Craft Food Tours Turns Five Years Old and Expands to Fort Lauderdale

Craft Food Tours, a walking food tour company in Delray Beach, pays homage to a love of culinary experiences and cuisine and was founded by two foodies.

Matt Guidice and Anthony Guzman met in 2014 through mutual friends and bonded over a shared love of exploring new restaurants. On a 2016 trip to Austin, the idea of Craft Food Tours came to life when Guzman took a food tour of the Texas city. "The ability to taste multiple restaurants in a few short hours under one set price was intriguing, along with the fun facts portion of the tour," he tells New Times.

The duo then enrolled in Food Tour Pros, a food tour training institute based in Chicago, where they received guidance on creating their own business, including developing marketing plans and enlisting restaurants to participate.

The two share responsibilities, with Guzman spearheading sales and marketing while Guidice focuses on finances and operations.

Like many companies tied to the hospitality industry, COVID-19 hit the business hard. With no tourism and restaurant dining rooms closed, Craft Food Tours temporarily closed in March 2020 and pivoted to driving business to their restaurant partners who'd switched to takeout. They used email and social media to promote eating locally, posting Instagram stories on daily specials, sending out weekly newsletters, and buying takeout themselves at least five times a week to support the restaurant community.

The strategy paid off. With minimal overhead costs, the business was able to resume tours in early 2021, emerging with only a small loss.

During the first six months after relaunch, the tours were private-only groups of ten or fewer people. Mandatory masks, individual servings, a full refund policy, flexible booking/cancellation, and other policies were enforced as a precaution.

With South Florida seeing a tourism boom, the little food tour company found itself expanding to include Fort Lauderdale tours in August 2021.

“Our goal has always been to replicate the success of our tours in Delray. The first Craft Food Tour was a deep dive into Delray’s vibrant food culture and a way to support the city’s mom-and-pop shops, a concept that we knew would work well in other South Florida towns,” says Guzman, adding, "We always had Fort Lauderdale at the top of our expansion list and knew it would be the next big opportunity to scale.”

The Fort Lauderdale food tours begin in front of the Stranahan House, then navigate through the restaurants of Las Olas.

The partners are also eyeing Boca Raton. Right now, they're dipping their toes in the water by planning private tours. The goal, says Guzman, is to expand to most cities in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Guzman says the company aims to connect and educate through food.

“Our motto is to ‘create relationships around food tourism,’ so what's next for us is to continue building our community,” he adds. “We're getting prepared to take Craft Food Tours to new heights and will hopefully have a team of twenty-plus one day operating our concept in multiple cities. We want to be able to help more and more local restaurants get their word out to curious locals and travelers about what it means to eat local.”

Craft Food Tours. craftfoodtours.com. Tickets cost $60 to $85.