Las Vegas — The 2023 Bar & Restaurant Expo, formerly known as the Nightclub & Bar Show, returned to the Las Vegas Convention Center last week. Celebrity chef Jet Tila from Pakpao Thai in Los Angeles cut the ribbon to get the expo underway on Tuesday morning.
This year’s expo featured 200 more exhibitors than last year. That includes just about everything that goes inside a bar, restaurant or nightclub. Attendees were able to try free samples too!
Citrus America showed off their machine that can juice up to 30-40 oranges, limes or lemons per minute. It will speed up the process and protect their employees from carpal tunnel and other injuries.
“It manages the fruit, cuts and squeezes the fruit and it makes the freshest orange juice you can possibly get,“ said Brian Framson, CEO of Citrus America. “It’s also a great machine for doing lemons and limes for your bar business. We dramatically reduce labor costs. We can juice entire boxes of fruit in about 2-3 minutes depending on the machine. We’ve helped a lot of Mexican restaurants, for example, reduce five hours of labor costs down to under one hour. There’s a lot of repetitive motion injury by manually squeezing a lot of fruit and cutting. You can actually juice many, many boxes of fruit everyday and reduce your risk for your employees as well.“
QubicaAMF told me more about their Fly’n Ducks duckpin bowling game. It can be a perfect addition for bars and restaurants looking to offer more entertainment options.
“We have a new sensation that’s sweeping around the country and around the world, it’s duckpin bowling,“ said JR Huyck, manager of new business development at QubicaAMF. “It is another form of bowling. Most people are familiar with the 10-pin bowling. This is just another variation of it. It has a shorter format that fits better in other operations. These balls are just three and a half pounds which is easy for anybody to just pickup and roll. Those pins are little duck pins. They’re smaller. The pinspotters are new just like the game is relatively new. They’re on strings. It’s very low maintenance.“
GuestQueue introduced their check in app that was designed for concerts and other special VIP events. Guests simply scan a QR code and then they are are checked in.
“It is mainly used for nightclubs—you can create different guest lists for promoters for staff, anyone that you want to track guest check-ins for,“ said Octavio Gomez from GuestQueue. “You can also have in online form where guests can sign up and have their data collected in. You can send text messages, emails, confirmations. You can check-in with a QR code. At the end of the day, collect all of this data and know how many people checked in through your guest list. You can also have a permanent guest list and add this guest list to every event. They’re just your regulars basically.“
R&B/soul/funk band Kool and the Gang made an appearance on the red carpet.
Even established companies like Dyson, Heineken Corporation, Sunkist Foodservice, Uber Eats had a presence at the Bar and Restaurant Expo.
For more info about the Bar & Restaurant Expo, visit: https://www.barandrestaurantexpo.com/
Attendees were able to receive free samples 
This new machine by Citrus America can juice 30-40 oranges, limes or lemons per minute. 
GuestQueue showed off their guest check-in software 
Kool and the Gang on the red carpet 
A large crowd waiting to get inside the Bar & Restaurant Expo 
Duckpin bowling by QubicaAMF 
XL Energy Drinks