Work 02 · Event Design · Experience Design

K-Food Night 2026 at THAIFEX – Anuga Asia 2026

A trade-show evening built as a premium Korean reception, where the product tasting is the entertainment.

Role

Event and experience design

Type

Networking reception

Context

THAIFEX – Anuga Asia, 2026

Scope

Spatial planning, display, tasting, stage, lighting, graphics

Evening, one room

Zones in the venue plan

Product families presented

Design layers specified

Objective

K-Food Night 2026 was designed as a premium Korean-inspired networking event, combining traditional Korean aesthetics with a modern luxury atmosphere to present K-Sool and selected K-Food products.

A networking evening and a product showcase pull in opposite directions. Guests come to talk, which means standing room, low light and no obligation. Exporters come to be seen, which means their bottles lit, labelled and within reach. Push too far towards the reception and the products become decoration; too far towards the showcase and the room empties in twenty minutes.

Goal 01

Make the room feel like a private reception, not a hall stand after hours.

Goal 02

Keep every product within arm’s reach of a conversation.

Goal 03

Hold one identity across space, lighting, tableware and print.

Context

By eight in the evening a trade guest has been sold to all day. The only thing left that works is hospitality.

K-Sool is unfamiliar

Korean traditional liquor has no fixed reference for a Thai buyer. It needs the presentation language of wine, a wall, a map, categories, order, before it can be tasted with confidence.

Luxury has a cliché

Gold on black is the default for premium Asian events and reads as generic. Soft cream with warm gold light was chosen instead: quieter, and closer to Korean material tradition.

Ballrooms are flat

A hotel function room gives you a rectangle, a carpet and no character. Everything distinctive had to be brought in: motif walls, lighting temperature, and the height of the furniture.

Guests

The importer

Here to find one product worth a shipment. Wants to taste, compare and take a card, and will leave the moment the evening turns into a programme.

The Korean exhibitor

Has paid to be in the room and needs their brand visible, their bottle poured and a place to stand beside it.

The host and press

Need a stage, a clean backdrop and a photograph of the room that looks like the invitation promised.

Where guests are expected to spend the evening

Standing floor

K-Sool wall

Tasting zone

Stage front

Lounge

Design intent, not measured data. Used to size each zone and to decide how much of the floor stays deliberately empty.

What each guest needs in the room

ImporterCompare, taste, exchange a card

ExhibitorBrand visible, bottle poured, a spot to stand

Host and pressStage, backdrop, photographable room

Three demands, three edges of the room. The centre is left to the guests.

Circulation Product Programme

Concept

Tradition, quietly luxurious

Soft cream tones, warm gold lighting, Korean mountain motifs, and refined typography were used to create a cohesive premium identity across the event space. The room is dressed rather than built: light does most of the work, the motif appears at three scales, and no surface competes with the bottles.

Hand-drawn isometric concept sketch of the K-Food Night 2026 room — Concept sketch. The room decided as a diagram: stage and screen on the short wall, K-Sool wall and bottle display on the far flank, tasting zone and K-Collection display near the entry, dressed product runs along the right, and a loose grid of standing tables holding the whole centre.

Pillar 01

K-Sool wall

A lit backwall that categorises the liquors and gives the tasting a structure to follow.

Pillar 02

Tasting zone

A served station with its own signage, staffed so pouring never becomes self-service.

Pillar 03

Stage and screen

Low platform, wide screen, lit from the floor, short speeches, then back to the room.

Pillar 04

Product tables

Long dressed runs of K-Food along one flank, at standing height, in front of the exhibitors themselves.

Venue plan

01
Entry past the tasting
Guests meet the K-Food tasting station and its signage before the floor opens up, so a glass is in hand within a few steps.
02
Cocktail tables as the body of the room
A loose grid of standing-height tables fills the centre. No seating plan, no fixed groups, and every table is one step from a product.
03
Stage on the short wall
Set at one end with lighting rigged in front of it, so speeches address the whole floor without the room being re-arranged.
04
Product against the long flanks
K-Sool wall on one side, dressed K-Food tables on the other. The two product families face each other across the guests.
05
Lounge and long table at the corners
Soft seating for a private conversation, and a long seated table for the delegation, both off the main circulation.

The evening, step by step

Arrival

Warm light, motif wall, name checked without a desk in the way.

First pour

Tasting station immediately inside; a glass replaces the small talk.

Welcome

Short remarks from the stage, lights lifted on the floor, not dropped.

The wall

Guests work along the K-Sool categories with an exhibitor beside them.

Cards exchanged at the tables; product taken from the display runs.

Before

The room sets the register

Cream surfaces, gold light and mountain motifs are in place before a single guest arrives. The register of the evening is decided by the lighting temperature, not by the programme.

During

Products at the edges, people in the middle

Nothing is staged in the centre of the floor. Guests own it, and every direction they turn ends at a product with someone standing behind it.

After

The evening leaves as print

The graphic artworks, menu, wall, signage, invitation, are the part of the event that survives it, so they were specified to the same standard as the space.

Design

Interior render of the K-Food Night 2026 room at eye level — The governing view: the room at a guest's eye level. Product held against the two long walls, programme at one end, and a wide empty centre of standing tables that lets a hundred conversations happen without the room being crossed by a queue.

Render of the K-Sool wall and tasting run — K-Sool wall as designed. Ten labelled spirits either side of a map of their regions of origin, the structure that lets a buyer compare before tasting.

Render of the tiered bottle display — Tiered bottle display. Three steps so every label is visible from standing height, with the tasting notes printed along the front edge rather than on a separate card.

The built K-Sool wall lit in the venue — Built and lit. Each bottle sits in its own illuminated recess, which does two things at once: it turns the wall into the light source for that corner of the room, and it makes an unfamiliar range look curated rather than stocked.

Render of the K-Collection display unit — K-Collection unit as drawn. Rounded cream shell, three lit shelves, mountain motif at the base, the module repeated for each product family.

The built K-Collection display in the venue — The same unit built and filled. Worth comparing with the render: the real product mix is denser than drawn, which is why the shelves were specified without dividers.

K-Collection display seen against the dark wall of the room — In the room. Against a dark hotel wall the lit shell reads as a lantern, which is how the display holds attention in a low-lit reception.

Registration desk at the entrance to the event — Registration, the first thing a guest meets. Cream, brush-drawn mountains and gift bags lined up as a single graphic, the register of the evening is set before the door.

Guests photographing the K-Sool wall during the event — The wall doing its job. Guests photograph it and pour beside it; the hanbok-dressed server stands at the end of the run rather than behind a bar.

Bottles on the stepped display with tasting notes — Bottles at close range. Ceramic, glass and sparkling formats in one line, the range's variety is the argument, so the display keeps them all at the same height.

Render of the K-Sool tasting zone unit — K-Sool tasting zone. A served station with its own sign, three makgeolli pours set out on wooden trays, and a closed base so glassware and waste stay out of sight.

Outcome and reflection

Light carried the luxury

Cream surfaces under warm gold light read as more expensive than any amount of applied gold, and cost less to build.

A wall taught the category

Structuring K-Sool as a labelled wall gave guests a way into an unfamiliar range: they could compare before they committed to a taste.

What I would do differently

The tasting station sits close to the entry, which is good for the first pour and bad once the room fills. I would split it in two, one at the door, one deep in the room, so the entrance never becomes the bottleneck.