Paper short abstract:

In order to attract tourists, small scale farms and food manufacturers have to create stories around their production. This paper follows the work of small entrepreneurs in two regions in Sweden and their creations of food stories in relation to and interaction with development organizations and final users.

Paper long abstract:

Culinary tourism in Sweden has increased significantly during the last years as a result of a renewed interest in gastronomy, food and meal, although still far behind the leading regions in the world. Many of the culinary points of interest are small scale farms and food manufacturers that have seen a complimentary niche to their traditional production. In order to attract tourists, they have to create stories around their production.

This paper follows the work of small entrepreneurs in two regions in Sweden (Sjuhäradsbygden and its surroundings and Skåne) and their creations of food stories in relation to and interaction with development organizations and final users.

The intertwinement and interdependence of entrepreneurial and official stories of the region is one theme of the paper. Another is the cultural clashes during the creation of food story telling, between the rural small scale actors and their urban audience, used to fine dining rhetoric from urban restaurants.

The paper is based on the work of the newly started project "When is food worth a trip? A study of culinary tourism in Sweden", a collaboration between ethnology and business economy. The method of the project is a multi-sited ethnography. By combining participatory observation and interviews, the project aims to obtain a multidimensional picture of actors and the material surroundings.