Smahrt Toulouse · 2028

Agoris analysis · updated November 2026

Key takeaways

• Smahrt Toulouse is the food service trade show for the Greater South-West: commercial and institutional catering, hospitality and specialist food trades (bakers, pastry chefs, butchers, delicatessen owners, chocolatiers, caterers, wine merchants), with a strong focus on catering and hospitality equipment.
• Next edition: from Sunday 30 January to Tuesday 1 February 2028 at the MEETT, the exhibition centre and convention venue of Toulouse Métropole, in Aussonne. Biennial, held in even years, in a late-January slot.
• Organiser: Sirha Food, the food service brand of the GL events group, which the trade show joined in 2024. The entity that publishes the website and runs the trade show under the terms and conditions is GL events Exhibitions Opérations, a société anonyme registered with the Lyon Trade and Companies Register.
• Results of the last edition (25 to 27 January 2026, ninth edition): 12,500 professionals, 45% of them decision-makers, and attendance up 18% on 2024, according to the organiser's report as covered by Restauration21 and Au coeur du CHR. The official 2026 exhibitor directory lists 267 companies, against 450 exhibitors and brands announced by the organiser, including represented brands.
• Advertised floor space of 18,000 sq m. The trade show belongs to Sirha Food's series of regional events, alongside Sirha Méditerranée in Marseille and the flagship event, Sirha Lyon.

Who exhibits

Typical profile

The offering covers the full chain of a catering or hospitality establishment. On the food side: regional producers and processors, wholesalers and distributors, meat, seafood, and fruit and vegetable supply chains, organic and local produce, drinks, wines and spirits. On the equipment side: professional kitchen designers, specialists in refrigeration, cooking, sous-vide and washing, furniture and fittings, tableware, textiles and hygiene, weighing, payment and management solutions, and service providers to the trade.

What sets the event apart is its regional footing: nearly half of the exhibitors at the 2026 edition were based in Occitanie, according to the report covered by Au coeur du CHR.

Notable exhibitors

The organiser publishes a full named list, with stand numbers, on the exhibitors page of the official website: 267 companies for the 2026 edition, a list that will be updated for 2028.

It includes specialists in professional kitchen equipment (A2C Matériels, ATL Cuisines Professionnelles, Dora Metal France, Adial by Groupe Neoadial), weighing and payment solutions (Act Pesage, JDC Occitanie, Balances Contrôles Assistance), food and drink producers (Alain Milliat, Accro, Académie Française des Jambons Secs), and regional collective bodies such as AREA Occitanie, the region's food industry association.

Visitor quality

The visitor base is above all regional and senior. The organiser states that 89% of visitors come from Occitanie, and the 2026 report puts decision-makers at 45% of the 12,500 professionals in attendance. In a market of independent catering and regional hospitality, where purchasing decisions are rarely made by more than two people, this is the trade show's real selling point: the business owner who walks onto the stand is the one who signs.

The organiser also states that 95% of exhibitors at previous editions generated new contacts. No OJS certification or third-party audit of attendance is published: the only figures available are those communicated by the organiser after each edition.

Programme & community

Conference programme

The programme is not built around plenaries but around themed stages spread across the halls, hosting a succession of competitions, masterclasses, panel discussions and demonstrations. The 2026 edition's programme, still available on the official website, featured 44 sessions across five identified spaces: Scène Métiers, Scène Bake, Espace Ambassadeurs du Pain, Espace Concours Pizza and Food Court.

Formats included chef-led masterclasses, panel exchanges and round tables on operational topics: "Giving unsold food a new life", "Organic Occitanie: a model for tomorrow's catering sector", "The products putting Occitanie in the spotlight". The 2026 report records 30 chefs and experts taking part. The programme for the 2028 edition had not been published at the time of writing.

Awards

Competitions are at the heart of the trade show: ten national and regional contests at the last edition. Official titles taken from the 2026 programme:

• Concours Occitanie Boucherie à l'Etal
• Trophée C9
• Sélection France - 11ème Mondial du Pain
• 7ème Championnat de France de Pizza Napolitaine
• 1er Championnat de France de Pizza Contemporaine

The trade show therefore hosts national selections, not just regional contests: the Sélection France stage of the Mondial du Pain and the two pizza championships draw candidates from across France, which is why trade juries and professional federations are present.

Community & networks

Smahrt Toulouse joined the Sirha Food brand and ecosystem in 2024, which brings together in France Sirha Lyon, Sirha Bake & Snack, Sirha Méditerranée as well as the Bocuse d'Or and Coupe du Monde de la Pâtisserie competitions. The organiser highlights a community of two million food service professionals and a networking app shared across its events, Sirha Connect, for booking meetings and scanning badges. For exhibitors, prospecting tools, contact databases and invitation campaigns are therefore shared with the brand's other trade shows.

In the catering and hospitality space, the trade show sits within a well-populated French landscape. Sirha Lyon remains the sector's global event, Serbotel covers the Greater West, SIPRHO the Mediterranean arc from Pérols, EGAST the Grand Est, and Equip'Hôtel Paris premises equipment at national level. On the food industry supplier side, CFIA Toulouse occupies the same exhibition centre, covering the upstream segment of processes and ingredients.

On site: what you need to know

The trade show is held at the MEETT, the exhibition centre and convention venue of Toulouse Métropole, opened in September 2020 and operated by GL events. The official address is Concorde Avenue, 31840 Aussonne, north-west of the city. The venue listing details the halls, services and nearby accommodation.

Access by public transport is via the T1 tram line, whose terminus is named after the venue, or bus route 30 on the Tisséo network. Toulouse-Blagnac airport is seven minutes away by car, and Matabiau station around twenty minutes away by tram. By car, via the A621 extended by the RM902. The venue has 5,000 parking spaces, 2,000 of them reserved for exhibitors, with card payment at the machines.

Opening hours for the 2028 edition had not been published at the time of writing, nor had visitor registration details: the website offers an alert form for when badge registration opens. Exhibitor registration is already open via the GL events client area.

How much it costs to exhibit

Preparing your visit

For exhibitors

• Request the sales pack early: on a biennial trade show, the best-located spots, especially near the stages and competition areas, are booked up long in advance.
• Decide between a display stand and a tasting stand: the latter requires connections, cold-chain logistics and a restocking plan, but it is the format that works with this audience of trade craftspeople and restaurateurs.
• Get involved in the programme: a masterclass, a demonstration or a competition partnership delivers visibility out of all proportion to stand size, and slots are booked well ahead.
• Make use of the Sirha Food ecosystem: e-invitations, meeting bookings and badge scanning via Sirha Connect are included in the exhibitor toolkit, but their return depends on the preparation done before the trade show.
• Plan for reuse: the trade show set up a Village du Ré-emploi (reuse village) at the last edition, and a reusable stand avoids both a disposal cost and a poor signal to this audience.

For decision-making visitors

• Come with a list of items to replace: the trade show mixes food and equipment, and without a clear focus the visit quickly turns into a tasting tour.
• Check the competition programme before coming: the bakery, butchery and pizza contests are the best vantage point for spotting the raw materials and equipment professionals actually use.
• Take advantage of the regional concentration of the offering: nearly half the exhibitors at the last edition were based in Occitanie, making it possible to compare short supply chains in a single visit that would otherwise be hard to source.
• Plan your journey: the MEETT is set apart to the north-west of Toulouse, and the T1 tram avoids car park congestion at peak times.
• Block out at least a full half-day: a quick visit does not allow you to cover both the food offering and the equipment offering.

CSR policy & initiatives

The trade show runs its own scheme, Sirha Collect, deployed across all Sirha Food events and described on a dedicated page of the official website: collection and redistribution of food, converting food waste into energy or fertiliser, reuse of materials, reducing the event's carbon footprint, and inclusion of people with disabilities. At the 2026 edition, daily food waste collection was handled by Hector le Collector and surplus redistribution by the Banque Alimentaire, according to the report covered by Restauration21.

On top of this was a Village du Ré-emploi bringing together around ten committed companies. These are operational schemes, to be distinguished from the programme's themes, where tackling waste and organic sourcing were also round-table topics.

At organiser group level, GL events publishes a CSR policy built around three pillars, Planet, People and Communities, with annual indicators: for 2024, a 4% reduction in carbon footprint per euro of revenue, a 6% cut in energy consumption versus 2023, 75% renewable electricity and 44% of entities certified, mostly to ISO 20121. The group reports a B minus score in the 2024 CDP Climate rating and an Ethifinance silver medal at 74 out of 100.

The venue, finally, offers a verifiable guarantee: the MEETT has been certified ISO 20121 since July 2022, with a reported on-site waste recycling rate of 70%. No ISO 20121 certification specific to Smahrt Toulouse has, however, been published to date.

How the trade show has evolved

Trajectory analysis

The defining development of the period is the change of ownership. Until 2022, the trade show was run by Toulouse Événements, the local GL events subsidiary that operates the exhibition centre. Since 2024 it has come under Sirha Food, the group's food service division, moving from the status of a regional event tied to a venue to that of a link in a national network built around Sirha Lyon.

This shift shows up in the figures for the last edition: exhibitors and brands up sharply, more than 140 new participants, attendance reported up 18% on 2024. For an exhibitor, the consequence is a wider audience beyond the Toulouse area and greater competition on the aisles, with national brands coming to seek a regional entry point.

The calendar deserves attention. The trade show was held in March in 2022, then in late January in 2024 and 2026, and shifts for 2028 to a slot straddling January and February. This early-year timing places it a year after Sirha Lyon, allowing suppliers to roll out regionally a product launched in Lyon the previous year.

One unknown remains: the biennial rhythm, comfortable for a regional trade show, sits awkwardly with the accelerating pace of food service product cycles. That is the point to watch.

All data without an explicit source comes from the organiser's website.

Unless otherwise stated, all factual data in this listing comes from the organiser's official website (smahrt.com).