Whole Foods eats its own cooking

Talk about eating your own cooking.

Whole Foods Journeys, the culinary travel arm of the healthy food chain, is offering four new trips in 2014. And its taking its own employees on two food-focused incentive trips.

The two new trips open to the public are to the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, where the locals are twice as likely to live to 100 as any other group, and a bike tour of Emilia-Romagna, home of all things parmesan and balsamic.

Two more are still on the drawing board, one to Croatia and a new three-day program in Aspen, Colorado, director Kathy Dragon told TravelMole.

The Aspen trip will offer three levels of hiking into Colorado’s back country, with food catered by Whole Foods in cooperation with local producers like Avalanche Cheese and Woody Creek Distillery.  

The final evening will have all the hiking groups come together for a barbecue at a ranch in the back country.

Open to individuals or small groups, the trip will offer accommodations, or hikers can make their own sleeping arrangements and just come for the hikes, the wine tastings, the company and, of course, the natural and locally grown food.

The Sardinia tour, just announced yesterday, features local wines and the slow-style cooking for which the island is famous, though it can’t promise to extend your life, of course.

But it will guarantee fresh seafood and hearty meats, mysterious Nuragic archaeological sites, including a sacred well and stone towers, a lesson in longevity by shepherds, visits to vineyards and wine cellars, hikes along the wild coastline of the Gulf of Orosei and cruises of hidden grottos in a private boat, and a cooking class with a Slow Food chef.

Two eight-day trips are planned, departing April 5 and November 1 from the fishing town of Alghero.

The groups will be limited to a maximum of 14 people, with prices from $3,995.00 per person.

Whole Foods offers trips in four categories: Active Foodie, Hands-On Cook, Health & Wellness and Global Connect, as well as customized programs, generally for groups of 8 or more.

The company hosted a number of small groups in this, its first year, including one in Peru, one in Switzerland, and six to Croatia, where "during the day we hike and visit winemakers and cheesemakers and the boat sails around and meets us at the other side of the island," Dragon says.

In 2014 she will host two internal programs for Whole Foods Markets team members, a "really educational program focusing on the culture and tradition of food," one to Chianti during the harvest festival and one to Emilia-Romagna. 

Each region will choose two employees to go; the basis they use to choose the winners is up to the regions.

Indeed, the printed schedule of fixed departures is only a small selection of what Whole Journeys can offer in terms of destinations and focus, Dragon says.

Itineraries can be arranged for different departure dates for custom groups and adapted with a selection of alternate properties for travelers who prefer simpler or more luxurious accommodations.

And trips can also be customized to focus on wine, food, hiking or other interests.