This year was my first time at the National Restaurant Association Show. Nobody warned me.
Okay, But the Candy Shop Part Is Real
As a consumer, I felt like a kid in a candy shop the second I walked onto that floor in Chicago. Dr. Pepper, Poppi, Olipop, Mike's Hot Honey, Coca-Cola—I saw brands I love, just there, in person. I'm not going to pretend I played it cool. I saw the Dr. Pepper booth and beelined for it like I'd spotted a celebrity. You genuinely never needed to buy breakfast or lunch the whole show. You just walked around and ended up full. There was even a high-end glassware and dishware company that had an executive chef on-site, cooking and plating food in real time, just to show off what their stuff looks like on a table.
It was fun to be there as a consumer, but honestly it might have been better as a marketer. A lot of those brands aren't really our competitors (they're more complementary), so getting to stand there and talk shop about how they run B2B versus D2C marketing was some of my favorite conversations all week. Our sales team had their own version of it too, actually talking to a brand like Coca-Cola and realizing everything that's under their umbrella, like the distributor network, the logistics, the factories, and even their own corporate cafeterias. You forget how big these companies are until you're standing next to their people.
Who Actually Showed Up
Being in our booth and just watching who came through was its own thing. Big franchise names—like Panda Express, Taco Bell, and White Castle—checked in, saw what's new, and praised our sales reps they already work with. And then, the same hour, a culinary student who just started their career, or an executive chef running a Michelin-star kitchen, or someone who opened their own restaurant after years on the line, came by too. Every single one of them—no matter where they were in their career—could tell you the exact moment they started wearing Shoes For Crews®.
What got me is how many of them said basically the same thing: the further they get in their career, the more they're out there as a personality and not just a cook, and their personal style becomes part of that. They care about what they wear and what they look like, and they want their shoes to actually do the job but also look good doing it.
Safety and slip resistance is important, but at the end of the day we're all human. We want to look good, we want to feel good, and if your feet hurt, it genuinely does not matter how safe the shoe is. So "does this fit my personal style" is just as real a question to them as "will this keep me from slipping." That's basically the conversation I had, over and over, all week.
We Heard It A Lot
I wasn't ready for how much love was in the room for us. People told us, completely unprompted, that they'd tried other shoes over the years and ended up coming back to us, over and over. One moment that's stuck with me: a chef working a completely unrelated booth looked at my name tag, saw Shoes For Crews, and just said, "I know who you are. I wear these every day." He wasn't selling me anything. He didn't have to say anything at all.
We're the nostalgic brand at this point (we've been around since the 80s) and the job now is just proving to people that they should come back.
The MOZO® Thing
Which gets me to MOZO®, because I think this show actually clarified something for me:
MOZO went through a real identity shift after we acquired the brand in 2016. Talking to people on that floor made it click a little more. Shoes For Crews is the brand people trust across an entire kitchen, top to bottom, and that's exactly what it should be. MOZO is something a little different—it's there for people who want more style options as their career and day-to-day needs grow, without giving up any of the performance they count on.
I kept picturing a head chef who outfits his whole team in Shoes For Crews and then reaches for MOZO for himself because he wants a bit more range in what he wears day to day. Both brands are doing exactly what they should for the person wearing them.
What I'm Bringing Home (besides a suitcase full of free merch)
A few things are staying with me:
I understand our audience a lot better now. A lot of our big corporate and franchise partners weren't there to be sold to; rather, they were checking in, seeing what's new, keeping the relationship going, or meeting people on our team they hadn't met before. I also didn't expect to talk to so many chefs and independent restaurant owners, or to realize that the person I was talking to might also be the one making the actual buying decisions for their kitchen.
And the culinary students got me the most, if I'm being honest. A lot of them came from culinary schools around Chicago, just wanting to look at the shoes and learn about the brand. It reminded me that for them, a shoe isn't an accessory; it's a tool, right up there with their knives and their skills from day one.
So next year, I'm already thinking about what's next, including maybe some kind of culinary endorsement for one.
First show in the books. Already thinking about the next one.
— Alie Kozik
Want what got so much love on that show floor? Shop Shoes For Crews. And if you're curious what the "little more range" she mentioned looks like, check out MOZO.
