• by Sara Guaglione , August 13, 2019

Vox Media’s Eater brand is partnering with boutique travel agency Black Tomato to create travel packages centered around food.

Called Eater Journeys, the trips are currently offered to Mexico City and Oaxaca, Rome and Florence, and Paris and Burgundy, with experiences like visiting a truffle farm and going on a biodynamic wine tour. 

Each month, Eater Journeys will release a new destination and itinerary based on the interests of Eater's readers and suggestions from local experts.

Eater Journeys is the next step of growth for Eater Travel, a vertical the publisher has been putting “a lot of time and energy into” in the past two years, Britt Aboutaleb, general manager at Eater, told Publishers Daily. It’s the first partnership of this kind for Eater, she noted. 

Lesley Suter was named Eater Travel editor in December 2017 to build out the vertical. 

Eater Journeys officially launched yesterday with an announcement on Eater’s homepage. It's also in Eater’s newsletters, social-media channels and content related to the chosen cities and regions.

“Come on one of our personally designed, private, food-focused trips through some of the world’s ultimate culinary destinations, from Rome to Mexico City and Oaxaca to Paris, all enhanced by expert local guides and Eater-approved restaurants to ensure you have the most delicious. trip. Ever,” Suter wrote.

The idea for the partnership with Black Tomato came from paying attention to readers' preferences, how they were using the site’s travel content and what they wanted more or less of, Aboutaleb said.

Eater’s audience uses the site’s popular heatmaps to look up the “hottest restaurants” in different cities, often while traveling to a new city or planning a trip. Suter works with a global network of local writers, illustrators and photographers to help craft Eater’s maps and travel content. 

Eater Journeys “is the luxurious version of the Eater maps,” Aboutaleb said. 

Readers can buy a trip through Black Tomato, with every restaurant in the itinerary curated by Eater and vetted by its network of local experts, she explained. Black Tomato takes care of the rest, such as reservations, guides and transportation.

Prices range from about $3,800 to $5,800 per person.