Kevin Durkee owns Culinary Adventure Co., which runs six food tours in Toronto. Eighty percent of his guests are local, 99.9 percent book direct, and in fifteen years he has never run an ad, fought for SEO, or opened a Google Analytics account. The industry mantra is that locals do not take tours and that the OTAs own the demand, so Mitch spends much of the hour asking how the business actually works. The short answer is that Kevin sells celebration rather than sightseeing: gift cards, Christmas presents, and a birthday program that gives a guest a free seat when three friends book alongside them.
Kevin also refuses to discount in either direction. He pays full price at every one of his forty vendor stops and quotes corporate groups higher when they ask for a break, with a setup fee and built-in gratuity, since the food costs the same in front of four people or forty. Private corporate work now runs thirty to thirty-five percent of annual revenue. He explains the retreat in Madrid that finally pushed his best tour from $119 to $199 with less food on it, and it has since sold better than in any prior year. Operators leave with a way to build a local repeat audience, a position to hold when a buyer pushes on price, and the three years and five cities Kevin spent learning what to cut.
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Key Takeaways
- Pay full price at every stop and never ask a vendor for a discount. (02:36 to 03:19) Culinary Adventure Co. buys everything on its tours at menu price, takes no samples, and asks for no handouts. Kevin owned a restaurant that hosted food tours before he bought one, so he heard the pitch from the other side of the counter: give us this free because we bring you attention. His answer is that those tours ran seventy or eighty percent inbound travelers, guests who are in a restaurant for two minutes and never come back.
- Ask to be part of the stop, not just on it. (03:19 to 06:07) What Kevin wanted as a vendor was three minutes, enough time to show the kitchen, highlight one item, or introduce the person who made it. An operator who arrives, buys, and walks out gives the restaurant nothing to care about. He also looks for the hour that gives guests something the public never sees, opening the door before service so they watch the place wake up, or arriving late afternoon while the staff eat their own meal.
- Eat somewhere six times before you tell them you run a food tour. (06:32 to 07:09) Kevin’s team goes on weekdays and weekends, at the rush and in the lull, until they have seen the whole staff and the whole operation. The restaurant has to pass that audit before he says hello. When he finally sits down, naming the server who looked after them last week is what tells the owner this is not a cold pitch.
- Translate your volume into a number the vendor can feel. (07:09 to 07:47) Kevin asks whether the owner would like a thousand guests a year at their table, then tells them it arrives eight at a time. A vague promise becomes a standing weekly booking with a different group of people each week. He works up to it slowly, respect first and the business explained bite size, bite size, bite size.
- A new operator with no volume has to earn access in stages. (08:05 to 09:09) Kevin’s advice to anyone without a restaurant background is to make the first ask almost nothing: phone the order in, pick it up, do not push. Come back after three, four, five months of steady business and ask for the next thing. That is when you take the first date to the next level, asking for the extra time, the look at the kitchen, or the introduction to a cook.
- Every vendor runs on different rules, and you have to learn each one. (09:37 to 10:30) Across thirty-five to forty vendors on six Toronto tours, the folks in Chinatown want cash and want to see him, while others ask for dietary restrictions and orders a week ahead on food he buys twelve hours out. Some partners get a WhatsApp group and others get email. The owner is also not the person working the stop, and the Tuesday staff is not the Saturday staff, so the briefing has to reach everyone.
- Give your vendors’ staff a free tour, and send them on someone else’s. (10:30 to 11:34) Culinary Adventure Co. offers tours to the staff of every partner business on one condition, that they cannot take the tour that visits their own restaurant. A cook who sees how another vendor presents itself comes back understanding what the tour is doing. Kevin has run it this way for years and counts it among the things that worked.
- Build the story so you can tell it without the owner standing there. (11:51 to 13:24) When a partner comes on, Kevin’s team interviews the people who matter about recipes and ingredients, not only for dietary restrictions but for the heart and soul of what the restaurant wants shared. A buyout or a rush can take the owner away on any given day, and the tour cannot depend on him. Kevin was presenting outside a Kensington Market bakery when he turned and found the owner behind him listening, who told him afterward that Kevin tells the story better than he can.
- Do the due diligence before you buy a tour company. (13:36 to 15:41) Kevin bought Culinary Adventure Co. from one half of the couple who founded it, then kept working with the other half for about eighteen months. That partner had taken roughly seventy-five thousand dollars, started a competing food tour company, and gone around to their shared vendors asking them to choose Team Kev or Team X. It took forensic accountants, police, and lawyers to get him out.
- Cut the inherited lineup faster than feels comfortable. (16:16 to 17:39) Kevin took over thirty-five active offerings: oyster classes, barbecue classes, wine experiences three hours outside Toronto, and about twelve different food tours. He left all of it running for roughly three years before he started paring down. In his own words, he stayed in the honeymoon too long and should have given himself permission to slash faster.
- Raise the price, take food off, put engagement on. (18:15 to 20:13) After a Tourpreneur culinary retreat in Madrid with eleven other food tour operators, Kevin took the VIP early access St. Lawrence Market tour from $119 to $199. He had told his experiences manager Caitlin they needed to tighten it and make it feel more foodie, so the new version carries less food and more time in the market. It has sold better than in any year before, and fifteen years in he was still nervous about price walking into that conference.
- Build the tour you want to go on. (20:13 to 20:28) Kevin has taken more than a hundred and sixty food tours around the world, which makes him his own client and guest. If a tour impresses him, he trusts that guests will respond to it. Mitch adds the other half from the coaching side, that guests cannot ask for what they do not know a place can give them, so market research alone never produces a distinctive tour.
- Seventy percent classics, thirty percent your own interpretation. (22:17 to 24:25) At Kozlik’s in St. Lawrence Market, every other food tour dunks the free pretzels in the mustard. Kevin carries blackberries in from another vendor and dunks those into a balsamic fig and date, which arrives in the mouth like a berry vinaigrette and has become a signature of the tour. Historical stories and classic recipes still carry most of the hour, and the remaining thirty percent is where a point of view lives.
- Run the logo test on your own marketing. (25:40 to 26:57) Ford’s rule, as Kevin tells it, was that if a competitor’s logo could sit on top of one of their ads without anyone noticing, the ad did not run. He grants that half of any food tour company’s social photos would survive that swap, because they are pictures of people eating. The tours themselves should not survive it, and personality is what guests are paying for.
- Count hugs and same-hour reviews. (28:30 to 33:00) Kevin watches for two things at the end of a tour, a hug from the guest and a review posted within the hour. A five star review collected by QR code at the last stop, before the guest has finished their beer, tells an operator nothing. What counts is the review a guest writes at home going back through their photos, three or four or five sentences long.
- Charge more for private groups, never less. (30:56 to 31:19) A corporate buyer asking for a discount on thirty people gets quoted higher, with a setup fee and gratuity built in. A private group means its own schedule and its own set of information, and the food costs the same whether Kevin stands in front of four people or forty. Nothing gets cheaper, so he has never offered a discount in his life.
- Sell corporate buyers on the work you remove. (39:00 to 43:21) Private corporate bookings run thirty to thirty-five percent of annual revenue, with mandatory gratuity, setup fees, and margins the guides like. The buyer is usually an executive assistant in her twenties putting options in front of a boss, so Kevin packages everything for her to resell inside the company. His pitch is that the team has to eat somewhere that night regardless, so book one thing instead of sourcing five.
- Locals book food tours to celebrate something. (38:00 to 40:17) Gift cards, Christmas presents, birthdays, Mother’s Day, and anniversaries drive the public tours, which is why the company sells Christmas in July every year. The birthday program, Your Tour Our Treat, gives a guest a free seat in their birthday month when three friends book alongside them. Kevin says the company is in gift giving and memory making, and the tours are how it delivers.
- Your guides are hosts, and hosts are allowed to slow down. (58:57 to 1:00:28) Kevin says calling his team culinary guides is his own mistake, because the work is hosting: notice who has not spoken, keep it playful, keep it personal. Bring twelve strangers into your house and you fill the drinks and point out the washroom without being asked, and three hours later they know you. The guide who keeps the group moving because the eleven thirty tour is behind him and a teammate wants the table is doing nobody any justice.