What’s new for Alberta Food Tours in 2021?
15 years!
Alberta Food Tours (AFT) has thrived for 15 years in business. That’s right. We started in April of 2006. That’s an incredible achievement by any standard but given Alberta will lose almost half of all tourism businesses because of the devastating effects of Covid-19 on our sector, the fact that we are staying alive is especially wonderful.
How are we doing it?
We are staying true to the reason for our existence. AFT exists to increase the health of soil, food and people. We do this through powerful story telling and connecting people with ways to eat signature foods, engage with chefs, food artisans, farmers, ranchers and markets and explore the world’s cultures through the lens of food. Since we can’t do this with our award-winning food experiences right now, we went back to our why and found other ways to fulfill our purpose.
A self-guided food tour game delivered on your mobile device seemed one way to continue. So, we developed our Alberta Food Finder Self-Guided Food Tours. This product is affordable, accessible and inclusive. Players generate their own experience. They control the day and time they play. They decide how long they take at each stop. The game is set up as a vehicle to help them discover hidden gems, get tastings and explore the food, art and history of a neighbourhood. We have launched this in Calgary’s Kensington neighbourhood and will be scaling it up big time across the province.
Sourcing great Alberta products to fill care packages that support Alberta food businesses and charities was another idea we’ve implemented since November of 2020. We developed our Alberta Cares Packages and have so far supported 25 business and six charities. We look forward to continuing this with pertinent season offerings.
We’ll spend 2021 scaling up both these offerings AND we’ll bring back our in-person tours when it is safe to do so. We miss our big team of 18 guides across the province. Which brings us to, who is left running the show?
Our team
Our team has shrunk from 18 in 2019 to just three of us now. Callandra Caufield is our operations manager. Nicole Liboiron-Coles is in charge of Digital Communications and Karen Anderson (that’s me) is founder and President. Though small in number, the human potential of our Alberta Food Tours team is still impressive. We are dedicated to staying the course and redefining our company to continue to serve our community.
New opportunities to travel at home and abroad
As the Covid-19 vaccine roles out around the beautiful blue planet, we will once again be able to travel. When it comes to overseas trips, all travel will be postponed until at least the fall of 2022. Our Ancient Tastes and Temples tour of South India is sold out but, we’ve got yet another bucket list destination coming for 2023. The best way to access the opportunity to Travel with Us is to become an Alberta Food Tours insider by subscribing to our newsletter.
Same passion – that’s a promise
For 15 years we’ve been sharing our passion for the best ways to EAT, ENGAGE and EXPLORE Alberta. This year were more fired up than ever. We may not be touring right now but we are always working behind the scenes to bring you new and exciting experiences. And no matter what, we wouldn’t be here without you – our beloved community. Thanks for getting us this far and we look forward to serving you for years to come.