U.S. Water Heating Solutions Sponsors Quarterly Shmoozefest Networking Event

On Monday, September 12, 2022 we sponsored our first event with tabling since 2019! Shmoozefest is a free networking event for folks in the food industry and related industries (i.e., management software, maintenance, equipment rentals, and more!). The events are held quarterly at Moretti’s in Edison Park, Chicago and are organized by Food Industry News (a one stop shop for all of your local Chicagoland area news!).

Each event begins with a talk by a guest speaker from the food or restaurant industry, followed by about three hours of networking, raffle giveaways, and snacks! This Shmoozefest’s guest speaker was Rob Grimes, the CEO of IFBTA (The International Food and Beverage Technology Association). After his talk, guests were invited to ask questions for the remaining time, then made their way to the main bar area for networking. Participants are initially given about thirty minutes to begin visiting tables and learning about the other organizations present, as well as to enter their business card in the rolling raffles. The best part? The raffles are open to all event attendees who enter a business card during the first portion of the event: both sponsors and non-sponsors!

As folks make their way around the event, Cary Miller, Vice President of Food Industry News, begins the business card-based raffles; the raffle prizes range from books, snacks, and Amazon gift cards to bigger ticket sponsor discounted services, dinner gift cards, and more! Our team members won some snacks at the Shmoozefest back in June and a book and a BBQ Tool Set this month. These raffles, however, are not the only giveaways. Most event sponsors with a table and representatives also tend to provide free samples of their products (hello Devanco Foods mini Italian beef sandwiches and Barilla pasta!) and/or will have an individual table raffle for folks interested in discounted services; those who stop by the table can typically sign up for their e-mail list of drop off a business card to enter a specific product or service-related giveaway. Back in June, our friends at Dominion Designs & Media had a separate table raffle and we won their brand awareness video package, which is now featured on our About Us page!

eyes. Another positive is the networking, it’s interesting to discuss the problems that come up among a diverse group of business owners in their respective fields.” Similarly, Joe enjoyed “meeting other vendors from the area and seeing people using their products for growth potential,” noting that he was delighted to learn that many of the fellow sponsors were local family-owned businesses.

We would like to give a huge thank you to Cary Miller at Food Industry news for going above and beyond to help us feel welcome at Shmoozefest and other events; he had introduced us to folks representing many different industries and has assisted us in sharing knowledge about preventative maintenance, which was featured in the October issue of Food Industry News. We’re looking forward to sponsoring the next Shmoozefest coming up in December!