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

Linda, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

We love Oceanside. Oceanside was a restaurant desert for many years and did not have a good reputation. 13 years ago a restaurant named “Flying Pig” opened; then Privateer in South O, then restaurants started coming in with the breweries. We were so excited that we had great food and drink. Our friends in a neighboring city started asking us what was going on in Oceanside. They wanted us to show them around, then they started asking us to show their guests around when they had visitors. Carla came up with the idea of a food tour. We approached the first restaurant, they didn’t understand the concept but they said we are new, you are new so lets learn together. We negotiated food prices and started charging for a walking food tour. We want people to love Oceanside as much as we do and what better way to get them interested than with food. We now have over 30 restaurants to choose from. We have a special relationship with the Chefs and Owners and thus have embedded ourselves in the Oceanside and Vista food scene. When available the Chefs come out and interact with the foodies answering questions and taking pictures. We have many people that take our tour every time they go on vacation to Oceanside as well as many locals. We are proud of what we have done with getting people to be comfortable in going to places that they would have walked by without a second look. We only go to family owned restaurants, no corporate restaurants.

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

Carla and Linda have been together since 1996. We have always been attracted to working for ourselves. We are def part of the gig economy. When we started the tour business there were a lot of things we had to figure out. We had never been part of the restaurant industry. As we approached each restaurant we learned a lot. During our first year we utilized all of the local groups like Main Street Oceanside and Visit Oceanside. Those groups helped us so much! They suggested doing surveys, having a list of places we went to and maybe handing out flyers with the local events listed. They gave us suggestions that we still use 8 years later. Every person that takes a tour gets a schwag bag with all kinds of fun stuff in it. We are very grateful for the relationships that we have developed. We are able to accommodate nearly any dietary restrictions, we do private tours for birthdays, anniversaries, bridal showers and team builders. We have also started to do beer tours and wine tours. We are so happy to live here in Oceanside and to be such a big part of the foodie community.

We started doing “practice tours” in late 2015 and had our first official walking food tour on Feb 21st, 2016.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Covid 19 really put a damper on the food tours. We had to find a way to stay relevant with the restaurants closed to inside dining. Linda had found out that a local mushroom company was giving away their stock because they couldn’t ship to closed restaurants. Linda was able to receive many pallets of fresh mushrooms and distribute them to the restaurants that were doing curbside pickup as well as to some of the groups giving out food to people in need. We did everything we could to promote food pickups and promote the restaurants so they could keep doing “to go” dinners. We are lucky to have made it through the pandemic with very few of the restaurants closing permanently. We still promote the restaurants just as strongly as we promote ourselves.

Have you ever had to pivot?

We had been doing walking food tours for more than 2 years and Carla got “that” diagnosis. She had a very strong and aggressive type of breast cancer. Linda continued to do the tours as well as keep up on Carla’s appointments. One of the Chefs found out and the word spread amongst the restaurants in Oceanside. One of the restaurants actually reached out to us to see if they could do a fundraiser for us. We are still and will always be grateful for all of the support that we received from ALL of our participating restaurants. With their support, along with our friends, we were able to get through the hardest time of our life without having too hard of a time.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.shoesandchews.com
• Instagram: @shoesandchews
• Facebook: Carla and Linda’s Local Tours
• Linkedin: Linda Pina
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l01k7bJ4lnc
• Yelp: Carla and Linda’s Local Tours
• Other: tiktok: shoesandchews

Image Credits
Linda Pina