Valuable restaurant coverage

Tomorrow I’ll be taking part in a Roxhill Q&A alongside Fortnum & Mason’s newly crowned Restaurant Writer of the Year Jo Taylor. (Congratulations Jo). The subject will be “How to land valuable restaurant coverage in the UK’s top food slots”. We’ll be talking about new and existing restaurants and how to pitch. For those who can’t attend, here are some pointers.

Firstly, when it comes to coverage in the Financial Times, it pays to be familiar with the different sections (and different editors) covering food and drink. These include HTSI (for which I and drinks writer Alice Lascelles contribute); the food and drink pages on the weekend Magazine (where reviews by Jay Rayner and features by Marina O’Loughlin, Tim Hayward and Jancis Robinson appear); and coverage in Globetrotter. Occasional food and drink focussed pieces also appear in the travel section and House & Home. Of course, pieces in each of these sections all appear in the same place online at ft.com.

You’re unlikely to secure a piece across more than one section (editors do confer) so pitch to your preferred slot. I mainly write for HTSI, but the last restaurant piece I wrote on Impala, the new opening from Super 8 group, appeared in Globetrotter and was online only.

Another pointer. Pieces on new openings feel more straightforward than those on existing restaurants. So what’s the secret to securing the latter? Firstly, get journalists with antennae for good stories into your restaurants. They will root out fresh stories and pitch them. Hungry freelancers with connections to different editors are ideal. Encourage restaurant owners and chefs to forge relationships with journalists (if only by making themselves available for quotes and even informal background chats). This will pay dividends in the short and long term. And make sure you as PRs are familiar with every aspect of the restaurants you look after: from the story behind them, to details about the dishes, design and service. If you have this information to hand, it will inform conversations you have with journalists and triggerideas you didn’t even think of.