Sirha

Venue and Event Update

Sirha will take place between 23.01.2025 and 27.01.2025. At Eurexpo Lyon, the rendition will take place as a live exhibition. The event organisers will not install strict COVID-19 prevention measures. This is because of the lifting of the country's domestic pandemic-related limitations. Attendees travelling from China should note that due to the implemented travel restrictions, they will be asked to present before departure a negative test result no older than 48 hours and a written attestation document.

A Brief Overview of Sirha

Sirha is an international trade fair for the hospitality, food catering and beverages industry with a focus on the future of the industry. It’s here that trends are set and travel all over the world from restaurant to restaurant. Professional chefs and senior decision makers travel to Lyon, France in the upper thousands and that’s one of the chief reasons to add this exceptional event to your list. Nowhere else do you have this access to the industry!

GETA ltd is the leading booking service provider for professionals on the road and guarantees you get a hotel room that saves you money on your travel expenses. Book a hotel for Sirha that’s close to EUREXPO Lyon and doesn’t cost you a small fortune. We have decades under our belt planning business trips and we have worked with businesses of all sizes, which makes our service fully customizable for every possible occasion.

Why Your Visit Is Worth It

Sirha allows you to reach the height of your specific field with ease. It’s a high-profile trade fair in one of the capitals of fine dining in the world. Not only do you build a reputation, but also foster valuable relationships. We also have to mention the scale of the event:

• 3700+ international exhibitors showcased at the event;
• 225,000+ international trade made the trip;
• 140,000 square metres of exhibition space used;
• 41 international pavilions;
• 24 contests and animations;
• 17 tons of food were donated to the Food Bank.

Industry Relevance

Sirha specialises in technical innovation, culinary creativity and high standards at an intersection between foodservice, catering and hospitality. The biennial trade fair has been held consistently since 1990 at EUREXPO Lyon and currently has strong positions as an epicentre for business and branding. 

Exhibitors cover the entire product spectrum with booths dedicated to crystal, glassware, fine china, delicatessen, restaurant equipment, crockery, tablecloths, washing machines, refrigerators, coffee machines, sophisticated dishes and so much more. But there’s far more than just the product displays. 

Ready yourself for over 17 competitions, 1500 demonstrations and many more culinary events. That’s only the tip of the iceberg! World Cuisine Summit is the definitive programming highlight as it’s here that you receive firsthand information on how the industry is changing globally.

The 2021 edition proved to be essential to help with the recovery of the hospitality sector. People were eager to meet face to face and reconnect in a friendly atmosphere. A lot of big deals happened and even the government took great interest in helping the sector recuperate after the challenges posed by the pandemic. The French government showed its investment in the hospitality sector by announcing the centre of excellence for French gastronomy in Lyon. Plus, tips paid by credit cards will now be exempt from taxes. 

For the first time in the show’s history, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, made a public appearance to show his support for Sirha and the gastronomy sector and the food trade as a whole. He made the following statement: “These are professions with a meaning, professions of the future, which provide an answer to the younger generations’ need for meaning. They are at the heart of every consideration. The France of 2030 will be a France of food and French taste.”

Who Are You Going to Meet?

Although Sirha is an incredibly large trade fair, it more or less serves as a key meeting point for the experts and trade visitors in France. A little over 30,000 visitors have come from outside of France, which is still a large number, even if the ratio is in favour of French nationals. Countries with the biggest presence at Sirha are Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Japan, Hungary, the UK, Germany, Norway and the USA.

The same can also be said about exhibitors, where only 28% of exhibitors were international. Visitors come from all corners of the industry—catering, bakery and pastry, education and training, wholesale and distribution, food trades and even architects.

Additional Value of Attending 

Innovation sits front and centre at Sirha. Organisers highlight the 30 of the best startups over at the Start Up Village and 5 French food-entrepreneurs at the Future Food Initiative. That’s not to talk about the Sirha Innovation Awards, which hands out 12 awards to reward exhibitors’ innovations.

Business dealings aside, Sirha has established itself as a meeting point for culinary masters to meet and determine who is the very best among them all. The competition lineup is a central ingredient to the success of the trade show, driving a lot of gastronomy personnel and experts to Lyon. Out of all the competitions, there are three that you should definitely keep an eye on. 

First is the Bocuse d’Or world cooking contest, which pits 24 chefs (each a champion in their own country) against each other in a Battle Royale to determine the very best in the world. Second is the International Catering Cup, which invites 24 butchers, pork butchers and caterers to fight for the first spot. Finally, there’s the World Pastry Cup. Here 20 teams of 3 pastry makers, chocolate makers and ice cream makers take on a variety of challenges to prove their expertise. 

Of course, there are many other competitions to keep you occupied over the course of five days such as the French Barista Championship, Coffee in Good Spirits French Championship, French Cezve/Ibrik Championship, Golden Shell Contest and the Golden Fish Contest. That’s to name a few. You’ll have to look at the full programme to learn about them all. 

The Outlook for 2023 

Preparations are well under way for Sirha 2023, which is set to greatly surpass its previous edition now that the trade fair industry is stabilising following the pandemic. We already know what the edition will center on. There are five core Sirha Dynamics that will shape much of the programme and the products being shown and demonstrated to buyers, experts and investors: 

• Technonature (for a finer balance between Mankind and nature)
• Consume less but better
• Human wellness
• Human creativity tenfold (preservation of skills and expertise)
• Dreams of a modern world and getting away from it all