Like most locals, we’re huge fans of the Park Avenue area in Winter Park. Food tours are one of our favorite things to do, so we decided to do the Flavors of Winter Park tour for my fiancées birthday celebration. The tour met in the chamber of commerce building (which was beautiful) and left just after 10:45am. The tour consisted of 7 different stops, but only 5 of them served some type of food. We tried samples such as beef patties, pot stickers, pastries, soda, and more. As locals who love the area, we’ve tried most of the top spots on park avenue. None of what we would consider “top spots” were visited. The tour guides said they tried to find spots that we may not know about, and they did just that, but it didn’t seem very intentional. We felt as if they didn’t spend much time hand picking the perfect places to stop. I’ll dig into that in the next section. One of the places we stopped was Fresh and Co, which is a chain. We couldn’t believe the tour stopped here. Another stop was a local candy and soda shop, which offered taffy samples, but didn’t really belong on a food tour. Our first stop was at the local farmers market, which seemed a bit odd. We also didn’t like that the guides never know what the locations are going to serve us. It’s random. If you’re hoping to get full, don’t plan on it. Most of the samples are TRUE sample sizes. We went on a food tour in the fall with another local company, and were so full by the 3rd stop that we could only eat a bite at the fourth. That’s how it should be at a food tour. It was nice learning some history about the area of WP, but we wouldn’t recommend this tour. A plus is that you get 10% off the day of tour at any of the stops. We enjoyed going back and using this at the Ancient Olive Store. On the other hand, we’ve both been on the scenic boat tour, which is amazing.
Thank you for your feedback, although we would disagree with many of the assumptions made. We have been doing this tour for 8 years and hand pick the non-obvious places to visit in Winter Park. That is an intentional decision, reviewed each year as to add or delete stops. We like the fact that the locations offer up a variety of different choices, which is why we have a 28% return rate on this tour from guests, as they know it won't be the same selections as last time. You mentioned that Fresh & Co is a chain....with three location, and one of the three is New York. It sounds like you were looking for something more like our progressive dinner tour, and we hope to see you on that one day!
