A 39-year-old man runs a successful food tour business in New York, generating over $145,000 in annual revenue.

On a warm, cloudy Tuesday in July, Scott Goodfriend readies to lead a group of five on his Iconic Foods of the Lower East Side tour in New York. They gather at the entrance of a bustling food market in the heart of downtown Manhattan.

The immigrant center of New York was where immigrants brought their food, according to Goodfriend. The tour includes eateries such as Ferrara, Baz Bagel, and others, with historical facts sprinkled in.

The Doughnut Plant, founded in 1994 by Mark Isreal, is a 30-year-old industrial-looking shop with concrete floors and platters of doughnuts behind a steel counter.

The group is presented with three distinct doughnuts by him: Tres leches, Brooklyn Blackout, and blueberry.

""These are good," says a seventh grader on the tour."

In 2019, Goodfriend, 39, began selling food tours while working in communications. In 2023, after being let go from his job at Meta, he decided to take his company, Ultimate Food Tours, full-time. Between May 2023 and May 2024, he generated over $145,000 in revenue.

Here's how he built his budding business.

Ethnic food was a constant in Goodfriend's life

Goodfriend, the oldest of two children, grew up in the Calabasas neighborhood of Los Angeles. His father was a mortgage broker and his mother worked at the UCLA medical center. Food was a constant in their lives. "My parents loved to take us out to different ethnic foods in L.A.," he recalls. "My dad had a particular fondness for Persian cuisine, while my mom always enjoyed sushi and Japanese dishes."

He frequently watched the History Channel with his dad while learning about the past.

Goodfriend graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2007 with a degree in journalism. He then pursued a career in reality TV, first in LA and later in New York. "I was drawn to reality TV because it allowed me to switch between projects more easily," he explains.

In 2016, he landed a job at major PR company Edelman. Over the next six years, he spearheaded projects in Web3 and virtual reality. In July 2022, he was offered a job at Meta in their augmented reality division.

He says he finally made it as the job paid about $200,000 per year.

Friends sent 'little goals to challenge me' to make tours

Goodfriend explored different neighborhoods in New York when he first moved there, including various eateries. He discovered Bosnian food in Astoria, Queens, and was curious about the Russian population in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.

He was tasked with organizing food tours for his friends, who wanted to explore Brooklyn neighborhoods like Borough Park and Sunset Park.

For eight years, Goodfriend offered tours to friends without monetizing them because he enjoyed it and didn't want the hassle of building a business and website. However, a friend suggested Airbnb experiences, which allowed him to sell local tours through the site. In the fall of 2019, he decided to post one.

In October 2019, he earned his first dollar from his Chinatown Food Tour.

'I made the decision to cut the safety net'

In 2021, he launched his Iconic Food tour and named his business Ultimate Food Tours. "I was like, how do I have something that sounds big and fun?" he says. By December 2021, he had built his website and was adding more and more tours to his repertoire there.

Goodfriend worked full time while also giving tours on weekends and earned more than $30,000 from his side hustle in 2022.

In February 2023, Goodfriend was terminated from his job at Meta, eight months after being hired.

Although he received a full-time job offer at a startup shortly after, he felt a strong urge to continue with his hustle. "I made the decision to cut the safety net in early 2023," he says, "to run Ultimate Food Tours full time and leave the corporate world."

'I probably work 80 hours a week'

The company, Ultimate Food Tours, offers six different food tours every week at $90 per person, which includes food. These tours usually have six to eight participants, according to Goodfriend. The company provides options such as Broadway Bites, Famous Sites and Famous Jewish Foods. Goodfriend, who designed each tour, personally conducts about two to three of them, while the remaining tours are led by five other freelance tour guides.

UFT has partnered with local restaurants and now offers private cooking classes, which are popular among corporate clients. These classes cost $150 per person. Additionally, UFT sells merchandise on its website.

Goodfriend is working to make the company global by helping guides build similar tours in San Diego and Japan. When those tours go live, UFT will take a small percentage, says Goodfriend.

Goodfriend is currently developing a long-form streaming show based on the Origin Stories series, which explores the history of famous foods in New York. He posts content on the company's social media accounts, including the Origin Stories series.

He is the only full-time employee of the company and works 80 hours a week. Although he earns less than he used to at Meta, he enjoys his job.

"This is absolutely my dream job," he says.

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