What This Is
Taste & Trade is a four-day experience built around relationships first. We believe meaningful trade grows from understanding each other’s food systems, sharing experiences, and sitting at the same table together.
Throughout the mission, participants move through food innovation, culinary immersion, regenerative agriculture, ingredient sourcing, and cross-border collaboration in a way that feels connected and grounded in real experience.
Why Mexico City
Mexico City is one of the world’s great food and cultural capitals. It carries deep culinary traditions alongside a fast-moving food innovation scene, creating direct access to the producers, markets, ingredients, and systems that shape both.
The city creates a rare environment where ancestral knowledge and contemporary food innovation continue evolving together. That’s the kind of conversation this mission was built to support.
2026 Highlights
One of our central collaborations this year is with Baldío in Mexico City, a project rooted in chinampa agriculture, fermentation, ancestral ingredients, and circular food systems.
Through this collaboration, participants will:
● Connect with growers in Xochimilco
● Learn about regenerative and ancestral growing practices
● Explore fermentation and circular food production
● Experience ingredient-driven culinary storytelling
● Share meals and conversations about the future of food
Participants will also spend time at Food Tech Summit & Expo, one of Latin America’s leading food innovation platforms.
This creates opportunities for:
● Industry networking and ingredient discovery
● Product development conversations
● Commercial partnerships
● Market expansion between Mexico and Canada
Who Is This For
For people whose work touches food, from the field to the shelf to the table.
Indigenous Chefs, Growers & Food Entrepreneurs
This is a space to share culinary traditions, ingredients, and knowledge while building reciprocal pathways for collaboration and commercialization.
Food & Beverage Brands
For companies interested in sourcing, market expansion, ingredient discovery, and cross-border partnerships.
Food Scientists & Product Developers
Opportunities to explore ingredient applications, fermentation, regenerative systems, and collaborative product development.
Restaurants & Culinary Leaders
Direct exposure to local ingredients, producers, culinary traditions, and emerging food innovation.
Researchers, Academia & Community Organizations
A platform for collaboration around food systems, sustainability, and knowledge exchange.
What You Leave With
● Meaningful cross-border relationships
● New sourcing and collaboration opportunities
● Direct connections with producers, innovators, chefs, importers, distributors, buyers, and sellers
● Exposure to Mexican food systems and markets
● Opportunities for product development and commercialization
● A deeper understanding of regenerative and culturally rooted food systems
● Ongoing relationships and future collaboration pathways
Taste & Trade Mission was created with the belief that food systems can continue evolving while staying connected to the people, cultures, and ecosystems that sustain them.
The mission creates space for knowledge, ingredients, and opportunities to move between communities with care, reciprocity, and long-term intention.
Funding support available:
Food and Beverage companies and associations may be eligible for travel and event reimbursement through programs like: