Eat the World by RTL Deutschland: Experience a City with All Senses
Interview with Astrid Hamer, Managing Director, and Tanja Zismer, Head of Marketing of Eat the World GmbH
Do you want to experience a district with all your senses and learn something more exciting than when the local church was built? Since 2008, Eat the World has been taking participants of its city tours on entertaining three-hour culinary and cultural journeys - and has not only become the market leader in its segment, but also appeared on the radar of Gruner + Jahr, which acquired the company in 2017 and later integrated it into RTL. Speaking with Wirtschaftsforum, Managing Director Astrid Hamer and Head of Marketing Tanja Zismer discussed the strength of their brand, its unique market positioning, and the upcoming merger with the sister brand Meet the World.
Wirtschaftsforum: Eat the World was founded in 2008 by two founders, before it was finally bought by Gruner + Jahr in 2017 and thus now belongs to RTL Deutschland and Bertelsmann. What was so interesting about this company for your publishing house?
Astrid Hamer: As a publisher at Gruner + Jahr, I had long been responsible for our food titles, which included strong brands such as "essen & trinken". We had long been intensely engaged with the question of how we could convey this lifestyle in other ways. From the outset, Eat the World impressed us simply because this company, with its offerings and its attitude, showed the same passion for cuisine, discoveries, and enjoyment that we also live in our day-to-day business.
Wirtschaftsforum: What concept lies behind Eat the World exactly?
Tanja Zismer: We now offer culinary-cultural tours and city experiences in 56 cities across Germany. At the core are our food tours, where up to 16 guests are guided through a neighborhood for three hours per tour, especially in big cities, often a bit off the well-known tourist paths. There, our guides lead participants to up to six owner-operated shops, cafes, restaurants, delicatessens, or similar locations that capture the individual atmosphere of the respective district as closely as possible. This allows our guests to fully experience, live, taste, and enjoy this place in all its diversity and individuality with all their senses.
Wirtschaftsforum: What makes your city tours special?
Astrid Hamer: Primarily, it's probably our guides – they know their respective districts like the back of their hand and have much more to tell our guests than the often quite boring data and facts about when the church was built or the town hall was inaugurated. Rather, we want to inspire our participants with stories and anecdotes that are memorable and that people enjoy retelling over a glass of wine. A good tour should offer discoveries and experiences, it needs to be exciting and entertaining – and particularly in a culinary context, nothing beats a tip for a special restaurant or shop that might delight as a charming little gem.
Wirtschaftsforum: Even before the acquisition by Gruner + Jahr, Eat the World was able to achieve impressive growth rates with this business model.
Tanja Zismer: Alongside all the data-driven approaches that we pursue today, Eat the World was and still is convincing primarily through impressive word-of-mouth marketing: A successful tour that really brought joy to the participants, that could impress with its individuality and a great experience, and about which people therefore spoke in their families and circles of friends, was and remains essential for this growth. The wider impact that resulted from the acquisition by Gruner + Jahr could naturally trigger an additional impulse: After the acquisition in 2017, we doubled our revenue within two years and have even tripled it since then.
Wirtschaftsforum: And then the pandemic hit, which probably paralyzed your entire company.
Astrid Hamer: Because group tours were not allowed, the restrictions due to the coronavirus essentially meant eleven months of a professional ban for us. During this difficult time, we were able to benefit profoundly from the strength of our corporate structures: we did not have to lay off any of our employees and were accordingly in a good position to get going immediately after the lockdowns - with impressive success. As early as 2022, we had surpassed the sales records from the pre-Corona period. Few other tourism companies have managed to do this.
Wirtschaftsforum: What do you attribute this effect to?
Astrid Hamer: We have an incredibly strong and direct connection to our customers. We are not an anonymous, hard-to-reach, and therefore replaceable platform that only mediates tours, but as organizers, we stand for quality, trust, and direct customer communication.
The entire team worked for many years with steadfast commitment and boundless passion on building a loyal customer base and a reliable reputation. Especially during times of general uncertainty such as a pandemic, this hard work has paid off. People trusted us to effectively protect them with our safety measures.
Wirtschaftsforum: Alongside Eat the World, a second brand called Meet the World has emerged with a slightly different focus.
Astrid Hamer: With Eat the World, we had acquired an extremely strong competence in developing and organizing tours – because not only the creative process of capturing and transporting a neighborhood's atmosphere is precise, but also the logistical effort behind it is anything but trivial: After all, our tours can be booked up to two hours before the start time, and yet the dishes, including special requests, must be served exactly on point in the restaurants and cafes. We wanted to offer this core competence also beyond the culinary frame – with crime tours, quiz tours where participants can play with and against each other, and our GEOLINO city rallies, which are also appealing to children and teenagers. However, since these elements did not necessarily have a direct connection with the culinary focus of Eat the World, we wanted to establish our own brand with Meet the World first.
Wirtschaftsforum: Now, however, both brands are to be merged – why?
Tanja Zismer: With Eat the World, we have advanced to become the market leader in our segment – we want to secure and expand this position. Frankly, it has been more difficult and probably more expensive to establish a second brand with Meet the World alongside. Initial tests have now reinforced our view that our Meet-the-World offerings will greatly benefit from the sustainably established and esteemed brand Eat the World if we offer them in the same environment. Eat the World will again be able to hold a stronger attraction for a more diverse target group with an even broader range of offers. From a group perspective, the synergies are naturally obvious: We only need to maintain one website and no longer need separate marketing budgets. At the same time, we are taking the merger of the two brands as an opportunity to make our brand leadership even more attractive with a comprehensive corporate design refresh and the relaunch of a new website focused on 'Mobile first', and making our web presence more user-friendly. Thus, we also want to lay the groundwork for further growth: Because especially in an era that is becoming increasingly digital, shared experiences with loved ones are only becoming more valuable.