News flash

I know you are excited about restaurants reopening indoors this week. God knows, I am too. I ate outside in the rain on Sunday (“We’ll need the table back in an hour and half,” said our waiter. “No problem, we’ll be lucky if we last 30 minutes,” I replied), so you can imagine how much I enjoyed my lunch at Scott’s yesterday. There were carpets and a roof and everything.

As you can imagine, my inbox is full of emails from you guys giving the full fanfare: lists of menus, reminders of chefs’ CVs, tributes to the loyalty of customers, comments from owners about how buzzed they are to be opening again, etc, etc.

It’s all very reassuring stuff and builds on the growing sense of excitement at possibly getting back to normal next month (and Indian variants be damned), but like I say, my inbox is rammed. Dozens and dozens of emails basically saying the same thing.

I always advise you to go out on a limb, to try to find something out of the ordinary that is going to make your email stand out, but it is never more important than when there is a big event like this that means every other PR will be sending out releases at the same time.

It could be stats about how many bookings the restaurant has taken, how many extra staff have been hired to man the switchboards. It could be focused around a seasonal ingredient that the chef is excited about showcasing (you know how we love a trend: if three of you happen to mention the same thing, there’s a feature right there).

Anything, really, beyond the simple “We’re here. We’re open”. I’m happy to hear that, obviously – survival is an under-rated skill in this era – but it would be great to know just a little bit more.