You Need to Try This Woman’s Game-Changing New Travel Tool on Your Next Vacation Women’s Health
go to original May 16, 2017

Traveling Spoon connects travelers with authentic food experiences, from in-home meals to cooking classes to market tours, with locals around the world (Traveling Spoon)

In 2011, on a trip to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, Aashi Vel -  then 32 years old, with a professional background in art and design but a passion for food and travel - had an ‘aha’ moment.

On that trip, Aashi found herself struggling to find authentic Mexican food. “I was asking friends for recommendations and looking at review websites, but all too often the restaurants ended up being touristy or not truly authentic,” she remembers.

Then, one day, on the way to a restaurant, Aashi passed a local home and saw a woman through the window cooking dinner. “I remember thinking, ‘I wish I could eat with her and hear her stories and share her food.’ A lightbulb went off.”

In 2013, Aashi and co-founder Steph Lawrence, who she met at UC Berkeley a few months after her trip, founded Traveling Spoon, a tech-meets-travel company that does exactly what Aashi would have loved to do that day in Mexico in 2011: It connects people with pre-approved hosts who welcome travelers into their homes for private, home-cooked meals.

Travelers log onto Traveling Spoon to book in-home meals, cooking classes, or market tours in over 22 countries from China to Morocco for anywhere from $20 to $170. This summer, the company will launch in Europe. “We wanted to disrupt that industry by offering local food experiences,” says Aashi. So they did.

Traveling Spoon also offers hosts the opportunity to make money doing what they love, all while learning new languages, and meeting people of different generations and from different parts of the world, Aashi explains. “They become micro entrepreneurs.”

Read the rest at Women’s Health

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