We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jami Maudlin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jami below.

Jami, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

When my husband and I were talking about starting a tour geared toward women, I knew I wanted it to have shopping involved – I love to shop local. Since we live in Savannah, where we have an open container policy, my husband also wanted to include drinks while the ladies were shopping. I took shopping and sipping and came up with the name Sip n’ Shop Tours; we have since trademarked the name Sip n’ Shop.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Chris and Jami are lifelong residents of the Coastal Empire. As true locals, they have a deep and sincere love for historic Savannah. They created Sip ‘n Shop Savannah Tours from Jami’s life-long love of fashion, shopping and supporting local businesses; mixed with Chris’s love of historic downtown Savannah.

After several years of giving tours and many hours spent in the historic district, they realized that Savannah was a prime women’s destination. They also noticed that there were very few tours and activities geared toward women visiting this beautiful Hostess City. Out of that desire came Sip ‘n Shop Savannah Tours, a chance for women to do two of their favorite things: shopping while sipping their way through the historic district.

After many tours of women saying how great this would do in other cities, they decided to take the leap! Their first “outside” city was Charleston, then came Nashville, Austin just launched in September.

It is Jami’s and Chris’s hope that their guests will be able to Sip ‘n Shop like true locals, with the shopping focus being on locally owned businesses.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Sip n’ Shop Tours did begin as a weekend side hustle. I (Jami) am a teacher, I still teach part-time, two days a week. Teaching has been my career for 20 years, but I was getting burnt out with teaching, especially during COVID. The goal was to stop teaching full time and focus on Sip n’ Shop while opening up other cities. We were able to make this happen in 2021, after opening up Charleston. Weekends were staying so busy, we began opening up days during the week, people started booking! It was so cool that people were signing up for something we created. This has definitely turned into a full time job. We book 100 or more people a week, because of this, I was able to leave full time teaching and focus on growing a business I absolutely love. We know are in four cities! It is still hard to believe!

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Our best source of clients are bachelorette parties. Sip n’ Shop is such a fun activity to do on a bachelorette party. Who does not love to drink while shopping and getting discounts at stores? The tours are between two and 2.5 hours, so the girls get to see a part of the city and have plenty of time to do other activities afterwards. We also tend to get a lot of milestone birthday celebrations.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @sipnshoptours
• Facebook: Sip n’ Shop Tours