Cavin Kaysen: The hardest thing about being a chef? Probably the pressure of just continuing to tap yourself over and over again.

Ivy Hartman: Every spring, the nation’s windy city becomes the worlds culinary capital as may it brings foodies and hospitality professionals to one of the worlds premiere event and 2007 is no exception. The National Restaurant Association 2007 restaurant, hotel, motel show made history drawing a record breaking number of attendees from all 50 states and more than 110 countries.

Cathy Morel: We are pretty sure that the crepes start to be very, very important in the United States and we are the only one in the world to do what we do.

Ivy Hartman: The sold out for the event at McCormick Place in Chicago drew nearly 74000 food service and hospitality professionals eager to see the hottest trends and technology.

A record number of exhibitors; 2142 companies showed off their products and services in more than 600000sq. ft. of the exhibit space. They were miles and miles of food, drink and smiles as food industry experts, celebrity chefs and leading restaurateurs from the world over converged on Chicago.

Teddy Anderson: You know if you can take several products that you can make quick to see like no one has time to do anything, not even sit down and eat. You know it’s a little long, too down to make a meal about it. If you can make it simple, you can make it taste good then you can make it, you know, good for you, people are going to love it naturally just this just how it is.

Jeff Holmes: That’s been fantastic. I pretty have 50 leads in the first 30 minutes.

Tom Quinn: It’s been crazy busy since 9:00 this morning. We’ve been five or six people back the whole day. It’s been a great group of people too.

Ivy Hartman: In addition to the exhibits, attendees experience world class culinary competitions and demonstrations. The 2007 restaurant, hotel, motel show featured more than 60 free educational sessions to help food service and hospitality professionals grow their business.

Michael Green: Thomas suggests the current state of cocktailing in America is down quite sad with a few notable successive that have launched into an individuals rather than in operator understanding that great bar chef, that great mix sausages is not as much a chef but a pastry chef and those who office, you work on your home from understand, pastry, there is little room for filling.

Ivy Hartman: The exhibit floor of the biggest restaurant hotel, motel, show ever offered an outstanding opportunity for industry professionals from around the world to connect with cutting edge equipment, products and examples of the hottest trends of today and the future of restaurant menus.

John Li: We talk about incorporating our products into menu solutions where the menu solutions pull in how we think their consumers are defining health and wellness and it could be organic, it could be all natural, it could be sourcing and calling out the origin of the ingredients. Anyone of those combinations and at some cases it’s actually functionally fortified foods.

Ivy Hartman: The 2007 restaurant, hotel, motel show is not only important to foodies. It’s an important event in the US economy. The US restaurant and food industry gives job to 12.8 Million people on the United States and represent $537 Billion every year.

The 2007 show exhibitors donated more than 112000 pounds of food. The equivalent of nearly 85000 meals to the greater Chicago food depository; making it one as the food links largest single day collections of food for hungry people.

The 2008 NRA show will be held at McCormick Place in Chicago, may 17th through 20th. And to learn more about the event, visit Restaurant.org.

I’m Ivy Hartman for sbtv.com where small business is our only business.