This story is part of our January 2025 issue. To subscribe, click here.

An out-of-state mother visiting her college student son. A family of three in town for a Christmas-themed train ride. A couple on date night. The three parties gather one November afternoon in Sacramento to share a meal with strangers. “I didn’t even know we were doing this until just now,” a woman says, giggling. Her companion booked the surprise outing through Local Roots Food Tours, believed to be the first-of-its-kind business to set up shop in the Capital Region.

Owner Dawnie Andrak addresses the group. “This is how it’s going to work,” she says. “We’re going to show up to places, and food is just going to appear.” Then everyone walks inside the restaurant to learn about the city’s history and culture, one bite at a time. Andrak leads the way to four other eateries, pointing out murals and reciting trivia between stops. The full-course dinner consists of tacos al pastor, coffee, pad thai, breaded cauliflower fritters in buffalo sauce and an ice cream sandwich. 

Andrak plans out every step, but she also employs three guides to lead folks on her four walking routes across Midtown and downtown. A chef launched the food tour agency in 2010 after experiencing one at Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Andrak and her partner Tim Bailey acquired Local Roots five years later. The business appeals to people who are unfamiliar with Sacramento’s food scene but want to experience it cost-effectively. “They want to get the lay of the land and find out what’s going on in the city, and a food tour is a really good way to do that,” Andrak says. 

A food tour isn’t about the food. Not entirely. Surprise is part of the charm. Andrak coordinates with 25 restaurants for her Midtown tour, swapping them out based on availability and customers’ dietary needs.

People don’t know where they’re going or what’s on the menu, just that there will be a variety of quality meals within walking distance. A food tour is a novel way to experience a place through an activity that appeals to and is accessible by all: eating. “At some level, we’re really in the business of selling Sacramento,” Andrak says, “which is fine by me.” She’s not alone. Since Local Roots started up, several other food tour agencies have got into the business of selling the Farm-to-Fork Capital.

Selling Sacramento

Robert Vee is a chef-turned-entrepreneur who calls himself “a food tour evangelist.” After successfully starting a food tour business in Austin, Texas, Vee launched Sacramento Food Tours in 2017. An early hurdle Vee had to overcome was introducing the concept to customers. “It was still a learning curve to the general populace, even to our target market,” he says. His team created promotional material explaining the premise. “Once we got the knack of that, business was good.”

Vee only does private tours and focuses on employee team-building outings for corporate clients. One time he led a group of travel writers and influencers from around the world who were undertaking a grand tour of California. “That opened up my eyes right there, that we got something,” Vee says. He aims to give customers a behind-the-scenes look at what they’re eating. Often he’ll have the owner, chef or a senior staffer visit the table to speak with his tours. 

But the key to a good tour is a good tour guide. Vee describes himself as a cross between celebrity chef Guy Fieri and the late California PBS show host Huell Howser. He educates and engages his guests with lore and legends. The platter and chatter are deliberately intertwined. “I build a storyline behind the whole thing, and they love it,” Vee says. “So that’s the appeal right there.”

There’s selling food tours to potential customers, then there’s selling it to restaurant owners. The sales pitch is additional revenue and exposure at convenience. Food tour agencies get permission before adding them as a stop and always coordinate ahead of time. The eateries know when the tour will arrive and its size, typically ranging from eight to 15 people. Visits can be scheduled for slow periods of the day, and the fact the group all eats the same dish means it can be ready by the time they arrive. Then they’re in and out in 30 minutes. 

Another benefit is bringing in people who normally wouldn’t eat there, potentially making future customers. It’s a symbiotic relationship made apparent by the pandemic lockdowns. When the local eateries closed, so did the food tours. As Vee puts it: “We’re at the mercy of the restaurants.” His Sacramento business has relaunched, but his Austin tours remain on hiatus. 

COVID-19 also affected Heather Fortes, a commercial photographer who started SacTown Bites in September 2019, calling it a “cliche midlife career change.” Her background in event planning and coordinating with multiple parties was a useful skill set for running a food tour agency. Planning a food tour is like playing Tetris, she says.

There’s a lot of moving parts that constantly need to be arranged to fit into place. SacTown Bites got more of Fortes’ attention after she was laid off in February 2020. Now she and her guides lead tour walking routes in Sacramento and two excursions (transportation not included) featuring farms and wineries. 

Fortes says, “You can really do a food tour in any city,” but Sacramento has its benefits. A study from WalletHub last year put Sacramento as the seventh most ethnically diverse large city in the country. “You can really get any cuisine that you’re looking for,” Forte says. “All that just make it really dynamic. So there’s everything from an inexpensive hot chicken sandwich all the way to izakaya, chef-menu plated dinners.”

A food destination?

Sacramento isn’t a bucket-list destination with world-renowned landmarks, so food was turned into a feature. The city’s tourism bureau Visit Sacramento claimed the title of “America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital” in 2012, and the Farm-to-Fork Festival was launched a year later. Restauranter Josh Nelson pitched the campaign to promote the area’s restaurants by highlighting their direct access to fresh ingredients. 

Years later, Visit Sacramento convinced the state tourism bureau to pay Michelin inspectors $600,000 to review restaurants statewide. The Kitchen, co-owned by Nelson, in 2019 became the first Sacramento restaurant to earn a Michelin star, followed by Localis in 2022. The reputation of Sacramento’s food scene continues to grow. The New York Times last year published an article titled “How Sacramento Turned into a Great Restaurant City,” and the website Eater included the city in its list of “Where to Eat in 2024” alongside places like Osaka, Japan and Cairo, Egypt. “The city has made an effort to make it a food destination,” Fortes says, “and I think that’s really paid off.” 

Abhijeet Shirsat, an associate professor at Sacramento State University teaches a class on food tourism and says the concept grew in prominence around the late 1990s. The global trade group World Food Travel Association was established in 2003 and organized the first international culinary tourism trade conference a year later. Food tourism is an extension of “experience tourism”: Younger generations from late Millennials to Gen Z and onward want more from their vacations than just buying souvenirs and snapping photos. 

“When experience became more popular, students and people started to look at different ideas of learning what tourism itself is,” Shirsat says. “So out of that started to grow a need for exploring cultures, a need for exploring food, a need for explanation to cultures. And I look at food tourism, or gastronomic tourism, as an opportunity to tell a story about a culture.”

Walking food tours started in Tier 1 cities like New York City and Los Angeles, then spread to smaller metropolitan areas. Sacramento isn’t late or early to this trend. “What is more important to understand is Sacramento has food tourism,” Shirsat says, “unlike many other Tier 2 cities who still don’t have it.” However, Sacramento doesn’t have must-visit food attractions like Portland’s Voodoo Doughnut or Leonard’s Bakery in Honolulu, nor regional dishes like Philadelphia cheesesteaks or Chicago-style pizza. What the city is leaning into is its proximity to abundant agriculture. The freshness of California cuisine is a unique selling point. It could help draw visitors to the Capital Region as the reputation of its restaurant scene grows. 

“These food tours are going to be super popular for God knows how long a time,” Shirsat says, “but it’s going to become this big thing for, especially Sacramento, in the coming years.”  

–

Stay up to date on Capital Region food news: Subscribe to the Comstock’s newsletter today.