New openings

Let’s talk about new restaurant openings. It’s the kind of story I get pitched a lot. And mostly the pitches come in the form of this: Chef A or Restaurateur B is opening a new restaurant in Location C with Culinary Style D. Would you be interested in featuring it/ running the exclusive?

The biggest obstacle in covering new restaurants for me is imagery. When will pictures of the food and interiors be ready? That’s to say when will construction on the venue be complete and the venue be ready to be shoot? HTSI goes to press about two weeks before each issue. Pictures need to be delivered about two weeks before that. If the piece is an exclusive, are you to willing to hold off other press for up to a month following completion to make that work?

The other hurdle I face is what to write. Even if the restaurant turns out to be good, how do I turn that into an 800 – 1000 word feature? The who, what, when and where (A-D above) are enough for a press release. But a press release is not a story. So what’s the story?

Sometimes the people involved (A and B) are of enough interest to build the story around them. Recent HTSI stories on Arlington and Singburi 2.0 fit the bill because the people behind those two ventures have such great backstories and reputations that everyone wants to hear about their latest ventures.

Sometimes the restaurant is so original in its concept and the chef so bold in his vision and execution that you can build a story around those – though “sustainable”, “seasonal”, “low waste”, “farm to fork/table” and “nose to tail” are concepts that no longer differentiate restaurants the way they used to.

On the flipside, sometimes a restaurant is doing exactly what a number of other new restaurants are doing and a journalist can turn that into a trend piece (cf. recent features on rotisserie chicken).

Otherwise, I often find myself concluding that the restaurant in question (though promising and likely to do well) would be better served by a review in which my colleague Jay Rayner could get to grips with the food, service and venue without having to offer the kind of “story” that a feature format requires.

But as I say, new restaurants can yield interesting stories. The trick for the PR representing them is deciding what those are. Is there a gripping human story at play? Are there tensions in concept and vision to be teased out? What is truly new, innovative or zeitgeisty about this place? What big idea does it represent? Is the team doing something interesting with ingredients or produce that can be brought colourfully to life?

If you can’t see the headline and standfirst for the piece you want and if the headline or standfirst of that piece isn’t something that would make you read the piece, then you probably haven’t found the story worth pitching.