Upstate Eats Trail Case Study

Industry:

Food/Beverage; Travel/Tourism 

Services:

Social Media Strategy; Content Creation; Community Management

Background

The Upstate Eats Trail is a partnership between Visit Syracuse, Visit Rochester, Visit Buffalo, and Visit Binghamton that aims to offer travelers guidance on delicious foods to fuel their next road trip through Upstate New York. The Trail encompasses 19 different restaurants in five different cities. Ultimately, the tourism organization partners aim to increase tourism to the region by highlighting the amazing food that can be enjoyed across Upstate New York.

While the outstanding food speaks for itself once you get to taste it, the real question was: how do they get the word out about these incredible eateries?

The Challenge

Summer is peak road trip season in Upstate New York, so in June 2025, the partner organizations sought an experienced social media consultant that could travel to all 19 destinations along the Trail, meeting restaurant owners, sampling dishes, and capturing loads of captivating content. They also needed a cohesive social media strategy for disseminating that content across their main social channels and community management to engage with their growing audience. 

The goal was to raise awareness of all the unique, delectable culinary offerings along the Trail by sharing scroll-stopping, shareable content. 

The Solutions

In July 2025, I was hired to handle all strategy, content capture, and content creation for the Upstate Eats Trail, and jumped right in! I planned a series of road trips to Buffalo, Binghamton, Syracuse, and Skaneateles (as well as some local jaunts around my hometown of Rochester). Seven road trips in three months resulted in a full six months of engaging social content and assets to be used for years to come. 

I developed a detailed content calendar and posting cadence to maximize content creation and posting during peak road trip season. This included 4 posts per week during July and August (peak road trip season), 3 posts per week in the fall (while folks are still road tripping to enjoy the foliage), and 2 posts per week in November and December (to encourage supporting local businesses during the holiday season).

Our content strategy included:

• Creating informative carousels based on all FAQs from the website to ensure people discovering the Trail for the first time could get their questions answered quickly. 

• Making lighthearted memes about regional foods that resonated with locals, sparking conversations and social shares. 

• Creating mildly controversial videos to spark heated debates (for example, hyping up Nick Tahou’s garbage plates so people will fight over their favorite plate place in the comments. This ended up being our first viral TikTok!). 

Other key actions included:

• Coordinated with 19 different restaurant owners/managers in six different cities to plan visits for capturing content.

• Spoke with restaurant owners, managers, chefs, and front of house to learn more about the brand and their story. 

• Interviewed restaurant owners on camera to create video content. 

• Shot photos and videos of restaurants, scenery, and of course, the delicious food. 

• Edited photos and videos into engaging content for social. 

• Scheduled content to be shared across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok and optimal posting times, adjusting copy as needed based on the audience. 

• Managed file management system to ensure photo and video assets could be used by the Trail members and partner organizations in the future. 

• Responded to comments and messages on all platforms, sharing relevant feedback with partner organizations and member restaurants. 

• Compiled a monthly analytics report and shared key insights with the team. 

• Built a library of photos and videos that could be used in the future by partner organizations and member restaurants. 

The Creative

Here are a few of my favorite pieces of content I created for the Upstate Eats Trail.