Joint festival expo fuels industrial transformation in Yishui

A combined event integrating Qingdao Beer Food Festival and the 4th Shandong (Yishui) Food Expo concluded in Yishui County from August 3 to 12. The ten‑day “one festival, one expo” campaign creates chemical reactions among consumption, culture and industry for Yishui's time‑honored food cluster with more than 700 local enterprises.

The expo took place at Yishui Civic Culture and Art Center, while the beer festival was held at Yihe Sanqiao Tourism Zone. Adjacent venues enabled mutual visitor flow between professional trade exhibitions and mass‑oriented recreational activities. The expo drew 44,000 professional and public visitors, and the beer festival attracted 200,000 tourists. Key local scenic spots received 310,000 guests and hotel occupancy rates nearby climbed above 90 percent, delivering prominent “industry‑plus‑tourism” multiplier effects.

Yishui, known as “China's Food City”, boasts solid manufacturing capacity yet faces constraints in brand influence and product premium capacity. During this expo, the county launched Blooming on Yimeng Countryside, a regional public brand for local food. Thirty‑two carefully‑selected signature products were unveiled, combining Yimeng mountain ecology, revolutionary cultural heritage and food industry resources to raise local product value. Well‑known local brands such as Qingyuan and Nuohaojia exhibited alongside national giants including Xu Fuji and Panpan, encouraging local manufacturers to benchmark advanced brand‑building practices.

The event upgrades exhibition models from traditional display‑oriented trade fairs to immersive consumption scenarios featuring food, scenery and live performances. The upgraded Yishi Cloud Expo platform operates 365 days per year, realizing the dual‑driven mode of offline on‑site events plus persistent online digital exhibition. Physical visitor traffic is amplified into nationwide online exposure, turning short‑term festival momentum into year‑round sales capacity.

For the first time, an import‑and‑export food zone was set up. Delegations including the Uganda National Chamber of Commerce and Malaysia‑Shandong General Chamber of Commerce attended matchmaking sessions. Specialized procurement sessions were divided into bakery, snack food and import‑export sectors for precise business docking. On‑site signed deals reached 180 million yuan, with intended cooperation hitting 450 million yuan. Local food enterprises accessed core supply chains of major national corporations and aligned production standards with international market requirements.

Though the ten‑day event has closed, its far‑reaching influence continues. Yishui is shifting from pure manufacturing‑oriented thinking toward brand‑driven development and further integrating into global supply chains, exploring a path of high‑quality growth for county‑level food industrial clusters.

Editor：韩蒙蒙