Casual Dining cancelled as venue converted to hospital

By Mathew Lyons

Published: 30 March, 2020

This year’s Casual Dining and Commercial Kitchen events are the latest to be cancelled in the wake of coronavirus (Covid-19).

The Casual Dining show, which had already been postponed from earlier this month to July, was due to take place at London’s ExCeL centre, which has now been converted to a 4,000-bed NHS-run field hospital as the epidemic intensifies.

The cancelled Commercial Kitchen event was due to take place in June.

Casual Dining has been rescheduled to run at ExCeL on 10 and 11 March 2021. A new date for Commercial Kitchen, originally due to have taken place in June, has yet to be announced.

Chris Brazier, group event director at Diversified Communications, which owns both events, said: “Like all businesses, we’ve been closely following the rapidly changing developments during these unprecedented and difficult times.

“With ExCeL, our venue, now taking on an important role to help the NHS during this national emergency, it became clear that we had no other option but to cancel the shows until next year.

“The people working in, and supplying, the foodservice, hospitality, catering and leisure industries have been hugely affected by events of the past few days and weeks and we will continue to support these communities – our communities – in every way we can. I know that we’ll all continue to support each other in the months ahead.”

In November, the Casual Dining show announced it was gearing up to launch a dedicated wine area as part of a bigger overall focus on alcoholic drinks at its 2020 show.

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