Case study · Edmonton Chinatown
Chinatown Dragon Food Tour
Dozens of family kitchens, decades of cooking, and no way for a stranger to visit any of it. We built the brand and the booking path that turned a district's food culture into something you can reserve for a Saturday.
Presented to the Chinatown Transformation Collaborative at the Edmonton Tourism Awards, 5 June 2026.
Plus 11 workshops, run on a schedule rather than as a single annual event.
Full-service · 53.5461°N 113.4938°W · Edmonton AB
01 · The case
The food was never the problem.
Edmonton's Chinatown holds decades of culinary heritage across dozens of independent kitchens, most of them family-run and none of them marketed. What the district lacked was not quality. It was a reason for someone who had never been to walk through a door they had walked past for years.
The briefBuild a visitor product, not an event. Something a person could find on a Tuesday, book for a Saturday, bring a visiting relative to, and recommend afterwards — running on a schedule rather than appearing once a year.
The constraintThe tours had to be led by summer students rather than professional guides, which meant the brand, the route and the booking path all had to work in the hands of someone doing it for the first time that week.
02 · Our role
Product, not promotion.
The tours belong to the Collaborative and the businesses who opened their kitchens. This is the part we built.
A guided walk through working kitchens, not a festival stall. The distinction decided the price, the schedule and who it was sold to.
An identity a first-time student guide could carry, and Pandy — a character that gives a stranger permission to walk in.
Find, choose a date, pay, arrive. Built so a season of tours could be filled without anyone answering a phone.
Explore Chinatown Edmonton — the district guide the tour sits inside, so a booking leads to a second visit.
Content and social built around a running schedule rather than a launch, so demand arrived every week instead of once.
The case for the Culinary Tourism Award: what the programme did, who it reached and why it counted.
03 · The work
On the street.
04 · What moved
A season that filled.
2025 season. Figures published by the Edmonton Tourism Awards.
A running schedule rather than a single annual event.
Presented 5 June 2026 at the Edmonton EXPO Centre, one of twelve honorees.
The Culinary Tourism Award was presented to the Chinatown Transformation Collaborative for the Dragon Food Tour series. The tours were run by the organization and its summer students, in kitchens opened by the district's businesses. We built the brand, the booking path and the marketing behind it.
The tours were led by young people from the community, which made the programme a mentorship as well as a visitor product — and gave the district a cohort who can now tell its story without us.
05 · In their words
Items were delivered on time and oftentimes ahead of deadline. Our requests and needs were taken care of promptly and professionally.Joanna Wong · Director, CTC Edmonton · Verified on Clutch
The tours launched in 2024, returned in 2025 and ran again in 2026. The Collaborative operates the programme; we continue to support the brand and the marketing around it.
06 · Next
Your place is next.
Most districts have something worth visiting and no way to book it. Tell us the place, the mandate and the date, and we'll tell you what we'd build first.
Full-service destination branding · Churchill Strategy · Edmonton AB