About Us

​Our Founders

Doug & Jewel Taylor have been together for more than 40 years!

They met when Doug's band started playing at the restaurant Jewel owned.  While Jewel originally hails from Horseshoe Bay,  the couple moved around for years before settling in North Vancouver in the 1980's.

These days when they aren't planning food tours & connecting with tour partners, they are running after 3 small grandkids. 

Doug is a serial entrepreneur specializing in Real Estate and Jewel's background in Restaurant Management inspired Taste Vancouver Food Tours.

After a few holidays that included trying food tours in a few other North American cities, they realized that Vancouver was missing the opportunity to showcase the rich history and delicious culinary scene. The result? Taste Vancouver Food Tours was born! 
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Operations Management

​Maria Bellamy is our operations manager and makes sure the business runs smoothly. With a background in tourism & hospitality, Maria has the perfect combination of skills to manage the day-to-day operations at Taste Vancouver Food Tours. From assigning tour guides to connecting with our restaurant partners and managing our booking system, Maria is the glue of all we do!

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Our Tour Guides

Brent Hirose
Senior Tour Guide

Hailing from Winnipeg, Manitoba, a storied city with the most restaurants per-capita in Canada, He's always had a great love of food and history, and loves spreading that love in his new hometown of Vancouver. Food is best enjoyed with good company and conversation, and Brent aims to make every tour as filled with interesting knowledge and fun times as possible, while sharing his passion for the city & the many delicious foods on offer on each tour. 

Tia Glenn-Cooke
Senior Tour Guide

Tia originally hails from from Northern Ontario. Since moving to BC in 2007, she’s continually hunting out new food & drinks, and doing her best to imitate her favourite flavours at home.Tia performs improv and stand up comedy all over the city. She believes the beautiful marriage of good stories and great food is what makes Taste Vancouver the best way to introduce new friends to her favourite places. . 

Brad Bergeron

Being a tour guide here is so wonderful because I'm proud of my city. Vancouver is such a gorgeous city to live in and I love showing people around. Gastown in particular, with it's rich history and amazing restaurants is a part of the city that I love showing off to people.

Sean Sonier
Tour Guide​

Sean LOVES food.
He often finds himself talking about his next meal while eating his current one.
One of the best feelings in the world is discovering a new restaurant. He hasn't stopped talking about SALT Tasting Room since he first went there.

It's probably the Maritimer in him that loves to shares stories and food with family, friends and complete strangers! Vancouver is rich with history and filled with yummy eats and Sean is thrilled to share that all with you. ​​ 

Alex Patalas
Tour Guide

Raised between the prairie fields of St. Albert, Alberta and the sandy shores of Lima, Peru, Alex developed a passion for diverse eating at a young age. As a child, his favourite foods were pizza and ceviche (raw fish marinated in lemon juice). As an adult, not much has changed (although experience has added some new favourites). In his spare time, he enjoys travelling, discovering new restaurants, and yoga. A proud resident of Vancouver since 2006, Alex loves sharing this beautiful city’s rich history and delicious restaurants tour guests
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