This Exec Builds Massive Industry Events Like the National Restaurant Show. Here's His Strategy.
Marcus Viscidi discusses how emerging brands grow outside their four walls, why connection beats convenience and how the right event can change a business.
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Key Takeaways
- Viscidi believes the most valuable industry insights are found outside the four walls of a restaurant.
- At events, emerging brands gain inspiration, community and the rare chance to learn from peers facing the same challenges.
- From AI-powered matchmaking to curated formats like speed networking, Viscidi ensures operators and vendors make meaningful connections rather than hoping for chance encounters.
Marcus Viscidi is not just attending conferences. He is one of the people responsible for bringing them to life.
As a vice president of sales for Informa, the company behind some of the most influential gatherings in food, Viscidi oversees the impressive industry events portfolio that includes Create, Restaurant Leadership Conference, FS Tech and even the National Restaurant Association Show.
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The Create event in Nashville, Tennessee, was filled with operators who arrived ready to learn, argue, collaborate and grow. “This is the one event built specifically for emerging brands,” Viscidi says, a reminder that events like it exist because he and his team identified a gap no one else was filling.
It is the exact environment he thinks about every day. Not food costs or equipment decisions, but people. More specifically, what happens when you pull operators out of their restaurants and place them in a setting where curiosity takes over?
“Humans are social beings,” Viscidi says. “You get away from your day-to-day, you see content that inspires you, and you surround yourself with peers who help you level up.” He says it with ease, but the simplicity hides the truth.
In an industry defined by constant urgency, stepping back to think requires discipline.
For Viscidi, this segment of emerging brands is electric. It is also the reason he stayed in the events world after its darkest chapter. During Covid, he spent months canceling conferences, calling partners and asking them to hold deposits at a time when no one knew what the next week would bring.
There were days he wondered if events would ever return or if he needed a entirely.