Her company was one of Maine’s fastest-growing a few years ago. Now, after the pandemic has upended Maine’s dining scene, Laskey offers a wider menu of tours.
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Pamela Laskey founded Maine Foodie Tours brand in 2009, offering guided tasting tours of restaurants, giving visitors an inside look at chef’s kitchens and the state’s booming dining scene. In 2016, Mainebiz named Laskey’s firm one of Maine’s fastest-growing companies.
When restaurants closed during the pandemic, she shifted the model to offer history tours. She’s just now starting to get visitors back to restaurants, but now offers a wider palate of tours. Between tours, Laskey took some time to chat with Mainebiz.
Mainebiz: How were you able to make the pivot to history tours, did the PPP loans help with that?
Pamela Laskey: Yes, I did. I applied and received a PPP loan through the SBA and Bangor Savings Bank. I used that money to pay my tour guides to help create the content for the new tours. We’ve also been using it to create some videos with the guides on locations talking about some historical facts and stories that we’re editing now to add to our website. We used it to help create the Coco To Go [virtual tours] and begin the marketing and social media endeavors for all of those new tours. And I paid my management team to help process the sheer volume of refunds that we needed to return — painful, but understandable — and we wanted everyone to recognize that we weren’t going to push them to a gift certificate. You just have to do the right thing. The whole pivot in general has been a team effort.
MB: Last summer, in the height of your company’s success, you had 30 tour guides and over 10,000 guests. What do those numbers look like this year?
PL: We’re running one tour a day, sometimes none. I think that it’s probably going to remain slow like this for an indefinite period of time. Of course, when you own a business, you’re an optimist. I’m always creating new tours and expanding because that’s what I love, but at the same time I’m very aware that the circumstances are larger than what any of us can control. Last year to date versus this year-to-date, we are at 10% of typical sales, so that’s my prediction for the year.
MB: Can you describe what your conversations with restaurants across the state have been like?
PL: What we are doing with our partners daily is a lot of communicating about the state of their community, the state of their business, their comfort levels with customers and their safety precautions. What I do right away is assure them of our new COVID-related policies and procedures in place. There are a lot of partners that are willing to work with us because of our policies and procedures in place. And there are some that are saying, ‘We’re just not ready at this time,’ or aren’t open. They want to hold off and see how things play out. Generally, thus far, people have been really grateful for the business because most places have empty seats.
MB: How have you adjusted your tours as restaurants continue to reopen?
PL: Normally, we’d sell out with 14 people on the tour, now we limit those to eight people. They need to read our COVID-19 policies on our website. When they purchase tickets, they need to check a box that says they agree to them. I do the same thing with all of my tour guides before we start every tour. When guests do purchase tickets, 24 hours before their tour, they get an email confirmation that asks them again.
MB: Are there any other things you plan on adding to your brand?
PL: We’ve added the history tours. We’ve added two new towns with those in Biddeford in Brunswick. We just started our very first virtual tour, which is a Coco To Go package. It’s a fun combination from our partners across the state of Maine that we mail out in the continental U.S. with some fun facts, stories and videos from chocolatiers. We kind of create an experience around the food as well as curating an interesting gift pack. It’s a lot more interesting than just getting a food gift in the mail.