DC Food Tour Learnings — TTFD

A continuation of this series

On my first couple of DC food tours I had guests meet me at the fountain in the center of Dupont Circle. It’s the perfect local DC neighborhood meetup spot, with lots of benches & seats, and it’s alive with people & activity, especially at the 5pm meetup time.

After an opening speech, we’d head towards our first food & drink spot. Along the way I’d stop a few times to tell a few stories about DC history. All of this could sometimes take up to 30 min, depending how many questions guests had throughout.

Feedback: “You need to decrease the time to first drink”

I totally understood this one. I’d always intended to greet guests at the meetup with an Orange Crush, a local’ish cocktail. I then realized this would be very bad: you can’t really drink in parks (anymore…); and your really really can’t give drinks to guests if you don’t have a full-on, thousands-of-dollars, liquor license. So, Crush crush crushed.

Which is why the time to first drink (TTFD) was sometimes almost 30 min. Not a good way to food tour DC when your biz is called Drink•Eat•Walk. An iteration was needed.

So, instead of in the circle, we now meet in cool little parklet just a few steps from the first food & drink stop.

I also now only tell one brief story before we go in to eat & drink, so the TTFD has gone down to ~10 min. Bonus: I no longer have to worry about being late for the reservation time, as there is much less variability in the timing of the walk & talk.

Cheers to you, guest feedback 🍻