Bringing Communities and Travelers Together
Theresa Szymanski
Can you share a bit about your background and what inspired you to start your food tour company? Was there a specific moment or experience that sparked your journey in the tourism and culinary industry?
I was a professional fundraiser on vacation in New York City when I picked up a brochure for something called a “food tour.” Little did I know that I was about to embark on a delicious experience that would alter the course of both my career and lifestyle. A few minutes into the tour, I was talking to a local outside of Murray’s Cheese in Greenwich Village and I was hooked on the concept of experiencing a community through its food. Quickly the plan was set in motion to start my own food tour. Now nearly 2 decades later we’ve become an expert in group travel, offering tours in 20 cities on the Great Lakes including Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit as Tour The Great Lakes, in addition to offering international culinary vacations under the name Travel Deliciously.
Start planning unforgettable trips—read the February edition and subscribe for future updates.
What makes your food tour unique? Are there any signature dishes, local stories, or hidden gems you are particularly proud to showcase to your guests?
If you look at everything that we do, we’ve focused on making the story of the small business owners and food producers the core of our experiences. Besides that, we love listening to the stories that our tour attendees share on tours with us about their favorite foods and favorite food memories. Although we offer the standard 3-hour food tour that most food tour operators are known for, what differentiates us is that we have a team of itinerary planners ready to bring the most delicious group tour offerings and custom itineraries to life for our clients.
What impact have your tours had on the local community? What’s something you hope to achieve in the future for the area?
We spend millions of dollars annually with small business owners, food producers, restaurants and attractions, and I’m proud to know the financial impact to these organizations as a result of our efforts. We’ve also worked with many Great Lakes communities to build up the necessary infrastructure to host cruise ships and their passengers. This has included working with locals to launch their own tour companies in small communities, providing extensive tour guide and hospitality trainings to locals, and working with partners to create unique experiences that they may not have otherwise had the opportunity to develop. Looking ahead, I’m really excited about continuing this work with communities to build up their tourism infrastructure. We currently have 200 step-on guides and itinerary planners in the Great Lakes region, and I am excited to expand our reach to showcase even more cities in the years to come.
Discover top destinations in our February issue and subscribe to stay updated on group travel trends.
What trends or opportunities do you see in food tourism right now? How is your company adapting to or leveraging these trends to enhance the traveler’s experience?
Since the pandemic ended, we’ve seen an extremely strong increase in corporate travel and incentive trips and have seen that these groups are coming to us with shorter and shorter booking deadlines. We’ve also seen many group tour operators retiring and turning the reigns over to the next generation of itinerary planners. This is leading to groups looking differently – groups are smaller, coming to us with larger budgets, requesting more diversity in their itineraries, and traveling with a younger more mobile demographic ready to have deeper connections with the places they visit on tours with us. We’ve had to staff up as a result, building a team of itinerary planners and partners that can be nimble on short notice, and that can provide more than admission tickets or a meal at their location.
What tips or best practices can you share for effectively organizing food tours for group travelers? What impressions or stories are you trying to leave behind for guests after the tour is over?
First and foremost, I think it is critical to truly understand what the group travel market is. We’ve spent significant time talking to tour coordinators to understand what they want and need, met with other tour operators to better understand the market before creating our offerings, and then took the time to build out and price itineraries specific for group travel. Unless you are able to offer a tour that works for a full-sized coach bus, it’s not a group travel itinerary, so we stay very focused on creating a unique experience that can fit the group travel size. Whether it’s a small or large group though, we want our guests walking away feeling not only fed in their bellies, but in their minds with a newfound appreciation for the community and its people as well.
Tosa
What is one of the biggest challenges and rewards you’ve experienced while running your business? How did you navigate through these and how did it shape the way you approach future tours?
Our biggest challenges have revolved around launching operations simultaneously in multiple cities, especially in hiring enough of staff, ensuring everyone feels a part of the same team even though they are in different cities, and making sure that each staff person has enough bandwidth to be successful. I continue to focus my effort in making sure that everyone knows their role in creating delicious memories for our guests. This year we launched a new tradition of hosting our team spanning the Great Lakes region on a retreat. We visit a new city together, experience behind-the-scenes tours, meet fellow operations staff to commiserate and talk about wins and losses. It’s been a great reward for our team to get away and focus on strategy rather than emails, and it’s been rewarding to me to know that I can do this for our team and to see it bringing us together even stronger. We haven’t figured it all out – yet – but continue to grow and get better each year.
Stay ahead in group travel—read the latest edition and subscribe today.
