Culinary Tourism

Team Mentor:

Dr. Marge Condrasky, Associate Professor,
Dept. Food Science and Human Nutrition

Culinary tourism is a somewhat new industry that deals with a combination of traveling, locality, and originality. Lucy Long, a researcher at Bowling Green University , originated the term “culinary tourism” in 1998 when it was rare that people understood the term. The actual culinary tourism industry did not come into play until three years later, when the International Culinary Tourism Association President presented his white paper. After the development of the white paper, the word of culinary tourism spread as did the culinary tourism market.

This CI team within Culinary Sciences investigated collaboration opportunities within culinary tourism of the Upstate of SC.  The team met and scheduled research activities from a Greenville, SC entrepreneur Carl Sobocinski,  with Table 301 restaurant concept and a Clemson University Alumni.  The team reviewed the historical perspectives from the hospitality industry of Greenville and discovered that Greenville  imposed a hospitality tax in 2001 that taxed 2% on all prepared food and  beverages. The team members are interested in comparing the advertising of hospitality industry within  other major cities including Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, and Dallas to Greenville.  Our plan is to learn more from marketing strategies from these destination cities to introduce ideas for similar collaboration within the Upstate.  The team hopes to gain greater insight into the current Greenville  hospitality industry marketing efforts and in turn provide strategy suggestions to support the promotion of the  economic stability of Greenville hospitality restaurant market. One such strategy may be the review of current hospitality tax in Greenville applied to food and beverage purchases.   Through research and presenting a premiere business plan, our goal is to positively impact the future of Greenville’s hospitality market.