Sudbury launches tourism strategy to lure visitors with food, food experiences

Tourists come to Sudbury for different reasons, but they all have one thing in common: they have to eat while they're here..

The city's new food tourism strategy will highlight local food to attract visitors.

Food tourism is any food-based experience where a person learns about, appreciates, or consumes food that reflects the history, heritage, and culture of a place.

"There's a lot of opportunities for us to educate and create more awareness, but at the same time be growing our tourism sector and having more people coming to our community to experience what our food and drink culture is all about," Dana Jennings with Tourism Sudbury said.

She adds that a big part of growing food tourism is making it a collaborative effort.

That means contributions from stakeholders such as restaurants, producers, growers, attractions, retailers, and festivals about what they offer.

It also seeks out local residents and tourists to tell their own personal food stories.

"It's one thing for us to be putting out a campaign or a social media post about something involving local food...it's quite another thing for people to be shouting it from the rooftops and saying I'm so proud of my city because of x, y and z," Jennings said.

"Trying to get that [food] culture more top-of mind, people talking about it, being really proud about it and giving their referrals more weight."

Food-stories unique to Sudbury

For the past year a working group made up of stakeholders in the city has been working with the Culinary Tourism Alliance to create the food tourism strategy and to find unique food stories to promote.

Agatha Podgorski, director of community engagement with the alliance, says residents need to spread the message about this hidden gem called Sudbury.

"There's a lot of pride individually in every person I've talked to about what's available here and what's special here," she said.

But she added that residents and businesses all need to get excited collectively about what is happening in food tourism.

"This agreement that 'Ya, you know we are pretty darn great. Ya we should spend the weekend in Sudbury and do something delicious,'" Podgorski said.

"That's really when travelers from out of town start coming for the food."

As a visitor to the city, Podgorski lists locally brewed craft beer, and Finnish doughnuts called 'jelly pigs' as food experiences unique to Sudbury.

"There's also this really kind of casual awesomeness about the food here, where there isn't pretension. They're celebrating things from all over the north, and you can try a little bit of everything, which is an exciting thing to find," she said.

A taste of Sudbury

"The food tourism strategy really is a call to action," Sudbury's manager of tourism and culture, Meredith Armstrong said.

"It's about what all of us can bring to the table sort of speak, to really promote a very new exciting culinary scene in Sudbury."

"Anytime you go out on the weekend you're going to see that restaurants are busy, parking lots are full and people are coming out to taste what Sudbury has," Armstrong said.

Tourism Sudbury wants to hear local food stories from residents and visitors. People are encouraged to use #DiscoverSudbury on social media to share tourism and food experiences.

"I think people are hungry for the taste of Sudbury."