This document discusses the past, present, and future of the local food industry in Waterloo Region. It notes that five years ago, the region had a chain restaurant-focused food culture with limited local food entrepreneurship and social media presence. However, it suggests the industry is growing slowly with more restaurants and an evolving food culture. The document outlines opportunities around social media, culinary tourism, and leveraging the region's tech industry. It envisions in five years a more developed local food scene with stronger culinary tourism and greater entrepreneurship supported by improved social media marketing.

1. Looking Forward; Looking Back:
The Future of Local Food

2. Food in Waterloo Region
• Assumption 1:
– Food industry entrepreneurship is growing, if slowly
• Assumption 2:
– Food culture in Waterloo Region is growing, if slowly
– Why do I say this? …

3. Five Years Ago … or so

4. Some Resto Statistics (courtesy CRFA)
• Resto industry = $63 billion p.a.
– 4% of Canada’s economic activity
• Resto industry employs 1.1 million people
– 6.5% of Canadian workforce; or, 4th largest sector
• Resto industry employs 483,000 people <25 y.o.

5. Looking Back
• Let’s pick just 10 years ago:
– A few precursors to a “Local Food Movement:”
– A chain-restaurant Region, generally;
– A meat-and-potatoes appetite.

6. Business / Commerce Opportunities Ahead
• Under-marketed [under-marketable?] restaurant sector
• Social Media / Piggy-backing on WatReg’s Hi-Tech energy
• Culinary Tourism

7. Then and Now: Marketing Minimalism
• Historically and Today:
– Restaurants = poor marketers
• Limited resources
– Local “ethnic” restaurants in Waterloo Region
• Unique but silent

8. Social Media in Food and Beverage
• Looking back only 5 years
– Little social media
– Many restaurants had meagre websites
– Few were savvy at communicating w/ customers
• Today: the same?

9. Future Social Media Smorgasbord?
• What does Waterloo Region’s Hi-Tech energy offer?
– Growing business / entrepreneurial interest in:
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Quora

10. Foodlink’s Food Phone App

11. Tourism
• 2008 = 42.3 million overnight visitors to Ontario
• In terms of food, WR needs to unify programs & energies
“related to industry associations, food entrepreneurs” and
food communities;
• Tourism can provide opportunities for FnB
entrepreneurship between a multiple stakeholders.
– [ adapted from OCTA Strategy Plan]

12. Culinary Tourism Defined …
• A tourism experience during which:
– Appreciation
– Education
– Consumption
– Reflection
… occurs in and around food and beverage “that reflects local,
regional, national cuisine, heritage, culture, tradition and
techniques.”
Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance, “Culinary Tourism Strategy and Action Plan: 2011-2015”
[http://www.mtc.gov.on.ca/en/publications/Culinary_web.pdf].

13. Who Are Culinary Tourists?
• Three distinct sectors:
1. 10% of tourists plan trips based on the food experience;
2. 80% include food experience in their larger tourism plans;
3. 10% of general tourists are “accidental culinary tourists”
• [UW Professor Stephen Smith / OCTA Strategy Plan]
• Obviously: Sector 2 should be our target…

14. Waterloo Region Culinary Tourism
• Unremarkable / off the radar
• Fragmented / disjointed
• NOT part of OCTA [should it be?]
• Some movement: CT = part of WRTMC’s evolution
– All this represents:
• Potential future business opportunities
• Improved quality of life in Waterloo Region

15. Five Years From Now?