"After all, half of a bed and breakfast – is breakfast,” said Garrett Klassen as voices and laughter bubbled up all around him at the Drew House in Elora.
A new and unique partnership was being celebrated there on April 16 as Elora and Fergus Tourism, the Fergus Elora Bed & Breakfast Association (FEBBA) and the people who produce food in the area gathered to celebrate the release of Recipes to Experience.
Several of them referred it to a brochure, but it is actually a book that gives people all the information they need to find events, things to do, places to stay, places to eat, and the places that are growing the food they enjoy when they visit Centre Wellington.
“We’re thrilled with it.” said Elora and Fergus Tourism representative Deb Dalziel. “It’s got all the information about buying local food.”
Last year, Recipes to Experience won an award with its concept of mixing agriculture, food, and tourism, and this year the 84-page effort has expanded so visitors can actually meet the growers who produce things like sheep and goat cheeses, honey, ice cream, wines, meats and other products – all made locally.
The new “brochure” has ten chapters, and introduces visitors to local chefs, local bed and breakfast operations, the growers, the Grand River, all the festivals and events happening in the community, maps of the area (some of the growers are from outside Centre Wellington, and a county map is included, too, along with promotion for Buy Local Buy Fresh, a Wellington County promotion).
Other Chapters focus on walking tours, a calendar of events, a perspective on all the local arts, and, finally, boutiques and other diversions a traveller might want to experience.
Dalziel said she was blown away at how everyone seemed to become involved. “We were sold out a week before the deadline,” she said of the advertisers and partners who are in the book.
Klassen joked, “We’re an overnight success. It took only three years.”
That’s how long the group has been building its promotional effort.
Those efforts come with much more than just a brochure, too.
In this modern world, a website is mandatory, and Klassen said in an interview, “We launched the website this morning.”
That website is recipestoexperience.com, and it includes all of the information and advertising in the brochure, plus a few extras.
The provincial government provided the local tourism groups with $98,000 for promotion of agriculture and tourism through an Ontario Marketing Investment Fund grant. That means not only a bigger and better promotional booklet and website, but wider distribution.
Klassen explained each brochure carries a code on it when it directs people to the website. The group is moving from 35,000 brochures last year to over 80,000 this year. Several members noted that Fergus Truck Show chief operating office Wayne Billings was attending a four-day truck show in Montreal that week, and he had taken along four boxes of Recipes to Experience for distribution.
Ontario is not being ignored, either. Besides local distribution, on May 22, the Friday of a long weekend, 52,000 copies of the book will be distributed by the Globe and Mail to target areas ranging from Newmarket around the GTA and back westward to Kitchener-Waterloo.
Klassen said the intent is to target what is the area’s natural market: “upscale adventurers.”
He noted organizers will be able to tell where the book was most effective. A contest will send people to the web site, where they can win stays at a bed and breakfast, dinners, and other goods, and they will have to use the book’s code, which tells organizers what area they are from, and allows them to track the promotion’s effectiveness.
Kelly Waterhouse, who was hired by Elora Fergus Tourism and wrote the book, with Klassen and Melanie Ward as editors and contributors, said people today are interested in food and will travel to places that offer unique and tasty fare.
“People travel for a food experience,” she said.
Dalziel said those involved in promoting the book included local BIAs, retailers (many advertised), and “People with a passion for the community dug deep and planted seeds of friendship.”
She was particularly pleased that so many food producers were interested in working with the tourism groups.
Waterhouse told the assembly, “I think this is the start of something big.
Mayor Joanne Ross-Zuj congratulated the group she had seen proposals for the book a few years ago when it was accidentally sent to her instead of councillor Kirk McElwain. She remembered at the time that she was pleased with all the ideas the rough sketch showed.
Now, she said, “Look where we’ve come. Look how we’re working together. We’re onto something really big and really exciting.”
