A Guide to Snack Show for First-Time Exhibitors
Snack Show is the French trade fair for out-of-home and on-the-go catering, and the 2027 edition runs 24–25 March at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, in Hall 7.3. It is organised by RX France and held annually each spring. The organiser reports around 450 exhibitors, roughly 16,000 catering professionals across the two days, and close to 1,800 innovations declared by exhibitors each year.
It was known for years as the Sandwich & Snack Show, and the older name still surfaces in search results and on the legacy domain. If you are researching previous editions, that is why the coverage appears to be for two different events.
Two facts matter before you plan anything. The show is two days long, which is short even by French standards and leaves no margin for a late delivery. And the hall changes: the 2026 edition was in Hall 7.2, the 2027 edition is in 7.3, so a delivery plan carried over from last year points at the wrong level of the building.
Who Exhibits at Snack Show and What Visitors Want
The floor is organised into three exhibition zones. Snacking covers food concepts and packaging — the sandwiches, bakery, prepared products and the boxes, wraps and cups they are sold in. Parizza+Gusto is the Italian snacking zone, built around pizza and Italian formats. Smart Lab is foodtech and equipment: ovens, fryers, vending, ordering systems, payment, delivery software. A dedicated coffee area, the Coffee Place, was introduced in 2026 and brought roasters, machine makers and the Specialty Coffee Association's French Barista Championship onto the floor.
The visitor is a buyer with a site to run. Independent restaurateurs, bakers, franchise operators, petrol-station and convenience networks, caterers, contract caterers and their purchasing teams. They are not there for a market overview — they are there to decide what goes on the menu or behind the counter next season, and they will taste before they decide. That is the single most important thing to understand about this show: the tasting is the sales conversation, not an accessory to it.
It follows that a stand with nothing to hand over is at a structural disadvantage here, in a way that would not be true at an ingredients or sourcing fair. Even where the product is equipment rather than food, the exhibitors who get queues are the ones running the machine and giving away what comes out of it.
Cooking and Sampling on the Stand: What It Actually Takes
This is the section that separates a Snack Show stand from an ordinary one, so it is worth being concrete. A stand that serves prepared, cold or ambient product from a counter needs surprisingly little: a wipe-clean surface, hand-washing access, a compact fridge, and a bin position that is not in the visitor's sightline. That is comfortably achievable at nine or eighteen square metres and it is what most first-time exhibitors should be aiming at.
A stand that cooks is a different order of problem. Heat means extraction, and extraction has to be specified with the venue and positioned over the appliance rather than added later. Anything with a water circuit — an espresso machine, a combi oven, a steamer — needs a supply, and everything that takes water produces waste, which needs a route. Refrigerated stock for two days of service takes more space than people expect, and the fridge cannot sit where it blocks the serving line. Then there is the cleandown between the Wednesday and the Thursday, which needs a sink and a surface somewhere out of public view.
None of that is exotic. It is simply ordered early or not at all, because venue services close well before the design does. The practical rule we give clients is to send the equipment list — appliance by appliance, with power draw and whether it takes water — before we draw anything. The design is then built around the service positions, which is the only order of operations that works. Reverse it and the concealed pipe run becomes a visible hose across the corner of your stand.
One more point that is easy to miss: food hygiene on the stand is your responsibility as the exhibitor, not the builder's. We design surfaces, hand-wash positions and storage that make compliance straightforward, and we will build to whatever your food-safety plan requires. What we cannot do is write that plan for you, and we would rather say so now than let you find out in March.
Stand Size: Choosing Between 9, 18, 24 and 48 Square Metres
Nine square metres is a serving counter, a back wall and standing conversations. It works well here — better than at most shows — because the currency on this floor is what you hand across the counter, not how much floor you have. It is the right size for a packaging supplier, a regional producer or anyone sampling a finished product cold.
Eighteen square metres adds a second serving position or a small seated corner, and it is the largest size we would build without a proper serviced cooking position. It is the most common size on this floor for a reason.
Twenty-four is where live cooking becomes practical: enough depth for a service line with the appliance, the preparation surface and the refrigerated stock behind it, and enough frontage that a queue does not block the aisle. If you intend to cook, treat 24 m² as the working minimum rather than an ambition.
At 48 m² you can run a full kitchen line and still hold a private conversation, which matters when a franchise buyer wants to talk about a national rollout rather than taste a sample. From 60 m² upward a double-decker adds meeting and staff space without eating the ground-floor area — and on a floor this dense, ground-floor area is the expensive thing.
What a Snack Show Stand Costs by Size
Ranges below are all-in for design, fabrication, graphics, intra-EU road freight, install and dismantle. They exclude the floor space rental you pay to RX France, and the electrical, water, waste and extraction orders placed with the venue.
- 9 m² modular with a serving counter: €4,100–€8,700
- 18 m² modular with two serving positions: €4,800–€10,100
- 24 m² custom with one serviced cooking position: €11,500–€15,000
- 30 m² custom with a tasting or meeting area: €15,000–€19,000
- 48 m² custom with a full service line and back-of-house: €19,000–€26,000
- 80 m² premium or double-decker: €34,000–€48,000
Common Mistakes, in Order of Frequency
The most common by a wide margin is designing the stand first and working out the cooking services afterwards. The second is planning the delivery from last year's hall number, which for 2027 sends the lorry to the wrong level. The third is under-providing refrigerated stock space, so somebody spends the Thursday morning driving to a supermarket instead of selling. The fourth is staffing a ten-hour Wednesday with the number of people you would put on a six-hour day. The fifth is writing the back wall in English for a floor whose visitors are overwhelmingly French. Every one of them is settled at briefing stage or not at all.
Getting Started
Send us your stand size, your hall and stand number once RX France has issued it, and the equipment list — every appliance, its power draw, and whether it takes water. That last detail changes the design more than anything else you can tell us. You get a 3D design and an itemised all-in quote, at no charge and with no obligation.
Because Snack Show is annual and only two days long, the economics here favour a structure that goes up fast and comes back next year — the frame stays in our Frankfurt warehouse between editions and the following show costs a graphics refresh rather than a rebuild. Our modular exhibition stands are built for exactly that pattern.
