How Hippie Farmers and Hippie Chefs Created the Iconic American Slow Food:

Abstract

Drawing from a case study on Californian cuisine, this paper examined how regions without any well-known cultural heritage can develop slow foods that cater to practitioners of slow travel. The case study’s findings revealed that both the high quality of the cuisine and the story associated with its development have been responsible for making Californian cuisine an iconic American slow food. The results suggest that the story associated with Californian cuisine enhances the experiences of slow tourists by satisfying their desires to distance themselves from the modern world full of “impurity, the virtual, the spun and the mass-produced,” to understand American culture, and to practice ethical consumption. For marketers of Japanese tourism, the findings imply that creating a well-framed, effective story of slow food requires profound, accurate knowledge of local food and local culture, as well as attention to the fact that slow tourists, unlike entirely self-interested consumers, value ethical consumption.

Keywords

• slow travel
• slow tourists
• hippie movement
• chez panisse