Blending Culinary Delights with Atlanta’s Rich History
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 am a food historian and the founder of Unexpected Atlanta, a company offering guided tours that combine the city’s rich history with its diverse culinary scene. Born and raised in Alabama, I initially pursued a career in law, graduating from Duke University School of Law and practicing as an attorney in Atlanta. But, I hated the job and felt like it was stifling my creativity.
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On my morning commute in 2007, my favorite morning radio show started featuring a woman who had quit her job to travel around the world. I was completely fascinated – I had never heard that someone could do such a thing. This was in the early days of blogging and well before Eat Pray Love came out, before anyone had ever heard the idea of “digital nomad,” and very early in the concept of remote work. I was fascinated and felt like it was the right way for me to reset and leave the legal career before trying to decide what to do next. So, at 30, my husband and I quit our jobs to travel around the world.
The original plan was to travel for three months. Along the way, I began blogging and writing about food and travel for fun, specifically focusing on culinary history and the people behind the foods we love. The blog became very popular within just a few months of launch and was featured in the LA Times and was syndicated by Lonely Planet and Reuters. I realized that I could actually make money off writing about food and travel — which was a lot more fun than practicing law!
But, in 2013, we came back home when I found out that I was pregnant with my first child. Since I could no longer really travel and write about food, I decided to open a food tourism company in my hometown of Atlanta that would share those same stories about the food, history, and people that make Southern food so unique. Unexpected Atlanta was born with the vision to share unexpected stories that matter, and tell the stories that are so frequently unheard.
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?
My love for food is intertwined with my appreciation for its ability to connect people and tell stories about a place. Through my travels and research, I’ve discovered that food is often a lens through which one can understand history, culture, and societal changes. This realization inspired me to start Unexpected Atlanta, and, one of our most popular tours highlights the city’s rich African American culinary heritage and its evolution alongside Atlanta’s role in the Civil Rights Movement. In that tour, we literally tell the story of how Dr. King is a foodie, while learning about the variety of Southern cuisine. By blending historical insights with exceptional food experiences, we aim to showcase Atlanta’s identity as a hub of culture and resilience, inviting visitors to explore its legacy one dish at a time.
What impact have your tours had on the local community? What’s something you hope to achieve in the future for the area?
In the past ten years, we have brought over 28,000 customers to some of Atlanta’s least-visited neighborhoods. Our focus is on introducing visitors to the “unexpected” locations in the city, including places that they might never explore on their own, or communities that really need their support. We also donate a portion of our proceeds directly to community organizations. We have donated over $33,000 to charitable organizations across the city, including organizations like the King Center for Non-Violent Change. We are committed to looking for
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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?
One of the biggest opportunities we see in food tourism is immersive food experiences. We are leveraging that by creating a new type of food tour that integrates mini cooking classes into the experiences. Our Historic Market Food Tour + Biscuit Class shares the story of Atlanta’s 100 year old municipal market, while also explaining how bread has become the basis of human civilization while tasting different types of bread products through history, from the Ethiopian injera to Native American hoecakes to British pot pies. We end with a 1-hour cooking class in which guests make their own Southern buttermilk biscuits. We see shorter and more immersive food experiences as the future of food tourism.
1920s microfoodwalk
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?
Here are my three best tips to ensure that your food tour creates a top quality, positive experience for group travelers:
- Plan ahead by providing food restrictions to the food tour company well in advance. Our core values are passion, honesty, and Southern hospitality. As part of that Southern hospitality value, we do our very best to accommodate all food restrictions but we need to know those restrictions in advance. We have literally accommodated people with every type of restriction from more common concerns like vegetarian, gluten-free, and vegan, to more specific restrictions like an aversion to black pepper or onions.
- Give your attendees enough time to really enjoy the food tour experience. Surveys regularly find that food tours are one of the most popular experiences for group travelers and, for many attendees, a food tour is the highlight of their trip to a city, but if the food tour is rushed between other activities, they are unable to sit and really enjoy the food and the experience. Our tours range from 2 to 2.5 hours and we occasionally have group travelers who ask us if we can squeeze it into a 1 hour experience. While we can accommodate those time restrictions, it impacts the quality of the experience if people aren’t able to really spend enough time learning and enjoying the food.
- Prep your attendees to be a bit adventurous. Most food tour companies, including ours, hope to expand the palate of our visitors by giving them the opportunity to try unique foods in a small tasting. For example, we serve collard greens and catfish on our tours — two foods that many people outside of the South do not eat — and guests are surprised by how much they like these foods. It’s easy to stick to the same old, and while we do some of that, too, we see the food tour as an opportunity for guests to experience the foods that are uniquely Southern and native to our communities.
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?
One of the biggest challenges that we find in the food tour space is the financial and logistical pressures on our restaurant vendors, as well as how those financial and logistical pressures impact our operations. In particular with larger groups, it can be too much to take a large group into a single restaurant at the same time because it impedes their ability to be open to regular customers. We try to really accommodate our restaurants and be a good partner to them, which sometimes means that we are splitting up larger groups into smaller groups so that our restaurants are not flooded with our groups only. We want our restaurants to be able to thrive and balancing those financial and logistical pressures can be difficult, particularly in the group tour space.
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