New bus tour takes comedy on the road
Fun Coast spotlights local breweries and landmarks, with a comedian on board
For more than two decades as a salesman, Steven Gooch had pitched everything from vacuum cleaners to telecom systems.
Now, behind the wheel of a 23-foot commercial tour bus, he’s offering fun.
“I had done sales for 25 years and I was tired of selling things to people that they didn’t want,” said Gooch, 50, the founder, owner, tour guide and bus driver at Fun Coast Tours, a newly opened business that specializes in themed 4 ½-hour excursions showcasing local breweries, landmarks and history.
Gooch and his wife, Cassie, who teams with him to run the business aspects of the company, moved to Daytona Beach from Gainesville a few years ago. After leaving a telecom sales job there, Gooch had started working as an Uber driver as he contemplated his next move.
It opened the door to a new career.
“When you really start to drive Uber enthusiastically, you start to become a tour guide anyway,” Gooch said. “I found that I got better tips the more I knew about landmarks and the history of the area. I found out that people don’t even mind going a little bit out of their way to see something interesting or to hear a story.”
In July, Gooch and his wife launched Fun Coast Tours, offering Segway tours that included a beach ride, scavenger hunt and “Daytona at Dusk” tour melding history and ghost tales.
Initially, he had planned to expand into brewery bus tours in 2022, but as tourists enthusiastically embraced travel during a record-setting tourism summer in Daytona Beach, the timetable was expedited. By mid-July, he had purchased a 23-foot bus equipped to host a dozen passengers in cushioned seats customized with cup holders.
“I found it on Ebay,” Gooch said.
“There’s a guy who sells buses out of Michigan.”
Gooch paid $5,600 for the used Ford E-350 with 265,000 miles on it and another $1,400 to a driver hired to deliver it from Michigan to Daytona Beach. He spent another $600 on repairs that included two new tires, an AC recharge, additional lighting and other touches.
Fun Coast’s Brewery Bus Tour features a revolving itinerary of stops that include Copper Bottom Craft Distillery and Red Pig Brewery, both in Holly Hill; The World’s Most Famous Brewery (formerly the Pallet Pub) on Main Street; Ormond Garage and Beachside Brew Pub, both in Ormond Beach; Dunes Brewing in Port Orange; and McK’s Tavern & Brewery and Daytona Taproom in Daytona Beach.
On the eve of Halloween, the company added a second tour, a trek that showcases distinctive dive bars.
This week, Fun Coast offered a few new stops and another new entertainment wrinkle. In addition to stops at the Streamline’s Sky Rooftop Bar, Ocean Deck, Landshark Bar & Grill and Tir Na Nog Irish Pub, the three-hour event also marked the debut of Fun Coast’s Tickle Me Transit concept featuring a stand-up comedian on board.
The $35 ticket includes one free drink at each of the stops, a complimentary swag bag and prize raffle. The Fun Coast bus will run a continuous shuttle route from the hotel to the participating bars throughout the event.
“I’ve never done comedy on a bus before,” said Doug Canny, a comedian based in Palm Coast who has toured the stand-up circuit for 12 years. “I did stand-up on a flatbed truck years ago.”
For the Streamline, the tour bus partnership is an opportunity to build a sense of community among the hotel and other popular tourist-oriented businesses in the area, said Ashley Zalkin, the hotel’s event sales director.
“We want to do more bar crawls in the future,” Zalkin said. “This is kind of a whole new venture for the Streamline.”
For Gooch, the Streamline connection represents the kind of partnership he hopes to forge with other tourist-related businesses.
Looking ahead, Gooch also is teaming with the West Volusia Tourism Advertising Authority to bring tours to DeLand, Orange City and other West Volusia destinations.
An initial Dec. 11 tour transporting guests from Daytona Beach to visit breweries on the West Volusia CoolCraft Beverage Trail is already sold-out, said Georgia Turner, executive director of the West Volusia Tourism Advertising Authority.
“We sold it out very quickly,” Turner said. “There’s definitely a future for us to work with them. So many people on the east side (of the county) want to come over to see what west side has to offer.”
Gooch also is looking for local ghost hunters or paranormal experts who might be interested in lending their knowledge to tours related to that topic, he said.
To help promote the tours, Gooch also recently launched a travel-oriented podcast, Downtime in Daytona, to raise awareness of tourism options in Volusia County. In its 13-episode run, guests have ranged from hoteliers to public officials including Daytona Beach City Commissioner Ken Strickland.
Gooch is optimistic about the company’s potential in Daytona Beach.
“Despite the pandemic, tourism did not stop,” Gooch said. “Everyone kept coming. If ever the iron was hot, it’s now.”