Employing ‘someone to be your voice’ in an artisanal gastronomic tourism business: Authenticity, cultural capital and human resources

The difficulty of hiring suitable staff in rural areas has been particularly challenging for small gastronomic family businesses involved in tourism. Their human resources needs may include the ability of employees to tell stories about the business, including the family history, and to assist in maintaining its authentic image for visitors. This article explores the experiences of artisanal food or beverage tourism businesses with respect to employment of staff and draws on qualitative data from case studies of South Gippsland, Victoria in Australia and the UK’s Peak District. Sixteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with relevant stakeholders. Findings suggest that familiness played an important role in the way that many of these artisanal gastronomic businesses made their decisions to employ staff, linked to issues of authenticity and cultural capital. While employing non-family members to interact with visitors in public-facing roles was generally not a preferred option, these businesses may need to train and empower non-family staff to tell the family story in a convincing and acceptable way or pursue collaborations with other artisanal businesses to overcome the problem of staff shortages.