Alfresco season is upon us and so is the opportunity for pitching summer food stories to the broadsheets. Hannah Evans gives the lowdown on everything you need to know for crafting the perfect pitch. Now all you need is wall-to-wall sunshine...
Summer is an odd time of year as things simultaneously quieten down as the country goes on holiday, and get very busy as we put together features to keep them entertained. This means there are plenty of opportunities for pitching, especially as the period we run ‘summer food’ stories lasts from around early June to early September.
Here are a few key things to keep in mind to ensure when pitching summer food stories to ensure you stand out in a journalist’s inbox.
The recipe content that resonates
A large chunk of the features we run during the summer period are recipes. Generally speaking, during the season we’ll run something on all of the following: picnic ideas, al fresco dining recipes, summer entertaining recipes (cocktails, nibbles, sharing plates), easy summer dessert ideas and barbecue recipes and tips.
These will appear in all print sections, from the Times Magazine to Weekend. Recipe content is often a mix of recipes with nuggets of advice from chefs and restauranteurs.
We don’t pay attention to national days (eg. National Barbecue Day), but we do watch the weather forecast and plan around bank holidays, so if you see a sunny spell or a bank holiday coming up, then pitch us summer recipes around the above topics.
If you’re sending advice on barbecuing or building a picnic, make sure what you send is a mix of informative and imaginative. We might not use your ideas straight away but it’s great to have them in the bank.
With recipes, the best thing to remember is that they need to be as simple as possible with not too many ingredients, while also not being boring.
All the editors I work with on these sections receive hundreds of emails a day, so it’s best to send over the copy (recipes or tips, plus a picture) in your pitching email rather than wait for a response.
Don’t send a dish that can’t be found on Getty images – not all desks have a budget to send photographers.
Why all PRs should read the paper
Read the news. This shouldn’t just apply to summer food but is applicable throughout the year. It’s a great way to look for fresh pegs for your clients.
Has a dish, restaurant or person been in the news and is it a good opportunity to for a follow up feature with your client?
A great example of this was the below feature on fior di latte ice cream. It was pegged to a news story about King Charles and Queen Camilla’s visit to Rome. During the trip, they ate fior di latte ice cream, and so the next day we ran a story on why it’s actually the flavour of the summer, speaking to chefs and using examples of restaurants (Dove, Gelupo, Wildflowers) serving it in the UK.
The thing to remember on same day deadlines, such as this, is that we work very quickly, and often need quotes and bits of information within a few hours.
How we cover products
If you are pitching a product, it’s always great to shout about which notable chefs use it, or if there are any interesting hacks that it can be used for.
For example, I know lots of professional chefs use Crosta and Mollica pizza bases at home, and have referenced this in lots of features.
Packaging up a trend
Has your client begun serving something you think is going to be the food trend this summer? We’re always looking out for ideas about what is hot around the country, from ice cream flavours to cocktails, and this is one thing I’d love more PRs to do.
Broadly speaking, we need three examples to call something a trend and we don’t want them all in London – our readers live across the UK. Examples can also include videos or pictures people have posted about your client that have gone viral
Act fast – we want to turn these features around quickly before any other newspapers notice the same trend.
An example of when a PR successfully pitched and worked with me on a feature can be found here. Forced rhubarb is seasonal and so comes around each year, but they had noticed there was even more hype around the ingredient this year, and so got in touch with some examples (not just from their client), some stats and a few quotes.
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