Seafood Calendar
2013 JANUARY
Jan. 28-30 Global Seafood Market Conference National Fisheries Institute Te Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel Santa Monica, Calif., U.S. (703) 752-8880 www.aboutseafood.com
FEBRUARY
Feb. 6 Marel Salmon Showhow Nørresundby, Denmark (206) 781-1827 www.marel.com/ salmonshowhow
Feb. 21-25 Aquaculture 2013
World Aquaculture Society Nashville Convention Center, Nashville, Tenn., U.S. (760) 751-5005 www.was.org
MARCH
March 10-12 International Boston
Seafood Show and Seafood Processing America Boston Convention & Exhibition Center Boston, U.S. (207) 842-5504 www.bostonseafood.com
APRIL AUGUST
April 23-25 European Seafood
Exposition and Seafood Processing Europe Brussels Exhibition Centre Brussels, Belgium (207) 842-5504 www.euroseafood.com
Aug. 3 Great American Seafood Cook-Off Morial Convention Center New Orleans, U.S. (504) 286-8736 www.greatamericanseafood cookoff.com
Produced by Diversified Business Communications, publisher of SeaFood Business and SeafoodSource.com
46 SeaFood Business
Behind the Line Continued from page 32
MAY
May 17-19 Cooking for Solutions Monterey Bay Aquarium Monterey Bay, Calif., U.S. (831) 644-7561
www.montereybay aquarium.org
May 18-21 National Restaurant Association Show McCormick Place Chicago, U.S. (312) 853-2525 www.restaurant.org
May 22-24 VIV Russia 2013
International Crocus Exhibition Center Moscow, Russia (704) 365-0041 www.vivrussia.nl
May 22-26 Thaifex World of Food Asia
IMPACT Exhibition Center Bangkok, Tailand l.how@koelnmesse.com.sg www.worldoffoodasia.com
JUNE
June 25-27 World Bali Seafood Show Bali International Conference Center Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia organizer@baliseafood.com www.baliseafood.com
take action. "California Pizza Kitchen, for example, offered diners a free dessert when they purchased a $25 gift card," says Krusmark, who is also an account executive at Transaction Wireless. Digital gift cards are catch-
ing on fast and within one year of launching a digital program, digital gift cards typically cap- ture 50 percent of online gift card sales. Te fact that they can be delivered instantly and with very little effort makes them an attractive option for last-minute gifts, and par- ticularly around holidays and special occasions, Transaction Wireless' clients have seen an overall lift in sales in double- digit figures. Darden Restaurants experi-
ences its highest gift-card sales in the last quarter of the year, with additional spikes dur- ing peak holiday periods like Mother's Day, Fathers' Day and graduations. "We also see upticks in
sales during non-traditional holidays
Day or Teacher Appreciation Day,
such as Secretary's those Hallmark-type
occasions that aren't really of- ficial," Guiang says. Digital gift cards are mar-
keted primarily on websites for Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Long Horn Steakhouse and Bahama Breeze, but will be carried through all the brands eventually. Like the plastic gift cards, they will also be redeem- able across the brands. "We're happy with sales generated by digital gift cards so far but it's still too early to determine how much of those sales are incre- mental versus share shift," he says. "Te longer they're out there, the more data we'll be able to generate."
Contributing Editor Lauren
Kramer lives in Richmond, British Columbia
Email Assistant Editor Melissa Wood at mwood@divcom.com
Visit us online at www.seafoodbusiness.com
Slicers can help smoked salmon producers meet spikes in demand.
which can be viewed online. Salmon slicers aren't the
only ones getting a boost from new technology. Te Icelandic firm Valka recent- ly introduced a new X-ray guided cutting machine for whitefish fillets. Te machine is high-
speed, but also extremely sensitive for filleting small, bony fish. It uses a combina- tion of X-ray and 3D image processing with robot-con- trolled water jets to find and cut out pin bones and por- tions with high accuracy. Put on a redfish process-
ing line at the HB Grandi plant in Reykjavik, Iceland, Valka's cutting machine was able to double the production of three to four workers ordi- narily on that line.
handling and slice-length control to assist in the pack- ing process. Te company has also added its INNOVA software to slicing machines to better provide live infor- mation on raw material, slic- ing and finished packing,
Special Feature Continued from page 38