Tourism Richmond's online experiment has turned into the full meal deal.
The agency's website promotion entitled 365 Days of Dining has been winning fans and peer praise, but it also just won the Best Social Media Campaign (Public) at the Vancouver Social Media Awards event celebrating the best in community conversations.
Bloggers were the toast of the VSMAs, and Tourism Richmond's hired blog writer is Prince George's Lindsay Anderson. Day after day, she has eaten at the smorgasbord of cafes, pubs and restaurants in Richmond and after each experience she writes about it on the 365 Days of Dining web page.
It is Tourism Richmond's way of showing off the extraordinary collection of eateries inside their city.
"It has been a lot of work - even more work than I realized it would be," said Anderson. "It is hard to produce content every single day. Eating out is not the tough part, but keeping your brain on track to produce something creative and interesting for people to read is the real challenge. But I still marvel that this is my job, so that is huge, and I'm also shocked at how quickly it's gone."
She is now into the final 50 days of the venture. She won the position using a creative video audition supported by a large contingent of friends endorsing Anderson's food knowledge and her personality - the combination needed for such a public figure.
She has studied culinary arts as a profession and cooking has been a major part of her previous work experience and constant personal passion.
She got the job, and she has lived up the initial expectations, said her Tourism Richmond team.
"We are thrilled to have been recognized for our hard work on 365daysofdining.com through the 2013 Vancouver Social Media Awards," said Tracy Lakeman, CEO of Tourism Richmond. "We have received great public feedback on the blog which has inspired people to try and enjoy dishes and restaurants they may not have heard of before and that was our goal - to have people discover Richmond and our unique culinary offerings through the eyes of our adventurous blogger, Lindsay Anderson."
The job has been more than just a buffet of cafes, Anderson said. She is a student of gastronomy so this has introduced her to food preparation and presentation ideas she would never have learned of otherwise. The varieties of Chinese food alone was a revelation to her, she said, plus all the other Asian nations that have set their tables in Richmond. Plus, the seaside city also has fresh fish of all kinds, European fare, and all the standard (some far above standard) North American flavours you would expect in a thriving metropolitan area.
"It is definitely springtime here so I am out exercising more, so I definitely have more of an appetite and I am prone to looking for places that do picnic lunches, and even picnic dinners. And I am craving lighter foods now - more sushi, less stew like I was craving in winter," she said.
She is also coupling the food revelations with other cultural points of interest around Richmond, pairing eating and enjoying city features like picking the right wine for the meal. She has a trip to the opera planned soon, a boat tour of the local coastline, touring a free-range chicken farm, and going for a wild bounce at Extreme Airpark (an indoor trampoline activity centre).
She adds these spices to her main blogger broth for more colour and flavor of Richmond in her foodie column.
These constant adventures will be missed, she said, when the job runs out in less than two months.
"When I'm finished I'm looking forward to cooking for myself a little more, but right now home cooked meals are a novelty," she said. "I've got ideas about what I'll do later. Nothing is set in stone yet. Hopefully when the job closes out I'll have an announcement to make. But the first thing I'll be doing is take a week to shut down, reboot the body and the brain."
