National days

I’m currently fielding ideas for October issues of HTSI and onwards. The other day a PR wondered if I’d run a piece to peg to Chocolate Week. “Is that a thing?’ I asked. Apparently, yes. It runs from 13 to 19 October, has has been going for over ten years and is a major focus for chocolatiers and retailers as it coincides with the London version of the Salon du Chocolat retail fair.

Perhaps I should have known this. And perhaps as PRs you already did. In fact, maybe you have a list of food and drink themed weeks and days which you use as part of your promotional strategy. There are a lot (too many?) and they feature heavily in the pitches that get sent to me. Among the most recent have been pitches based around National Tequila Day, National Burger Day, National Sushi Day, National Martini Day, National Wagyu Day, National Biscuit Day, National Fish and Chip Day and National Hydration Day. Chocolate somehow got a whole week.

These National Days have their place. They’re a great way to start a conversation and a focal point for industry activity, retail and marketing. But I’m not convinced they work as convincing editorial pegs – at least not in the FT – in the same way as Father’s and Mother’s Day and other seasonal events.

If I look back on the last year’s worth of features by me, none have been pegged to National Food Days. Instead they’ve coincided with restaurant openings, book launches, general lifestyle and dining trends (e.g. rise of Ozempic; decline of walk-ins), culinary fixations of me and the HTSI team (e.g. blue food, fermented foods beginning with K), guest editor peccadillos (a love for Maltesers) and regional food scenes (e.g. Cardigan; Isle of Wight). The difficulty for PRs is how do you insert your clients into a line up like that if you don’t have a new book or restaurant.

I get a lot of pitches about food trends. Many are self-serving and not that convincing. My best advice to PRs is to look to themed issues. All publications have them. And if you’re trying to get a story into HTSI you should know ours by heart. Did you know, for instance, that we have issues themed around weddings, philanthropy, sustainable living and property?

Currently, I’m working towards our 11 October issue. This is our “Design” issue and this year it has its own special theme: “Play”. I’ve just looked the date up. It’s National Sausage Pizza Day. I won’t be pitching that to my editor.