The Culinary Tourism Alliance (CTA) is a not-for-profit that connects growers, chefs, restaurateurs, and communities across Canada. Their goal? To strengthen local food systems and inspire travelers to explore the country through its flavors. For the CTA, food is about more than what’s on the plate. It’s about people, places, and the stories that bring them together.
Marketing Manager Gabrielle Mueller, who has been with the team for more than three years, has seen firsthand how storytelling can transform communities.
“I love seeing the impact on small farms and restaurants after we’ve helped tell their story,” she says. “When storytelling is done well, it can reignite passion in business owners and drive meaningful economic growth to a destination.”
Turning Stories Into Impact
Every day, Gabrielle and her team help tell Canada’s taste of place story for alliance members. “This can look like anything from planning content trips and social media campaigns to major cooperative marketing campaigns with national partners,” she says.
To bring those stories to life, the team relies on smart tools, like CrowdRiff,to power their visuals and keep their content fresh. “We use CrowdRiff to create photo galleries across our website platforms for each Feast On® partner in Ontario (our local food certification) and each destination member,” Gabrielle explains.
“Our website’s imagery is so reliant on the social content and CrowdRiff helps us stay relevant and fresh. It helps us source imagery when we haven’t been to a destination recently and helps us promote partner content.”
Partnering with Creators to Tell Local Stories
When the team launched the Great Taste of Canada campaign, they faced a challenge. Their Ontario-based team wanted to tell stories from across the country but didn’t have the capacity or budget to capture all the content themselves.
“We leaned on CrowdRiff Creators to capture content across the country,” Gabrielle says. “This allowed us to have unique content pieces to share with partners, across our website and on social media that could be repurposed again and again.”CTA has also collaborated with the Creator team to source content for the CanadaCulinary.com website and social channels. The partnership made it possible to feature fresh, localized storytelling that reflects the diversity of Canada’s culinary scene. “We still use some of that content today!” Gabrielle says.
Empowering Members to Tell Their Own Stories
Supporting members is at the heart of the Culinary Tourism Alliance’s work. The team focuses on giving each partner the tools and visibility they need to share their own stories and connect with travelers.
“We use CrowdRiff galleries for all of our partners,” Gabrielle explains. “It’s a great incentive for them to stay active on social media. We can say, ‘If you’d like your gallery updated on your landing page, keep posting, and we’ll pull your latest content from there.’”
By showcasing content directly from members’ social feeds, CTA helps partners celebrate their own local food stories and stay visible online. The process not only saves time curating imagery but also strengthens relationships and engagement across the network.
A Recipe for Meaningful Growth
Gabrielle shares some great lessons that any travel marketing team can use.
1. Get to know your community. The most effective marketing isn’t about promotion, it’s about connection. As Gabrielle says, “Take time to really get to know the stories and people in your community and destination. When you care, that comes across in your content.”
2. Let your partners shine. Empower local businesses, creators, and tourism partners to share their own stories. When they feel included, your destination benefits from a chorus of authentic voices.
3. Scale with purpose. Use solutions like CrowdRiff to help you save time organizing, collecting, showcasing, and producing scalable content. You don’t have to be everywhere to get authentic content!
4. Repurpose content strategically. Great content has a long shelf-life. Reuse visuals and stories across your website, newsletters, and social channels to maximize reach, impact, and ROI.
5. Always be learning. “We’ve loved being part of things like SEE and CONVERGE,” Gabrielle adds. “They’ve offered some really great growth opportunities for our team.”
Thank you Gabrielle and the Culinary Tourism Alliance team for sharing how storytelling connects communities from coast to coast to coast.
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