Meet the Buyer™ has built a reputation as the place where WA’s food and beverage industry connect with real conversation.
By AusBiz Media | 31 August, 2026
Ask any experienced Delegate what keeps them returning to Meet the Buyer™ year after year, and the answer rarely starts with a spreadsheet. It starts with a conversation.
Now in its sixth year, Meet the Buyer™ has built a reputation as the place where Western Australia’s food and beverage industry actually meets; where more than 600 products from local growers, producers and makers land in front of the chefs, retailers and foodservice buyers who decide what ends up on shelves and menus across the state.
With 85 exhibitors on the floor and 78 per cent of Delegates walking away having made at least one new business connection, the numbers tell part of the story. But talk to the Delegates themselves, and what stands out is something harder to put in a spreadsheet. It’s relationships that hold up long after the exhibition doors close.
Chef Leo from Miss Mi, an award-winning restaurant that finds its suppliers at Meet the Buyer™
Finding the story behind the supplier
For Sharath Kancharla, Director of Food and Beverage at Novotel Perth Murray Street, the relationships are exactly the point. Overseeing everything from the hotel’s 24-hour room service to its award-winning restaurant Miss Mi, Sharath still shops like the chef he’s been for 24 years, and Meet the Buyer™ is where some of his most valuable connections have started. It’s how the hotel came to partner with Gage Roads on its own-label beer, poured at the hotel’s Third Space lounge bar.
But Sharath isn’t only looking for headline names. “I like to go and check the little stalls, with the jams, the oils, dips and chilli sauces,” he says. “I definitely want to see the new ones.”
For Delegates like Sharath, the exhibition floor isn’t just a shortlist of usual suppliers, it’s a discovery process that rewards buyers willing to walk past the familiar stands and ask a few extra questions.
WA Chip processing potatoes © WA Chip
Turning connections into results
Those conversations can move fast. When the state’s only local chip manufacturer, WA Chip, based in Manjimup and run by the Bendotti family, exhibited at Meet the Buyer™, sales representative Mark Joy wasn’t sure what to expect.
What followed was a significant new supply relationship with Mineral Resources, servicing camps across the organisation’s WA mining operations. It also facilitated an introduction to an international delegation that has since opened early conversations about the company’s first export order with a Singapore-based supplier now trialling samples for its Michelin-star clientele.
“It was very, very helpful and opened doors to new business,” Mark says. It’s a return on investment that goes some way to explaining why WA Chip isn’t just coming back this October, they’re bringing double the team.
Corner Dairy Manager Ben and Chef Dave build their menu around producers from Meet the Buyer™
Building menus, and businesses, around what’s local
Sometimes the impact of a single connection ripples out across an entire business. At Corner Dairy in Doubleview, venue manager Ben Wood and head chef Dave Thornton built their winter menu almost entirely around producers discovered at Meet the Buyer™. From Stirling Ranges beef to BBQ mushrooms sourced through The Mushroom Guys, the result saw the restaurant doing summer-level trade in the depths of winter, powered by a menu that Delegates helped shape simply by showing up and buying local.
“It’s about making those connections and building those relationships,” Ben says, and it’s a sentiment echoed by buyers and suppliers alike across the show floor each year.
Meet the Buyer™ connects Delegates with top local producers
What it means for Delegates
While these three stories sit at different ends of the food and beverage industry — a hotel restaurant, a manufacturer, and a neighbourhood diner — they share a common thread. Each is proof of what happens when a Delegate takes the time to walk the floor, ask questions of a supplier they’ve never heard of, and follow through on the connections that result. It’s not incidental to Meet the Buyer™; it’s the entire premise. With 90 per cent of past Delegates saying they’d recommend the show to a colleague, the strength of that word-of-mouth speaks for itself.
Meet the Buyer™ returns to Crown Perth on Tuesday 20 October, bringing together the state’s producers and the Delegates who decide what makes it onto WA’s plates, wine lists and supermarket shelves. Whether you’re chasing a new signature ingredient, a reliable local supply chain, or simply the next great story to tell your customers, the floor is where it starts.
Meet the Buyer™ is a trade and industry event only. Register now for the trade show at meetthebuyer.com.au
AusBiz Media reports on the Meet the Buyer™ 2026