The Trumbull County Tourism Bureau is encouraging residents and visitors to take a stroll on the Italian Food Trail.

The program, launched in 2018, was designed to draw attention to the wide variety of Italian restaurants and food sites available in the county. The 2022 trail, which launched this week, includes more than 60 stops.

“It’s not just restaurants,” Beth Kotwis Carmichael, executive director of the tourism bureau, said. “We say food sites because it includes businesses like Just Pizzelles (in Cortland) and the Italian grocers, like Giuseppe’s (in Niles) and Jimmy’s in Liberty. There’s no national chains, but we include regional chains like Pizza Joe’s, which have multiple locations.”

While many restaurants on the trail serve pasta and meat dishes that can be found nationwide, others feature delicacies like wedding soup and greens, which became popular in the Mahoning Valley because of the Italian immigrants who settled here.

Customers can check in at the different business using a mobile pass downloaded to their smart phones. Those who download the pass at ItalianFoodTrail.com by July 25 will be entered into a drawing to win a $50 gift card to a local food site. The first 100 people with verified check-ins at five different locations by Nov. 30 will receive a free Italian Food Trail baseball cap.

“We were just in Columbus in May for Ohio Tourism Day, and everyone who stopped by (asked about it),” Carmichael said. “It generates a lot of interest and excitement and raises awareness of Trumbull County. It’s a way for us to grab the attention of visitors.”

The tool is just as popular with the locals.

“A lot of our users are residents,” she said. “There are people who travel in groups and try a different restaurant every Friday, and they use our list of Italian food sites to find new places or ones they have not been to for years.

“We were a little delayed in launching the trail this year, and we had calls and emails from residents asking, ‘Are you doing that again? When are you releasing it?'”