2025 Chowder Trail Renewal

Dear Chowder Trail participants,

We are so excited to be preparing for the 2025 Chowder Trail. We look forward to continuing to offer locals and travellers a fun, engaging tool to eat and drink their way across our province.

The Chowder Trail continues to get provincial, national, and international attention as a best practice in culinary tourism product development. In 2023, the Chowder Trail was the subject of a feature in National Geographic Travel Food Magazine, demonstrating the interest in these trails.

Plans for the 2025 season include:

•  Exclusively Digital Passports – After conversations with a number of participating businesses, we’ve made the decision to keep the Chowder Trail completely digital. This move will allow consumers the ability to get their passport stamps on their own, taking some of the load off of your staff.
• Mobile App – Our iPhone and Android friendly mobile app is free for consumers to download, and will allow travellers the opportunity to explore our province’s food and drink products and experiences from the palm of their hand.
  • The Taste of Nova Scotia mobile app houses the three culinary trails – Good Cheer, Chowder and Lobster Trail – with digital passports, stamps, business listings, mapping, prizing, and more.
  • We will once again be doing a media campaign to promote the app. Stay tuned for more information!
• Ongoing marketing campaign, including print, digital, social, media relations, and more.
  • In partnership with Tourism Nova Scotia, we ran another digital media campaign last fall that promoted the three culinary trails to locals (Nova Scotians) and folks intending to travel here from New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. The campaign promoted the trails through social media ads, video ads on YouTube and display ads on Google. This campaign served over 11 million impressions and drove over 100,000 ad clicks. In each of the three tactics, the campaign results exceeded industry standards.
  • The culinary trails were also a key part of the Taste of Nova Scotia Mobile App media campaign that we ran last fall.  This campaign prompted installation and use of the app as a tool for locals and tourists alike to eat, drink and explore their way across Nova Scotia, and was targeted to residents of Atlantic Canada. This campaign included social ads, display and text search ads, digital billboards, print ads and paid partnerships with The Coast and Seasoned Plate. This campaign served over 16 million digital impressions and helped propel our total app installs to over 9,000.
  • We will be running more campaigns to promote the culinary trails this season; stay tuned for more information!
• Enhanced passport incentive program, including t-shirts for all three trails and an incredible grand prize.

Participant Fees:

• Taste of Nova Scotia member rate: Participation in these trails is free for Taste of Nova Scotia members.
• Non-Taste of Nova Scotia Members: Participation fees in the Lobster and Chowder Trail for non-Taste of Nova Scotia members will be $150 + HST.

2025 Culinary Trail participation fees can be paid by credit card or by cheque made payable to Taste of Nova Scotia. Payment plan options are also available if requested. For businesses wishing to set up payment plan options or pay by credit card, please contact Brenda Wilson.

Prizing & Contesting:

• T-Shirts –  we will continue to offer the ever-popular consumer t-shirt incentive for those who achieve a certain number of stamps.
• Grand Prize – We will continue to offer at least three grand prize draws.
  • If you are interested in donating a prize for social media contesting purposes, please let us know.

If you have any questions about the upcoming culinary trails program, please contact Brenda Wilson at taste@tasteofnovascotia.com. Please note, the deadline for renewal is Monday, March 24.

Thank you,
Taste of Nova Scotia

PARTICIPATION RENEWAL