We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cherimarie Poulos a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Cherimarie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Food Tour Interview Question Answers for Carlsbad Food Tours 1.) How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Meet the Founders:
Cherimarie Poulos
• CEO – Carlsbad Food Tours is a Women-Owned, Veteran Owned Business. Retired Registered Nurse specializing in heart surgery.
Brad Poulos
• CMO – 30 + years in the medical device and internet marketing.
When did you start the business?
We opened in May of 2014 becoming the first guided culinary and wine walking tour in Carlsbad, CA. We focus on helping visitors and Carlsbad residents alike, enjoy the best off-the-beaten-path food and cultural experience possible. Eat like a local and enjoy a taste of Carlsbad! In 2017 Cheri won Women-owned Small Business Owner with the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce.
How did you come up with the idea for your business?
In 2013, during an anniversary weekend, Cheri and her husband went on a food tour in Carmel, California, and had a fabulous time. The thought came to her that “We have a village, with some wonderful restaurants, why can’t we have a food tour in Carlsbad?” She believed that the best way to experience a town is through food because food tells the story of a neighborhood’s people, history, and culture. After returning to Carlsbad and checking to make sure we did not in fact already have a tour, Cheri decided to jump on this idea before someone else did. But where to start? Having not owned her own business before, Cheri decided to seek counsel by calling the owner of the Carmel Food Tour, Stacy, and ask her for guidance. The first thing she said is I needed to contact Shane Kost in Chicago and do his Food Tour Pros course. Taking the course with Shane was the best advice she could have gotten. His course gave her a template on the how to set up her business. He taught them how to present the idea to the vendors, how to price the tour and how to set it up to be successful from day one. After going to Chicago, Cheri returned with so much enthusiasm and ideas! And immediately went about town pitching the idea and gathering my vendors together. She also spent an enormous amount of time studying the history and culture of Carlsbad, as well as getting the “back story” on the restaurants in town.
Choosing the restaurants and food tastings was fun but also difficult due to having so many great restaurants in Carlsbad. She initially focused on my two main items: Great Food & History! She chose eateries that had both characteristics. Cheri also wanted to spotlight unique family-owned places that we not easily repeated in other cities. Cheri wanted her tour guests to get a taste of what Carlsbad had to offer.
Location, location, location… Carlsbad is a wonderful place for family vacations, getaways and staycations and food tours! It is centrally located between San Diego and Orange County, which makes it a fantastic location for those looking to visit So Cal theme parks, Disneyland, LEGOLAND, Sea World, and the Wild Animal Park.
After setting up the tour, Cheri called Shane and told him I was ready for my walk thru visit. He flew from Chicago to do the tour, and of course took a plethora of notes and made a variety suggestion at the end of the tour on how she could improve the product. The first year of the business she continued to work as a nurse doing, 9 hour shifts during the week and tours on the weekends. So, it was a busy time, but the tours were doing well so Cheri was happy.
The second year Cheri did retire from nursing and decided to set the business up as a seasonal business because it is a retirement job and she had told her husband that she would sail with him in retirement. After 5 years of a semi-nomadic lifestyle, returned to Carlsbad full time. Carlsbad Food Tours is now in their eighth season, has two additional tour guides and going strong, they have doubled their guest experience year after year. Cheri and her team love showing Carlsbad off to tourist and locals alike.
Carlsbad Food Tours
WHEN: Tours offered daily
TIME: 11:30-2:30 pm
COST: $68
WHATS INCLUDED: All Tastings food & wine.
WHO: Perfect for both local San Diego residents and visitors interested in indulging their inner foodie! Eat like a local and discover Carlsbad’s history, culture and architectural gems. Family Friendly!
Custom Private Group Tours are available for team building events and celebrations
For more information, Visit Our Website at carlsbadfoodtours.com or email at
Cherimarie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Cherimarie Poulos OWNER & FOUNDER
Cheri was born & raised in California. She has lived in San Diego over 20 years, her children were born in the area. She has a strong connection to Carlsbad, in fact one of her daughters was Miss Carlsbad 2005. So she voted herself to be Mrs. Carlsbad. Now the Chief Foodie and Founder of Carlsbad Food Tours! She loves Carlsbad and is happy to share her knowledge about the local history and great eateries in the Carlsbad Village. Cheri was also a Registered Nurse for over 30 years and loves to teach others about how to live a healthy lifestyle; which includes walking, eating healthy foods, small frequent meals and socialization. All of which are in her tour.
Cherimarie Poulos owner of Carlsbad Food Tours won “Women-Owned Small Business Award 2017”. The Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce created their annual small business awards as a way to recognize the accomplishments of small-business owners.
Favorite Food: Chocolate
Favortie Drink: Coffee
Favorite Food Quote: “First we eat, then we do everything else” – M.F.K. Fisher
[email protected]
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
During the onset of COVID we had to pivot our business from walking food tours to specialty food baskets, “A Taste of Carlsbad”. We then sold the baskets online on our website. As it turned out it was quite expensive to mail the items, so we ended up delivering them locally. When we returned to doing the food tours we stopped the basket making due to it being time consuming and not as profitable. Other food tours around the country did pivot to basket and have decided not to return to their food tours. Places like Seattle and Pike’s market did very well in that business due to being known for specialty foods, i.e. seafood, etc.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
When we did return to our food tour business we noted a variety of changes in our tasting locations. Some of the restaurants were now only open in the evening for dinner and no service for lunch. Our tour are normally from 11:30am to 2:30pm, so that was obviously a problem that we needed to deal with immediately. A few of our restrauants went out of business or changed their business model. One in particular was an olive oil place that we had on the tour for tastings, that stopped doing tastings and ended up combining their storefront with a boutique that was located next door to reduce their overhead during the crisis. New restaurants also came into play during the pandemic. Although it was not a good time to start a business, who knew a disaster was in the making. Those new businesses were a Godsend for our business restarting. We lost some and gain new tasting locations. Basically, we had to reinvent the tour in order to stay afloat. It is a different tour now then prior to COVID but it is still a fun and exciting tour.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.carlsbadfoodtours.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carlsbadfoodtours
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NorthCountySanDiegoFoodTours
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlsbadfoodtours
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CarlsbadFood
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Carlsbadfoodtours
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/carlsbad-food-tours-carlsbad-4
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@carlsbadfoodtour