alcohol. Fancy Food was the first time I got to test that idea on people who had zero connection to Michigan, zero reason to be kind about it, and zero context for who we are.

Three Days of Pouring Non-Alcoholic Cocktails for Strangers

I lost count of how many samples we poured somewhere in the first afternoon. Bottle shop owners came by, a few restaurant beverage directors, a couple of grocery chain buyers who seemed mostly curious about case pack and shelf life, which, fair, that matters more than anything I'd say to them. Food media walked the aisle in packs, tasting fast, moving on.

What surprised me wasn't the traffic. It was how many people needed almost no convincing once the drink was in their hand. I'd start explaining what zero-proof even means, that it's not a mocktail, not a soda dressed up, that we build these the same way you'd build the alcoholic version, and half the time they'd cut me off after one sip and just say something like "oh, this actually tastes like a Paloma." That reaction, more than any pitch I practiced in the car beforehand, is the whole business case for The Still Bar.

Wrapping Up SFA's Maker Prep Program

The show also closed out something that had been building since spring. I spent several months in the SFA's Maker Prep program, which is built for specialty food founders trying to figure out wholesale, retail, and the operational side of a growing food business, usually without a team or an MBA to lean on. A lot of it happened late at night after a full day of running the business, one module at a time, not always sure it was sinking in.

Graduation landed on the show floor itself, which meant I walked off a small stage and directly into booth setup. Not a bad way to find out whether any of it actually stuck.

What Buyers and Industry Press Said About The Still Bar

Honestly, I went in just hoping people would like the drinks. What we got was more than that. A few restaurant beverage directors asked specifically about pouring our Cherry Negroni on non-alcoholic cocktail menus. One buyer, who I'm told tastes a few hundred products a year at shows like this, told me flat out that our branding held up next to labels with real design budgets behind them, which felt good to hear.

But the one that actually stopped me was from BevNet's Taste Radio. On their episode covering the standout products and trends from the show, the host called out our Dry Hopped Paloma by name, saying "I would drink this paloma, a non-alcoholic, over any other paloma out there." He called it really spectacular.

I mixed the first version of that drink on my own stove. Hearing it get singled out, unprompted, by an outlet that covers the entire beverage industry is not something I expected to happen at our first show, or maybe ever.

Where We Go From Here

A trade show isn't really the three days on the floor. It's the weeks after, when a stack of business cards either turns into real accounts or doesn't. I'm working through buyer follow-ups now, and I expect a handful of those conversations to turn into shelf space outside of Michigan before the year's out. I'll write more here once there's something concrete to share, rather than jump ahead of myself.

For now, I just want to thank the people who made this show what it was: everyone who stopped by the booth and gave us an honest reaction instead of a polite one, the SFA for putting Maker Prep together, and Michigan, for giving me a reason to start any of this in the first place.

There's still a long way to go before Michigan's craft beverage scene is actually open to everyone. But for three days in New York, it felt a lot closer.