A Guide to Internorga for First-Time Exhibitors
Internorga is the annual platform for the European hospitality and foodservice market, and the 2027 edition runs 12–16 March 2027 at Hamburg Messe und Congress, daily from 10:00 to 18:00. It is organised by Hamburg Messe und Congress GmbH, who also operate the venue. The exhibition splits into Digital Solutions, Kitchen Technology & Equipment, Food & Beverage, Packaging & Delivery, Living & Dining, and Startups & Drinks, with separate trend areas including the AI AREA, Future Food, the Newcomers Area, the Skywalk Table and WeinWelt.
Around the exhibition sits a substantial programme: the International Foodservice Forum, the Branchentag der Gemeinschaftsgastronomie, and competitions including the INTERNORGA Future Award, the Next Chef Award and the Deutscher Gastro-Gründerpreis. The show is supported by the regional DEHOGA hospitality associations, which is a large part of why the audience skews so heavily towards German independent operators alongside the international buyers.
Who Exhibits at Internorga and What Visitors Want
The floor is a mix of two quite different exhibitor types, and they need opposite things from a stand. On one side are food and beverage producers, whose entire proposition can be handed to a visitor in a paper cup. On the other are equipment manufacturers — ovens, refrigeration, dishwashing, coffee, point-of-sale, and increasingly robotics and kitchen software — whose proposition is a machine that has to be seen running under something like real conditions.
The visitor is usually an operator: a restaurateur, a hotel F&B manager, a baker, a canteen or contract-catering buyer, a franchise operations lead. They are not researching a category from scratch. They arrive with a specific problem — a labour shortage, an energy bill, a menu that no longer works at the current food cost, a piece of equipment that keeps failing — and they are looking at whether your thing solves it in their kitchen, at their volume, with the staff they can actually hire.
That has a direct design consequence. Abstract claims do very little on this floor. What works is proof at close range: the machine running, the product tasted, the process visible. Everything else on the stand exists to support that moment or to give somebody somewhere to stand while they wait for it.
Building a Stand That Can Actually Cook and Serve
This is the section that separates an Internorga stand from a normal one, and it is worth reading properly if you have never exhibited at a foodservice show. There are five technical questions, and they are decided in this order, before aesthetics.
First, power. Anything that heats or chills seriously needs 400-volt three-phase supply, correctly sized to the total connected load of everything you are bringing. Anything that holds food needs a separate 24-hour circuit so it keeps running overnight. Both are ordered from the venue, both cost more than the default show-hours single-phase supply, and both have deadlines well before build-up.
Second, water. Fresh water supply and waste water are drawn from fixed points in the hall floor determined by your stand position. If the sink is far from the connection you either accept a long service run under a raised floor or you add a waste pump. Neither is a problem if it is designed in; both are expensive if they are discovered.
Third, hygiene. If you are handling open food, the stand needs surfaces that can genuinely be cleaned: sealed and coved joints rather than open seams, a dedicated hand-wash basin with hot water separate from the vessel sink, covered storage, and refrigeration that holds temperature under hall conditions rather than domestic ones. This is not a formality — food handling at German trade fairs is inspectable, and a stand that cannot be cleaned is a stand that can be stopped.
Fourth, extraction and fire. A visible cooking line with an open heat source generally needs extraction above it and appropriate fire measures, and outdoor stands and gas appliances sit under separate rules again. Decide early whether you are cooking in public or plating something prepared behind a screen, because the two answers produce different stands at different prices.
Fifth, the floor. Carpet under a serving counter looks fine on the Friday and looks like a mistake by the Sunday. Sealed vinyl or a comparable washable, non-slip surface with a coved edge takes spillage, takes cleaning, and still photographs well on the last day.
Stand Size: 9, 18, 24, 45 and 80 Square Metres for a Working Kitchen
Nine square metres is workable at Internorga only for cold or ambient sampling — a counter, cold storage below, a back wall and standing conversation. It will not hold a cooking line, and it will not comfortably hold a queue. Treat it as a first outing to test whether the audience is yours.
Eighteen square metres is the realistic minimum for a stand with any service depth. You get a serving front, a small back area for stock and waste, and enough setback that a short queue forms on your own floor rather than in the aisle.
Twenty-four is where the stand changes character, because it is the first size that carries a plumbed prep area and a screened back-of-house alongside an open serving front. For a producer sampling all day, that back area is what keeps the stand looking presentable on day four.
Forty-five square metres supports a genuine demonstration kitchen with extraction, a cooking line the public can see, and seating for a short tasting. This is the size most equipment manufacturers land on. From eighty square metres upward a double-decker is worth pricing, because meetings and back-of-house move upstairs and the whole ground floor stays available for the thing people came to watch.
What an Internorga Stand Costs by Size
Ranges below are all-in for design, fabrication, graphics, domestic road freight, installation and dismantle. They exclude the floor space rental you pay to Hamburg Messe und Congress and any orders placed with the venue, including the electrical and plumbing connections described above.
- 9 m² modular with cold sampling counter: €4,100–€8,700
- 18 m² modular with cold sampling counter and stock area: €4,800–€10,100
- 24 m² custom with plumbed prep area: €11,500–€15,000
- 30 m² custom with enclosed back-of-house kitchen: €15,000–€19,000
- 48 m² custom demonstration kitchen with extraction: €19,000–€26,000
- 80 m² premium or double-decker: €34,000–€48,000
Common Mistakes, in Order of Frequency
First and most costly: ordering show-hours power and losing the contents of the chillers overnight. Second: designing the layout before knowing where the water and waste connections are, then paying for a pump or a diagonal service run. Third: under-sizing the electrical order because the appliance list grew after it was submitted. Fourth: laying carpet in a service zone. Fifth: sizing the stand for the people you want to serve rather than for the queue they will form, so the aisle blocks and the hall manager intervenes on the first morning. Sixth: staffing a five-day show as though it were a three-day one, and running out of both consumables and people by Sunday. Every one of these is a decision made weeks before the show, which is the good news.
Getting Started
Send your stand size, your hall and stand number once Hamburg Messe und Congress has issued it, and a list of every appliance you intend to bring with its nameplate rating. Tell us whether you are cooking in public or serving something prepared out of sight. You get a 3D design and an itemised all-in quote, at no charge and with no obligation. If a small local Hamburg builder is genuinely the better answer for a nine square metre cold-sampling stand, we will tell you that instead.
Internorga is annual, and most foodservice exhibitors here also attend one or two other European events in the same year, so a reusable system frame is usually the better purchase — the structure stays in our Frankfurt warehouse and each show costs a graphics refresh and a service-area reconfiguration rather than a rebuild. Our modular exhibition stands are designed for exactly that pattern.
