DC Food Tour Learnings → Part 2

I took a food tour here in DC a few weeks back, and wrote up the first part of my learnings, focused on the business side, in this post. Now it’s time for my review of it from the customer side (though still through my business-building 👀).

And my customer review is that the tour was…just not that fun. I mean, it wasn’t bad or un-fun —I ate some good food; I saw & learned about some good stuff; I met some good people— but I wouldn’t say I had a great time, and I was happy when it ended.

A good indicator of this: I only took two pics on the tour, and neither is that exciting.

Just buildings, no people, no joy.

So, what I’ve been thinking about constantly since the tour is “what would have made this fun?”

There are three key components to a food tour:

#1 → The food & places

#2 → The info & learnings

#3 → The guide & group

And I think I’ve narrowed it down to what made each of these items underwhelm in the “Fun” category on this tour, and how I could potentially improve on mine:

The ambiance & feel of the places are just as important as the food & drink. For the tour I took, we only ate inside at two of the four places, and the ones we did go inside for were bland & quiet. It really felt like we were just supposed to eat our food and move on to the next stop, rather than enjoying the full context of the food. In addition, all info about the food & place was just done as a speech prior to entering the place & getting the food.

Speeches are boring; discussions are fun. All the info conveyed to us on this tour were done in the form of speeches, where the Guide would stop on the street, gather us around, and spout off a 2-3 minute story he’d clearly told 100 times. Some of us asked some questions, but since the guide treated it as a speech, he kinda just walked on after he was done, so there was no real group discussion or exploration of anything he said.

The group is the key to fun, and the Guide is the key to the group. My biggest issue with this tour was that the Guide never really felt like a part of the group. Sure, he led us, and spoke to us, and handled logistics. But he always walked ahead and, most importantly, he didn’t sit with us to eat. As a result, the group dynamics were always a little awk and we basically stuck to small-talk, essentially avoiding all food & culture talk other than “mmm, this is good” and “this tastes interesting”. Groups are tough, especially when there are folks from multiple ages & backgrounds like ours had. It really takes some leadership to break the group-dynamic ice, and make us all feel safe & strong enough to let lose a little and act like the individuals that we all are.

So, the key takeaway here is that the Guide is everything in terms of making fun possible. They bring the group together, they liven the atmosphere, they provide the context & discussion to truly enjoy each other, and the surroundings & community we’re literally consuming.

The great news here is that I’m very specifically starting Drink•Eat•Walk because I want to be a guide — I want to be that guide.