Las Palmas Food Centre and Guest House, a fast growing player in Ghana’s hospitality industry has set itself an agenda to lead in the local tourism industry. Following its success in the Greater Accra region, the company is venturing into other regions of the country to promote local food and modernize the traditional restaurant or ‘chop bar’ sector. A new food centre has been opened in Kumasi, where over 100 workers are engaged to serve varieties of local and continental dishes. Director of Las Palmas, Johnson Quashie says the company is liaising with the tourist board, traditional and city authorities and financiers to put up additional facilities to create employment. He noted that the development of the tourism industry must be linked to the local food sector. “We realized that the tourism sector is just looking at one side of tourism, like going to Kakum Park, going to Boti Falls and that’s the end; and the type of restaurants we are providing in this country are not promoting tourism. They are rather promoting foreign culture and creating employment for those foreign countries. “So we have decided that we’ll take another path to see how best we can promote the Ghanaian culture and the Ghanaian food because we believe the Ghanaian has one of the best food in the world”, Mr. Quashie stated. He said local food vendors can “polish their style of selling their food” by improving their operating environment, without necessarily hiking prices of meals. Mr. Quarshie says the vision of Las Palmas is to set the pace in the creation of food markets for value addition in the tourism industry. “In Ghana, we do not have food markets but foodstuff markets, but we can build our market well so when the whiteman [tourist] comes, you take him to the market to show him this is palm nut, this is egusie, nkatie [groundnut] and this is kontomire. From there you take the person to the food market like Las Palmas, then you say look the Kontomire I showed you, this is how it tastes”, he said. Las Palmas operates five food centres in Accra. Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh/Luv Fm/Ghana