Culinary Tourism: The Secret Sauce in Selling the Caribbean – Insights From 7 Industry Experts
Culinary tourism experts discuss how travelers’ desire for authentic experiences and local culture, can shape how culinary experiences are incorporated into Caribbean itineraries. This webinar centers on how authentic cuisine and experiences can elevate and differentiate the Caribbean product in a competitive marketplace. The discussion examined the following tourism trends:
• Popular food-based itineraries that travel agents are selling;
• What types of visitors are booking food tours (demographics);
• Future trends in promoting and selling Caribbean food-based tours post COVID-19.
Panelists:
● Hon. Edmund Bartlett, Minister of Tourism, Jamaica – Welcome Remarks
● Maneet Chauhan, Food Network Judge on “Chopped” Author, Restaurateur
● Kevin Cottle, Celebrity Cruises Executive Chef, Hell’s Kitchen Season 6: Runner-up
● Doug Singer, Internationally published Food writer, Author of Award Winning Cookbook
● Suzette Finlayson, Owner/CEO Island Expert Travel
● Tren’ness Woods-Black, Sylvia’s Restaurant, the Queen of Soul Food, VP of Communications
● Nina Compton, Runner-up on Season 11 of Top Chef. 2017 “Best New Chef” award in Food & Wine magazine
● NN Nurse – Media Maven & Creator of Best Dressed Plate
● Derede Whitlock – Moderator DSW Consulting Media/TASC Board Director
DW: We welcome MC Chauhan and you may recognize her from Chopped. We’re very excited for her to give us an international perspective on food. People like MC can really help us in the Caribbean in better positioning our culinary product. So thank you, MC. We will move on to KC Cottle.
KC:Hey everybody. I actually had three restaurants in the Cayman islands a few years ago. So I’m kind of familiar with that whole aspect. Currently I have 11 cruise ships, small cruise ships across the country. We do everything from Creole, Louisiana stuff to, you know, Alaskan type foods and new England and everything in between. Each cruise ship has very diverse food, and mainly everybody comes on our cruise ship basically to eat and see Americana history.
SF:I have been in travel over 20 years and one of my passions is food and culinary tourism.
What I try to do with my clients is I customize their food experience when they go primarily to Jamaica. I have set up in the past food tours with chefs, I have done culinary tours, and I’ve also customized Villa stays.
DW:Great. Everyone else can give us advice, but you can tell us what sells and what doesn’t sell. So we can really get some perspective.
DS:I’m the travel editor for Jetset Magazine, amongst some other magazines I’m involved with. I’ve been to dozens of Caribbean islands and written about the culture and the food extensively. One of the things that I love about the Caribbean is the diversity from Island to Island. So when I travel to these places, I really want to find the story. A lot of times the story comes from the cuisine. It is a great way to share the story of a culture.
TWB:I’m third generation Sylvia’s Restaurant, where I serve as the VP of Communications. I
also, what’s relative to this conversation today is I sit on the executive board of NYC and Company, which is the official marketing and tourism company for our great city of New York. I also sit on the board of governor Cuomo’s reopening of New York State, and several others. I’m a Southern girl, but I do have roots in the Caribbean. My great grandfather was Jamaican and I have several other Caribbean loves.
NN:I’m the curator of Best Dressed Plate, which is a platform that I created to celebrate Caribbean food. I also host events highlighting Caribbean food. I’ve done events at the James Beard house and I’ve hosted the Caribbean Guest Chef Holiday Series at the United Nations. It has been an amazing opportunity to bring the food and the Caribbean holidays to the UN. Celebrating the holidays is not necssarily about gift giving, it’s about food and family and fun.
DW:Thank you so much. Well, the Minister of Tourism for Jamaica was invited to be a part of the panel and he was very excited about it. However, as you probably realize Jamaica is looking to reopen their borders. So he had a conflict today, but he was nice enough to do a pre-recorded welcome for all of you, both our panelists and our attendees.
EB:Good afternoon everyone. It gives me great pleasure to welcome our travel and tourism partners for this timely webinar, Culinary Tourism, the Secret Sauce in Selling the Caribbean. The Caribbean has an amazingly diverse culinary heritage that is more than worthy of recognition. It is a rich conversion of historical influences, which have been stirred by time into a vibrant, melting pot of culture. This is most evident in the region’s rich and innovative food scene. Caribbean cuisine tells a story of the people who came. It is a byproduct of the Spanish occupation, the slave economy, Indian and Chinese on indenturship, British colonialism, and Jewish and Sierra Lebanese migration.
This cultural fusion has given us Puerto Rico’s much loved Lechón Asodo, that is split roasted suckling pig Barbados’ cou-cou, the flying fish, Jamaica’s world renowned jerk pork, Guyanese pepper pot, and Trinidad’s Curried duck and roti. This wonderful culinary narrative ought to be shared with the world and you are valuable tourism partners can help us to do so. This is because the Caribbean region is now emerging from a COVID-19 induced shutdown, which has taken a heavy toll on our tourism dependent Island economies.
Before the pandemic, the Caribbean tourism was enjoying record arrivals. In 2019, stopover arrivals grew by 4.4% to reach 31.5 million outpacing the international rate of growth of 3.8% reported by the World Tourism Organization and the highest growth rate recorded in the Americas. At the same time, cruise visits increased by 3.4% 30.2 million, representing several years of consecutive growth in the industry.
As we move then to rebuild this vital industry amid COVID-19 we must look at tourism through a new and innovative lens. I often speak of a new generation of post COVID-19 travelers, Generation C or Gen C, that will reshape the way global tourism is marketed in the conceivable future. So Gen C, unsettled by the crisis will want reassurances and evidence that their experience overseas will be safe and not put their health and personal wellbeing at risk. Any new strategy to build out culinary tourism product must take Gen C into account and demonstrate a commitment to new standards of health and safety.
DW:So let’s get into the discussion and I want to start with Nina. Tell us a bit about your journey as far as culinary tourism promoting the Caribbean. I know you are involved in several different restaurants over the years. Tell us where does Caribbean food fit, in terms of having tourism appeal in the wider market. I just want to hear your perspective because of course the goal here is how can we sell more? How can we do more business and how can we generate more interest in our culinary tourism? Which is not necessarily always the first thing that people think about when they think Caribbean.
NC:Right. Well, I think it started with my journey when I did Top Chef. My mom, she said, why do you want to go on this show? This was kind of the main driving force for me because I said you know, mom if I get on this show, I can cook Caribbean food and let people know what we’re about. That was kind of the driving force for me. Once I did the show, it kind of made me become more creative as a chef. It made me become more proud of my heritage and my roots, and really wanting to shout that from the top of the mountain. About like, hey, St Lucian food or Caribbean food is really beautiful. You have to enjoy it and try it.
That’s why when I opened my restaurants, I could have cooked French, Italian, anything that I’ve done, that was my formal training, but I decided to cook my Caribbean food. I think that people just really don’t know what Caribbean food is about. It’s about the education of the history of the islands. You know, you have the slaves from Africa, what they brought on the ships, you have the settlers, you have a lot of different influences and those things we really need to highlight that and be proud of those things. It’s really, I think, you know, a lot of restaurants feel like they have to cater to the various paletes. I think that is kind of a downfall in the sense that you’ll see scallops on menus or you’ll see salmon. Like showcase the local stuff cause that’s what people want. They want to have the local fish that is being grilled on the beach. That’s what they came to the Caribbean for. They didn’t come here for scallops and salmon. They can get that anywhere.
So I think that is the point we have to be ready to shift as locals to highlight what we have because that’s why people are coming to the Caribbean, to sink their toes in the sand, drink a cold Red Stripe. I mean, I lived in Jamaica for two years and the fondest memories I had was going on the beach and the lobster man has the lobster, and he says “lobster today”. And I said, “yeah, I’ll have a lobster”. He says, “which one?” And then, you know, he sets up the grill and it was just cut in half and grilled with a lime vinaigrette. I still remember this lobster. This is 20 years ago and we have to create those moments for people when they come, because that’s what they came here for. You know, they want to have that unique experience that they can’t get anywhere else in the world. That’s what we have to really package that for.
DW:Now MC let’s move over to you. Of course, you know, you get to criticize every burgeoning chef. I’m saying that in a positive way, because you always are so very eloquent and diplomatic in your feedback. Tell us a bit about your experience with Caribbean food. And from your viewpoint, where do we fit and how can we make a greater impact with our food as we try to go after more of the tourism business?
MC:To me, I think one of the most incredible parts as I was mentioning earlier about Caribbean food, is the fact that it is a melting pot. You know, Nneka just mentioned that it is beyond what people’s perception is and which is what I faced with Indian food also. When I came over here, there was a perception of Indian food is $8.95 all you can eat buffet. I’m like no, there is so much more to it than just that. I think that is what Caribbean food is all about. The fact that there is, you know a Chinese influence, I mean it is such a melting pot and I think more people need to know that. And it is such a win-win situation.
I mean, imagine being in such a gorgeous setting with absolutely delicious, fresh food. Like NC was talking about the lobster my mouth was watering that I am craving a lobster, sitting on the beach right now. Right. Simple. It’s just homage to the ingredients that you get, which are as fresh as possible, but it’s also the awareness that you know, Caribbean food is so vast, it cannot be just be pigeonholed into two or three dishes. I think that’s what makes Caribbean foods so intriguing and delicious to me.
DW:In addition to all of your pursuits and all of your accomplishments, I think what makes your contributions extremely important here today is your involvement in the cruise sector. So lots of our travel advisors sell cruises, it certainly makes a major contribution to the economy of the Caribbean.
KC:All right. I just wanted to quickly jump on what Nina was saying real quick, just in regards to kind of Caribbean food. I like visiting spots that were off the beaten path, and I think those spots need to be highlighted more, especially stands that were in the middle of nowhere and there were lines of the locals just getting the food. I think those foods should be highlighted.
I went to a shack and had some of the most amazing goat. Those are the things that I think you need to highlight, with all that authencity. Now as far as the cruise ship industry. It’s definitely a new world for us. With everything that we do, we highlight food. All of our cruises are highlighted around each region that we go up to. So if we’re in Seattle and we’re doing the Puget Sound you know, we’re going to focus on all of the cuisine that they have out there.
We actually have culinary cruises where we’ll get wine vendors in and we’ll do cruises based on whatever regions or locations we’re going to. We’ll actually take the guests, maybe a handful of them, this can be a little tricky now with the groups of people, but we would take 30 people go to a market, buy stuff, and then do a culinary demo on every other cruise from that region. So if we went up to Alaska, we would do the same thing, get off and catch a can and get some, you know, all kinds of different things.
People eat a lot of seal in Alaska, so we would cook and stuff like that. Each region is very specific. Each Island has a different feel and a different flavor. Although very similar, I think that it’s very important to touch on what’s what is known for each sector, each town maybe have different things. I know that’s what we kind of focus on and it’s, it’s pretty much an immense experience.
Like you were saying, the lobster NC that you can’t forget, that’s the experience we’re trying to do for our guests. Not only do you want to see some historical stuff because we’re called American Cruise Line. So we’re super Americana. However, you know, if we’re in Louisiana, Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, New Orleans, wherever, Memphis, we even go to Nashville. So wherever we are, we try to highlight each region and do at least one to two demos per cruise. If it’s a seven day cruise, we’ll do two, if it’s a 14 day cruise we’ll do four, depending on all our regions.
I think those are the things that people want, especially nowadays where everybody’s so food savvy. But some of the preparations that we have to take now, we’re going to be interesting to kind of do those because you have to have smaller groups, you leave the boats, you have to, have your forehead scanned and you have to make sure where you’re going, and where have you been and what bus are you going on?
We have to contain any potential risks of these things. So I think we’re all in a very challenging time now. It’s a whole new mindset of trying to figure things out. I think that’s going to be challenging for all of us as we reopen and kind of get through the world.
DW:No, that was very, very helpful. Now I want to switch over. SF I’m going to come back to you, but I want to hear from Tren’ness. She wears a very important hat. Her affiliation with New York City and, oh, I forgot to mention that Tren’ness also was on a couple of cooking shows. She’ll tell you in more detail. So I definitely have a team of winners here. But Tren’ness in addition to that, tell us a bit about some of the things that you’re working on in New York City. We want to get a better understanding as to what are the strategies that New York City as a region might be looking at that we can learn from. Then also I want to hear a bit about Sylvia’s. You have been in the culinary tourism business and many tour buses stop at Sylvia’s. So you definitely are one of the competitors that the Caribbean can also learn from.
TWB:Absolutely. I’ll start with my position with NYC and Company sitting on that board. We get a ton of information funneled through the organizations and we have offices literally all over the globe. One of the most important messages that I think everyone that’s here should take away from, is making sure that during this time you are still keeping in touch with your demographic. It’s really important when you’re talking about culinary tourism and you’re talking about inviting people to the Caribbean that when they get there, they experience that.
Airbnb has done an amazing job. People think of Airbnb as lodging, but they think about themselves as an experiential company. A company that provides you with an experience. And with the type of travelers that we have present day, that’s what people are really going for. They’re going for that unique experience. When I go to Jamaica, is to get my lobster right on the beach prepared fresh for me. Those are the things that people want to experience. You know, the last thing they want to do is show up on their cruise or at the resort and there’s no representative from where they’re traveling to or traveling from.
So it’s important to maintain authenticity through your dishes, through your menu offering. During this time of COVID where folks are really getting antsy to get back to all of the beautiful places that they love, is to remind them as soon as they land, the aromas, the smells, and just welcome them back. Like, hey, welcome back home. We’ve been waiting for you. Here is your planter’s punch or here is your beef patty and your Red Stripe. So it’s really making sure that authenticity rings throughout because that’s what makes everyone feel at home.
One of the things that New York is doing, I’m on the governor’s reopening board for New York city. I’m the smallest business out of 116.
It puts me in a unique position, to really allow the administration to understand what the impact of COVID is on the small businesses. I’m sure a lot of the, the culinary experiences in the Caribbean are small businesses as well, and family-owned and the things that you have to understand about being able to move forward. Because we can work through this period, as long as you follow like proper guidelines. One thing that’s great about going to the Caribbean during COVID is the fact that a lot of the restaurants there are open air. Open-air is something that is beneficial to the guests to feel safe because the virus can’t really survive. It’s very delicate, the outer layers.
DW:Doug is an ideator and I’m going to give him an opportunity to share some of his ideas about how the Caribbean as a region can come together with our similarities in food yet our authenticity in our differences, how we can pull this all together into various marketing initiatives.
DS:That’s what a visit to any Caribbean Island should be. I think that the days of, you know, years ago, people used to try to, let’s say from my perspective, Americanize, everything. I think that, especially from a culinary perspective, people have gotten very bold. They want to do the deep dive. They want to be excited. I think we have to stop holding back and being conservative and just go for it. I think it’s those exciting menus and really kind of riffing on the true cultural components of any different cuisine is really what’s going to get people excited. I think people’s consideration for the culinary component of their travel plans is at a higher level than it’s ever been in history. I see that really as an opportunity and at the same time, there’s the challenge, you know, the challenge being how do we reach these people?
New York times just canceled their 2021 travel show, which is in January. The ability to reach out and have these trade shows and everything has really become limited. So I think utilizing technology as well as really partnering with one another, strength in numbers, shall we say, are really the Caribbean islands kind of linking together as one, really could create an opportunity I
think out of difficulties. I’ve been personally looking at the technology. My book is called Legacy , the celebration of the San Marzano tomato. We were really honored recently to be designated best in the world by Gourmand World Cookbook awards. One of the things that we did was a digital version of the book with greetings from chefs, video greetings from chefs in 10 different countries. We had 26 chefs from around the world, and every single one of those chefs had an actual video greeting.
So I just wanted to give you an example of the way that you can use digital opportunities to promote the Caribbean as a region. You can do it like a traditional cookbook as well, where you’re going to see recipes. But there are now so much more that you can actually accomplish with these books. It can offer a celebration of the culture itself, I think it opens a lot of doors. If you start to utilize some of these tools that are now available, it’s a new way, shall we say for generation C, which I liked that as well, to reach people and to basically excite them because you know, one dimensional pictures are so dated now.
DW:Thank you so much Doug. It’s one thing to talk about the new normal, but to actually experience the new normal and the reality of what we will face from a competition standpoint I think technology is definitely going to be one of the biggest takeaways and one of the key learnings from our COVID experience.
SF:My clients like things to be customized. So what I try to do, it doesn’t matter where my clients are traveling. I am very involved in that because food is a passion. So for me, one of my clients, she was turning 50 last year and she rented about four villas on the beach in Negril Jamaica. She brought 20 friends. The majority of whom had never been to Jamaica before, and she wanted me to work with her to customize their experience. One of the things we did is we sent out of course, preference sheets to find out who was allergic, who was vegan, any intolerances. We worked with the local chef. It was at Idle Awhile Villas in Negril on the Seven Mile beach.
We really came up with an amazing program for them every day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We curated the option. Some of the tours I did for them was the Appleton Rum Tour, which the Minister had referenced earlier. They also went to YS Falls and then at night I tried to do a different program every night. The most popular program that I did. It’s a local gentleman in Jamaica that he does what we call a Rum Bar Tour. A Rum Bar is a part of Caribbean culture. There’s a bar on every street corner as we would say in Jamaica.
And for her and her guests, that was the highlight because they got to go some to some very lovely places like the Cliffs in Jamaica. Then they ended up at the actual driver’s personal Rum Bar where his wife did Jamaican appetizers for them, the Cod fish fritters. Ackee and saltfish quiche. So they just enjoyed that authentic experience. I have to say from that one group, I’ve gotten many referrals and that’s just a sample of some of the things that I customize for my clients.
DW:Okay. So Nneka, what advice do you have in terms of rebuilding and strengthening our product based on your experience.
NN:One of the most important things when it comes to culinary is authenticity, right? And really zeroing in on what your customer looks like today. Tourism has definitely changed from what it was back in the eighties and the nineties. I can remember going to Jamaica and feeling special because you went to an all inclusive hotel, you know, that was the thing. Where you go to an all inclusive, don’t pay for anything, your liquor and food, but the food was not local. Now when you look at the tourists, they’re younger generation who are really connected to cultures, really want to know what the culture is like. Culinary travel is becoming really big. You have a lot of the farm to table experiences, that’s really growing. What I think needs to happen from a tourism standpoint is, www has made the big world really small. That’s why I created Best Dressed Plate as an Avenue for these chefs and restaurants who may not necessarily get the exposure, who don’t have the time to go online and market. With COVID-19 this is our opportunity to rebrand all-inclusive. Let’s go into the community and pull some of these street vendors, whatever paperwork is needed. In Jamaica, you have Scotchies, in Trinidad you have the Doubles. Bring some of those people into the hotel.
Just like here in the States, they have these food platforms or places like in Manhattan, where they have all these different food vendors that all come together and they have that one place. Create that inside of the hotels. And these local people could come in and talk at length as to how they prepared it. This is what people like to see. They want to get involved in that.
DW:There you have it folks, the grassroots approach. I love that. I mean, bring the cook shop into the hotel is what I hear you saying. I think that’s a phenomenal idea. Certainly I hope that there are some hoteliers and food and beverage managers in attendance and they can get some good ideas in terms of how we can revamp our tourism product.
NC:What we need to really do is look at the resources we have locally. You know, when I was growing up coconut oil was in abundance, right? And now coconut oil is so trendy. You know, people are using it as facial creams, to brush their teeth, to put it in their hair, all these things. These are the things that are in our backyard. Just hopping back to what was mentioned earlier about the culinary tours and talking about…I went to Bermuda this past October and we were walking and the guide was picking all these leaves and she was just like, taste this. As a chef, I was very excited and everything had a medicinal element to it. So she was saying this cures cancer, this brings down blood pressure. We have all of these things that we don’t even have to package. It’s just about educating people. But those are the things we really need to showcase and make people feel like you can’t find this anywhere else in the world except in the Caribbean. And that is something that we really have to show the appreciation of the bounty of what we have available to us. And really things like cassava flour. You have a lot of people with a lot of dietary issues that can’t eat gluten and people make cassava cakes.
DW:That’s great. Thanks so much Maneet here is your chance to give us some really critical advice in terms of strengthening our culinary product in the Caribbean.
MC:A lot of these culinary experiences are based on the people getting a feel of the local product and techniques. One of my favorite things on Chopped, is the culinary programs which go beyond cooking. It’s about having a local chef come and teach what needs to be done, getting the guests involved, perhaps getting four ingredients that are so quintessentially Caribbean and having people explore those ingredients. Because I mean, a lot of these ingredients people haven’t worked with it before, right. How can the chefs put their own signature on it and make it their own? Because then when you leave the Caribbean you’re taking a part of a new ingredient with you, which you are going to induct in your everyday life.
That way you form that connection with a place. I think that is very, very important. Just to offer experiences to people that they have not experienced before. Just cooking in a coconut, using cassava flour. All of these things I think are very integral in forming that Caribbean connection, which will inspire people to keep on coming back over and over again.
DW:That’s great. I guess we can look out for the Chopped Caribbean edition. If it hasn’t happened already.
MC:I know it should happen. Just imagine the number of ingredients. I would love to see what people do with it.
DW:You may need a dictionary to pronounce some of these things.
MC:I need a dictionary to pronounce most of the things.
DW:Just quickly, how do they decide on these ingredients? Are they crowdsourced or how do they come up with these really interesting ingredients on Chopped? I’m just curious.
MC:So there’s an entire culinary team that comes up with all of these ingredients. And they do come up with a lot of different things that they can do, how they can make a composed dish. So it’s not for random ingredients. It is really thought through. There are a couple of episodes which are crowdsourced.
DW: That’s wonderful. Still one of my favorite shows. It’s just so fascinating
