Get bits, bites of the ’Burgh in two boxes
COVID-19 has Sylvia McCoy thinking about boxes.
Her food tour business, ’Burgh Bits & Bites, had to shut down in March because of the pandemic. She needed an interim business strategy.
She noticed food tour companies in other cities, such as Savor Seattle, were rolling out boxes featuring products from stops along their halted tours. And she came up with Burgh Boxes in mid-June.
“Think of them like a food tour in a box,” she said.
She provides two options — a box of nonperishables that people can ship anywhere or give as shelf-stable gifts and a mezze box of fresh Mediterranean foods.
As of Saturday, Ms. McCoy also has resumed offering smaller and carefully-organized food tours where participants will be required to wear masks and maintain social distancing. She sees the Burgh Boxes as a possible long-term addition as she doesn’t expect the tourism industry to recover fully until the spring of 2021.
“A lot of people are still very hesitant” to be out and about, she said.
The Burgh Boxes will allow her to keep her business running and support the merchants along her tour routes. They also are suffering, she said.
The box of nonperishables is $60 and includes products from four neighborhoods. Strip District products are biscotti from Enrico’s and sopressata from Parma Sausage. Contributions from Bloomfield feature a bottle of Portuguese hot sauce from the Azorean Cafe and a Pittsburgh-themed tea towel from Commonwealth Press. A jar of strawberry mojito jam comes from Batch in Saxonburg. And Salonika Imports in Lawrenceville offers olive oil, red pepper spread and Greek wheat toast crackers.
The mezze platter box, $50, includes garlic hummus, roasted red pepper hummus and pita from Pitaland in Brookline, plus feta, olives and tzatziki from Salonika.
Shipping also is available for the mezze box, which can be packaged to keep the products safe. The boxes can be picked up at Salonika, which has free parking.
Depending on how these boxes are received, Ms. McCoy might assemble a bakery box next. But she needs to determine whether there’s enough of a demand because she has to drive to all the shops and pick up the goods.
Early response has been positive on social media.
One of her tour guides is currently tasting through a box and Instagramming her thoughts, Ms. McCoy said.
Boxes must be pre-ordered at burghfoodtour.com/shop.
As far as tours go, Ms. McCoy is running only a handful of her usual routes. July tours are available in the Strip, Brookline, Lawrenceville and Bloomfield. Groups are limited to eight rather than her previous limit of 12 to 14.
’Burgh Bits & Bites isn’t exactly celebrating its 12th anniversary this summer in the way Ms. McCoy might have expected. But she’s excited about the boxes. The mezze box supports three small businesses, including her own, she said, and the box of nonperishables supports seven businesses.
They’re not necessarily foods that people might associate with Pittsburgh, she said, but they are all from Pittsburgh businesses.
“It’s a nice little Pittsburgh thing to do,” she said.