Case study — project delivery
Imbibe Live London: 1-2-1 meetings programme
How a newly-acquired show used RX's broader event technology experience — under Ade's guidance from the RX side — to deliver a credible business meetings programme inside a famously social event atmosphere.
The project in brief
Bringing Technology Experience to a Newly-Acquired Show
Shortly after RX acquired Imbibe, we scoped and implemented a 1-2-1 meetings programme for the show's most commercially important attendees — applying technology and playbooks proven across RX's wider portfolio to a show that needed to balance structured business meetings with its established convivial character.
Get in touch about a similar projectThe challenge
Imbibe Live is the on-trade drinks show — brands and suppliers meet the owners, managers and staff of restaurants, bars and pubs. The event is known for its sociable, tasting-led character. Following RX's acquisition of the show, the question was how to introduce a credible, productive business meetings programme for key buyers without undermining the atmosphere that made the event distinctive.
What we did
Working with the Imbibe event team and the RXUK Digital team, we scoped and implemented the Grip matchmaking app and created a dedicated networking lounge as a physical home for the programme. Attendees received personalised suggestions of who to meet, could pre-schedule meetings, or arrange them spontaneously on the day. An onsite concierge function provided real-time support for users.
The results
The programme successfully enabled the event's target VIP buyer audience to have structured, productive meetings in an environment designed for the purpose — without compromising the social character of the wider show. The concierge function added genuine value, intervening when meetings were at risk and capturing real-time feedback from users.
The Full Story
Imbibe Live is the UK's leading on-trade drinks show, connecting brands and suppliers with the owners, managers and staff of restaurants, bars and pubs. It has a strong reputation for being convivial, tasting-led and socially-driven — the kind of event where business gets done informally over a glass. Shortly before this project, RX acquired the show, bringing it into a portfolio that included several large-scale B2B events with mature digital and meetings-programme capabilities.
Working from the RX side, the role was to bring the broader organisation's event technology experience to bear on the newly-acquired show — applying playbooks proven across other events in the portfolio, while respecting what made Imbibe distinctive. The specific brief was a 1-2-1 meetings programme: how do you run structured, credible business meetings for the most commercially important attendees, inside a show whose character is defined by tastings and socialising?
Working closely with the Imbibe event team and the RXUK Digital team, we scoped the requirements and selected the Grip matchmaking app as the core technology. Grip had been used successfully on other RX shows — a young, mobile-friendly platform that worked through attendees' phones, which suited Imbibe's audience: hospitality professionals who spend most of their working day away from a desk.
The physical and digital sides of the programme were designed together. We created a dedicated networking lounge inside the venue as a visible, branded home for the meetings programme — somewhere meetings could be held in a professional setting, separate from the busier tasting areas. The app allowed attendees to receive personalised recommendations of who to meet, pre-schedule meetings before the event, or arrange them spontaneously while walking the show floor.
A concierge function was added as a differentiator. Rather than leaving attendees to work the technology alone, onsite staff monitored the programme in real time — stepping in when meetings looked at risk of falling through, helping attendees make connections, and capturing feedback in the moment. This wasn't a feature of the platform; it was a service layer designed around it, and it became one of the most valuable parts of the programme.
The result was a programme that did what it set out to do — enabling the target VIP buyer audience to have structured, productive meetings with exhibitors in an environment purpose-built for the job, without disrupting the social character that made the wider show work. It also represented the kind of capability transfer that RX's acquisition had made possible: a smaller, specialist show benefiting from playbooks and technology that were mature elsewhere in the portfolio.
"Grip was the ideal solution to introduce both an app and a matchmaking solution to the young and mobile Imbibe Live audience. We needed a solution which would work easily through their phones, especially as due to the nature of their jobs they are not at their desks very often."Sonja Van Praag — Publishing & Events Director, Imbibe
Ade's role: Product strategy, customer communication strategy, onboarding the app vendor, integrating the programme with the broader show operation, and supporting the team through end-to-end delivery.
Working on Something Similar?
Whether you're launching a meetings programme, applying technology capability to a newly-acquired show, or balancing commercial meetings against a distinctive event atmosphere — we'd welcome the conversation.