Anuga 2027: A Practical Lead Management Guide for Food Exporters

Anuga takes place in Cologne from 9 to 13 October 2027 (Saturday to Wednesday), organised by Koelnmesse. It is held every two years and is open to trade visitors only. The organiser has not yet published opening hours for 2027, so check the official dates page before you book flights and plan stand shifts.

It is tempting to start thinking about leads a few weeks before a show. With Anuga, you have a year. That is enough time to decide what a good food lead looks like for your business, agree how your team records it, prepare the product information buyers will ask for, and test the whole routine on smaller events first. The work you do now decides whether, in November 2027, you are sending quotations or still typing up business cards.

This guide covers the system: timeline, capture standard, qualification, tags, owners and product information. The follow up itself is covered separately in how to follow up with international buyers after Anuga.

Why food leads need their own capture standard

A generic trade show lead form asks for name, company, email and “interest”. That is not enough for food. Two buyers who both say they are “interested in almonds” can be completely different opportunities:

• A German retailer’s private label team looking for a 200 g pouch with their own artwork, a BRCGS certified packer and a supply contract for next year.
• A Middle Eastern trader who buys bulk 22.68 kg cartons on price, by the container, whenever the market moves.

The first needs certificates, packaging development and months of samples and approvals. The second needs a FOB or CIF price today. If your lead record cannot tell them apart, your follow up will treat them the same, and one of them will be wrong.

Food buyers also ask questions that other industries do not: shelf life, crop year, residue limits, allergen handling, which certificates the plant holds, whether you can pack under their brand. Your capture standard should prompt your team to ask these at the stand, because that is when the buyer is in front of you and willing to answer.

A timeline from now to October 2027

Twelve months sounds generous. In practice, product development, certificate renewals and stand logistics fill it quickly. Here is a realistic sequence. Adjust it to your own calendar and to whatever deadlines the organiser sets for exhibitors.

If you want a single document to keep the team on track, turn this table into a shared checklist with an owner and a date against each line.

The food buyer capture standard

Decide in advance which fields every serious lead must have before it counts as entered. Keep the list short enough that a tired salesperson will actually fill it in at 18:00 on day four.

Two fields matter more than the rest: promised next step and channel and permission. Without the first, nobody knows what the buyer is waiting for. Without the second, you may message someone on a channel they did not agree to.

A note format your team can type fast

Business cards, badge photos and paper forms all work, as long as the notes end up in the same format. This one fits on the back of a card or in a phone note:

Questions that separate buyers from visitors

Anuga admits trade visitors only, but trade does not mean buyer. Your stand will also see packaging suppliers, logistics firms, consultants, other exporters looking at your prices, and people collecting catalogues for someone else. That is normal. What matters is spotting the difference quickly and politely.

Four questions do most of the work:

1. “What do you currently buy in this category, and from where?” A real buyer names a product, a spec and an origin. A browser stays general.
2. “Who do you sell to?” This gives you buyer type and route to market, and tells you whether your packaging or certificates fit.
3. “What would you need to see from us to consider a trial?” The answer is your next step: samples, a certificate, a price at a specific Incoterm, a factory audit.
4. “When do you next review suppliers or place orders for this?” Food buying is seasonal and often tied to crop years, retail listing cycles or annual tenders. Timing is a qualification fact, not a detail.

Write the answers down in their words. “Two containers a quarter” in the buyer’s phrasing is more useful later than your own estimate.

Grading leads: a simple A, B, C, X system

Give every lead a grade within a day or two of the show. A grade is a judgement, not a calculation, but it should follow written rules so two colleagues grade the same buyer the same way.

Some rules to agree in advance:

• A missing certificate is not an automatic C. If a buyer needs BRCGS and your plant is mid-audit with a date, that is a B with a note. If you have no plans to certify, be honest and grade it C.
• Volume below MOQ can still be an A if the buyer is a distributor who could grow, or if a mixed container with other products works. Record the reason.
• Private label leads take longer. Grade them on fit, then accept the sales cycle will run through artwork, samples and approvals.

If you want a more detailed scoring rubric to measure quality after the show, see how to measure lead quality and sales ROI at Anuga.

Tag names that still make sense in two years

Anuga is biennial. The tags you create in 2027 will sit next to the ones from 2025 and, later, 2029. Plan names that sort well and do not need explaining.

• One event tag with the year: Anuga 2027
• One grade tag per lead: Grade A, Grade B, Grade C, Not a buyer
• Product category tags that match your catalogue: Nuts, Dried fruit, Spices
• Format tags only where they change the offer: Private label, Bulk, Retail pack
• Status tags you move through: Samples requested, Samples sent, Price requested, Quoted
• Owner tags if more than one person follows up: Owner: Sara, Owner: Omar

Avoid tags that duplicate a field (country is already a field; do not also tag Germany) and tags with no action attached (“Interesting”, “Follow up later”). A tag should either define an audience you will message or a list you will review.

Owners and routing

Every lead needs exactly one owner before the first message goes out. Two people writing to the same buyer looks disorganised; nobody writing loses the lead.

Common ways to split an Anuga list:

• By region and language. One person for German-speaking Europe, one for the Gulf and North Africa, one for Asia. This keeps time zones and language manageable.
• By product line. Useful if your nut and spice ranges come from different plants or have different pricing owners.
• By who met the buyer. Good for relationship continuity, but check the result is balanced.

Set a deadline: all leads entered, graded, tagged and owned by the end of the first working day after the show. On a Saturday to Wednesday show, that is Thursday 14 October 2027. Make it a team task, not a homework assignment for whoever is least tired.

Product information food buyers will ask for

Expect many first follow ups at a food fair to contain the same request: “Send me your specs and price.” Have it ready before the show, as a link you can also show as a QR code on the stand.

For each product you will display, prepare:

• Product name, variety or grade, and origin
• HS code (buyers use it to check duties and import requirements)
• Specification: size, moisture, defects, or whatever your category measures
• Shelf life and storage conditions
• Packaging: unit pack, carton, units per carton, carton dimensions and weight, pallet configuration if relevant
• MOQ and what fits in a 20 ft or 40 ft container
• Price basis: Incoterm and named port, or “price on request”
• Certificates you hold, each checked for expiry
• Photos of the product and the packed carton

A clear export product catalogue makes all of this faster, because each product sheet is built from the same data.

In Double Export: a Product Sheet pulls these fields from your export catalogue, shows the certificates you tick, and can be shared as a link, a QR code for the stand, or a PDF. A frozen sheet keeps the prices you showed at Anuga even after your catalogue changes.

Practise on the leads you already have

The most useful test of an Anuga lead system is the list you already own. If you exhibited or walked Anuga 2025, those contacts are two years old, partly out of date, and quite possibly in several places: a spreadsheet, a colleague’s phone, an old email folder.

Before the 2027 show:

1. Gather every 2025 contact into one file. Remove duplicates by email and phone.
2. Mark who became a customer, who received samples, who never replied.
3. Tag them Anuga 2025 so they stay distinct from new 2027 leads.
4. In early September 2027, write to the ones still relevant to invite them to your stand.

You will discover which fields your team never filled in last time. Those are the fields to make easier, or to drop.

If you also exhibit at other fairs, use the same fields and grades there. For the wider database design, see how to build an international buyer CRM.

How to do this in Double Export

Start with your buyers. Import your existing contacts from a CSV or Excel file into the export CRM. Duplicate emails and phone numbers are caught on import and existing buyer records are never overwritten. Each buyer record holds company, contact person, country, email, mobile, WhatsApp, website and address, with notes and tags.

Create your tags now: Anuga 2027, the grade tags, product categories and status tags. Because tags work as campaign audiences, a buyer you tag Anuga 2027 and Grade B after the show is included automatically in the campaign aimed at that tag. Double Export has no lead scoring or pipeline board, so grades and stages live in tags and notes, and quotations live in export orders. The trade show lead management page shows how capture, tagging and the stand QR code fit together.

Build your export catalogue with HS codes, origin, MOQ, packaging and certificates with their expiry dates, then make a Product Sheet for the Anuga range and print its QR code for the stand. The page for food exporters shows how these fields fit products like nuts, dates and spices.

Draft your first messages before October 2027, then follow the 30-day trade show follow up plan once the show is over, using WhatsApp and email sequences from your own numbers and mailboxes. Plans start at $49 a month; see pricing for what each plan includes.