The foodie trend is what Foodie&Tours hopes to capitalize on soon.
The startup Foodie&Tours plans to offer culinary classes and activities starting in January. While it is based in Barcelona, the company is a virtual marketplace that anyone can access from anywhere in the world.
The marketplace matches travelers with gastronomical activities and food tours in Europe. Its CEO is Hugo Palomar, who is also one of the founders. Foodie&Tours is Palomar’s third startup in the tourism industry. The other founders are Enric Elvira, the backend developer, and Juan Peist, the chief technology officer. There is a total of five team members.
Regarding funding, the company is in talks about securing seed funding in a €250K funding round. As tourism is one of the fastest growing startup industries right now, it faces competition within and outside of the food tourism niche.
The startup is designed to fill the gap that tourists who are interested in having foodie experiences set up for them by professionals haven’t been able to find anywhere. There does not seem to be another provider of solely this type of service, although booking sites such as Viator are out there.
As well, professionals can create the food-centric experiences for travelers strictly using Foodie&Tours, without having to spread themselves out through several consultation services. In Spain, there are many tourists for Foodie&Tours to appeal to there; the number is upwards of 7 million foodies of the 64 million travelers that frequent Spain every year.
Perhaps Foodie&Tours will be bought eventually by Priceline or TripAdvisor. To date, Foodie&Tours has provided over 150 food tours and exercises for travelers. The cooking classes are in addition to the tours, single wine-and-cheese tastings, and the pop-up tapas experiences they provide too.
The food travel sector continues to expand, with startups such as Foodie&Tours popping up to meet consumer needs.