Category: Drink-Eat-Walk
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The American Dream
I think a lot about the American Dream these days. It’s always in the news. There’s a new museum in DC dedicated to it. And it’s the core theme throughout most of my Drink•Eat•Walk DC food tour stories. Especially the ones about the specific restaurants we stop in. Most of the stories follow a similar…
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Drink•Eat•Walk DC Food Tour Business Quarterly Review — 2025 Q3
It’s been three months since my first tour, so it’s time for a self-assessment: 👍 👎 I’m in the star-rating biz, though, so I guess I have to review myself through that lens: Overall rating = ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆ Despite the negativity, I’m pretty happy with how things are going. All I really care about in this…
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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…
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DC Food Tour Learnings — Reviews-22
A tour business like Drink•Eat•Walk relies on sites like Tripadvisor & Viator (the same company since 2014!), and Get Your Guide to bring in business, especially in the first season (I wrote about this here). The issue is that you can’t really get business on these platforms without reviews. Indeed, they state that they won’t…
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DC Food Tour Learnings — Choosing Curation
I wrote about the importance of guest feedback in this post. Since then, one of the main questions I’ve gotten when discussing the tours with friends IRL is “what kind of feedback have you gotten?” I love thinking & talking about this stuff, so with this post I’m starting an ongoing series where I’ll detail…
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DC Food Tour Learnings — Tour Business
One of the fun things about building this business & the tours has been learning about a whole new industry: how it works; the terminology; the business side of it. And what I’ve quickly learned is that one major part of the business side is especially terrible for a small, new DC food tour business…
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Friends & Family Fridays
I’m currently running tours Monday-Thursday, adding on Sunday once I start up my Rock Creek Park hiking tour. I partially don’t want to offer tours on Fri & Sat because I still want a two-day weekend. Lazy. But, I’ve heard from my local DC friends that Mon-Thu is always going to be tough for them…
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DC Food Tour Learnings — Golden Feedback
All guests on my first two tours have been friends. I mean, they’ve booked & paid like standard customers, but I’ve knew all of them before they did. That’s partially because: without a brand; reputation; reviews; word-of-mouth and begging are the only way to get bookings in your first season in the tourism world. However,…
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Gametime
Exciting day here at Drink•Eat•Walk World HQ getting all the walking supplies purchased and ready for my first tour and guests this evening.
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Let’s D•E•W DC Like a Local!
Is this thing still on‽ Welp, happy to announce that Drink•Eat•Walk is officially on! My first tour is this Thursday, July 3rd, and bookings are now open through the end of October. You can book directly here on DrinkEatWalk.com, but for now I’m trying to drive bookings through Tripadvisor & Viator to get some clicks…
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Learning Tours
I’ve taken three food tours, so far, on this cruise+ trip. They’ve all been fine. I’m thinking of them as learning experiences for Drink•Eat•Walk, though, so no matter how good they are, I have some takeaways. Like what? Welp, let’s drink, eat, and walk our way through the one I took in Lisbon, Portugal to…
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Nice Day for a Work
I’ve written how I like days where Drink•Eat•Walk working means researching & reading. The best working days, though, are the ones where I get out there to get at it. Yesterday was one of those days: I walked the route for my “Rock Creek Park + Mount Pleasant” tour. This is the tour I’m hoping…
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Geo. Journey
I’ve written about it before, but one of the many things I like about building Drink•Eat•Walk is that there are so many things to do. So if one day I don’t feel like doing something directly related —writing; businessing; designing;drinking•eating•walking— I can always be productive by researching & reading. Yesterday was one of those days.…
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Strike Out
I’m getting closer to starting my first Drink•Eat•Walk tours, so am furiously working on my stories, website, and messaging. I’m also starting to talk in more detail about the tours when I’m out in the world with people. One surprising thing I’ve learned is that not everybody knows what a food tour is. They’ve been…
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DAR Library
I visited a new library last week, one that DC uniquely offers: The Daughter’s of the American Revolution (DAR) Museum Library. It was extraordinary. Even from the outside you could tell it was going to be an amazing place. You then walk in and it’s even better than you hope: The long tables, the adornment,…
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Accountability Tour
A few weeks back I finally committed to the date I’m going to start running tours. It’s helped focus me, and the public accountability is a good 🔥 under my butt. It’s now time to kinda do the same thing with all the things I still need to do before launching. There are still a…
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AI Usage
AI is in the news all the time now. Every day we read & hear about new companies, tools, uses, and problems to be solved with them. However, in my world, nobody really seems to be talking about them much. Since I’m a lone wolf right now building out Drink•Eat•Walk, this makes it hard for…
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Centuries Suck
I’ve mentioned that I’m reading lots of history books to fuel my Drink•Eat•Walk stories. One of the most frustrating things for my simple brain when reading these books is constantly having to translate century references into actual years. Ex: “18th century means 1700s” and “19th century means 1800s”. I hate it. Why do writers love…
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DC’ea Culpa
I subscribe to the startup/Silicon Valley ethos to quickly Launch → Learn → Improve when building a product or company. The sooner you start this cycle the better, even if you’re not 100% ready — because you’re never going to be 100% ready. I think it’s time to admit, however, that I’ve now been actively…
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Regular Research
I’ve started actively researching the places I might want to stop at for some of my Drink•Eat•Walk tours, at roughly the times I’ll be stopping at them. Ya know, to see how crowded; to check the vibe; to pretend I’m a regular. It’s that last part I only realized last night that was totally bothering…
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Immigrant Confidence
I walk around DC a ton; partially to get places; partially to explore; partially to get out and get my steps in. So there are spots I walk by all the time without even noticing that I’ve been keeping an eye on and tracking them over time. Places like the one in the pic here,…
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On Writing
Tour guide are really just teachers & storytellers, and most well-crafted verbal stories start as written ones. There’s about a dozen stories I want to have ready for my Drink•Eat•Walk tours, stuff like ‘Why DC looks the way it does’, “Ethiopians in DC” and ‘Why you’re stuffing a delicious Papusa in your mouth’. I’ve spent…
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Traveler Tips
Kevin Kelley is amazing. His curiosity is infectious, and he’s lived his life in a way that overlaps with much of what I enjoy, and what I believe in. As such, every new listicle like this that he comes up with is gold → https://kk.org/thetechnium/50-years-of-travel-tips/ There are so many gems in this list, and all…
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DC Peeps
When most people visit Washington, they learn about the history of the US, the politicians that led the way, and the structures that have been built to honor them. What they don’t learn about is the people that built the city, nor do they see the amazing neighborhoods we locals live our lives in. They…
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Logo (con’t)
I’ve been working on the Drink•Eat•Walk logo a bunch the past few weeks. It’s getting closer to the feeling I’m trying to capture, but we’re still not there. Let’s recap: The first D•E•W logo was created awhile ago by Copilot and me, where I prompted it with something like “create a circle logo for a…
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Final Tour
My plan for when I finally launch Drink•Eat•Walk DC is to have three different tours. I’ve known two of them for awhile: 1- Walk Dupont Circle & Adams Morgan → This will be a classic walking food tour, with an emphasis on the food, drink, and histories of theses communities, and the people that have…
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Final Grade
Last post in this series. Ok, let’s recap all my 2024 Commitment grades: That averages out to about a D-. Ouch. Either I’m a very tough grader, or I had a wildly unproductive 2024. I think the former is somewhat true, but the latter is definitely true. Now I know why in my gut 2024 felt…
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Me in Tim
A friend asked me why I never post pictures of myself here. It’s a fair question, and I don’t really have a good answer other than: I’ve never really specifically chosen not to post them. It’s more that when it comes down to choosing what I post, it always just seems to be the images…
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2024 Evaluation: Item #6 → Community
This post is continuing this series. Commitment #6: Community → I’m going to get involved with some sort of organized, IRL group this year. My default is solitary, and without being forced into any office, the default rules. I really am a better version of myself when I’m around other folks, so I need to force myself…
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2024 Evaluation: Item #4 → Create
This post is continuing this series. Commitment #4: Create → I really enjoyed that process of building Did You Do it Today, and have some other ideas for web apps. So, I’ll be building out another one, using Bubble.io again. Grade = F+ I created no new apps this year. I was focused on other things (see below). So why…
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Finally, Productive
I definitely pushed the limits of this holiday break. Sure, I can blame this year’s calendar, and the amazing snowstorm we just had, but it was really just me being lazy. So it was great to finally have a productive day today — the initial DrinkEatWalk.com draft website is now live. There are only three…
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The One Thing I’m Going To Do In 2025
I’m going to focus on one thing this year: Build a tour business. For the past couple of years, I’ve kicked off the new year by committing to a bunch of things. I then do a yearend assessment of how I did towards the commitments. And it’s in doing my 2024 assessment (which is still…
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Chasing History
I took some more local DC walking tours this weekend, these ones focused on history & architecture. They were great, and the guides were super knowledgeable. Once again, though, they weren’t full of much joy, nor was there much interaction amongst the group (I think those two things are related). The only pic I took…
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First Tour & Route
Ok, I think I’ve figured out the stops & route for the first Drink•Eat•Walk tour I’m going to offer: Drink•Eat•Walk → Dupont Circle & Adams Morgan Here’s a summary of the tour: Here are the things I’ll be discussing on the tour (at the stops or while walking): I’ve pretty much known for a few…
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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…
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Walking Practice
I walked out another potential tour route today, this time on Roosevelt Island on the Potomac. It’s an amazing place that most folks never visit, even locals. So, potentially perfect for Drink•Eat•Walk. Then again, everything outdoors here seems perfect during autumn.
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DC Food Tour Learnings → Part 1
I took a Georgetown food tour in DC last weekend, partially because I’d never taken one here before and wanted to learn more about Georgetown, and partially to check out how other local companies are running their food tours. I’m so glad I took it. The tour was good, and I learned a bit about…
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First Tour Practice
I led some friends on a practice run yesterday for the potential hiking tour I’ve been working on. The route I mapped turned out to be a good distance: The hiking itself was great: And the fresh empanadas (and drinks) I bought & brought were the perfect mid-hike picnic fodder: I think this hiking tour…
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Workin’
Had another great day at work today
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Same Same, but Different
I discussed in my Origins post that there wasn’t really anything like Drink•Eat•Walk in DC, which helped convince me to start building it. I still think there’s nothing exactly the same, but the more I’m researching the market, the more overlaps I’m seeing from other tours in DC. I’m still feeling good about my prospects,…
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Old School Library Work
Doing some old school library work today #drinkeatwalkdc
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Tall Building Rules
One of the things I’m most excited to talk about when I get Drink-Eat-Walk going is this building, the reason DC has such severe building height restrictions.
eyeintim 