Chefs as Storytellers Through Media

I collaborated with Chef Johnny Hernandez of Grupo La Gloria on a personal story and recipe as told to Taste of the South for their July/August issue. I feel one of the strongest opportunities is for chefs to tell their story and philosophy in their own words. Not just for the obvious reason that you get to control the message, but providing quality, usable content to editors ensures you have a reputation as a reliable, go-to content source thus eliminating the heavy-lifting for them. And it’s a perfect opportunity to build a trusted, positive relationship with an editor once they know you can deliver well!

That’s why it’s so important as a communicator to know not only how to package and tell stories on someone’s behalf, but, in the case of popular chefs, to be able to guide and create a food story in their words. Knowing them well both professionally and personally it’s then seamless to step into their shoes and craft or ghostwrite a story that could have just as easily been told directly by them to a journalist.

Once you have that familiarity (and honestly sometimes it’s just something that comes with time), you can quickly execute on these chef narratives for media when opportunities arise. This was the case for Taste of the South. After an interview with Chef Johnny about the story he wanted to convey, I consolidated the facts and curated a 500-word narrative. The chef’s feedback: “Excellent, this sounds really good.” The associate editor’s feedback: “It is wonderful and perfect for this feature.” With minimal tweaks for styling, the piece ran almost word for word as submitted. Nailing an editorial project like this is a wonderful opportunity to make an editor’s job easier (and ensures you create a memorable impression for future coverage opportunities!).

Bottom line: Get to know your chef client well, ensure you can capture their voice, sharpen your interview and writing skills if you have to, and get to know the style of the medium you’re writing for. You will then provide an invaluable service for both your chef client and the editor.

Building Media Relationships on a Budget

I often found that while working in the travel media space, or really any media space, that budget was always limited and an important consideration as it so often is with many destinations or companies. It’s no secret that there are some out there with big pockets to host media or produce over-the-top destination experiences, and I’ve listened wide-eyed to many stories over the years from media on the extravagance and memorable experiences that one can have. It can be disheartening to think that it would be quite difficult to break through other pitches and offers, to offer up something enticing and interesting enough for media to cover. That’s where I’ve always found the value in building long-term, genuine relationships with media not only for myself, but ensured our destination partners did as well. I may not have had hundreds of thousands of dollars to work with, but my product—an authentic destination filled with rich stories—was in and of itself a great start.

So many times the key was simply giving our partners a platform to tell their story in their own words, along with how they fit in the context of the overall city (messaging!). My colleagues and I brought along chefs, musicians, artists and even park rangers (San Antonio has a World Heritage site!) on our travels. The seed of a new media relationship was always in those media interactions with partners. I thought of my role as facilitating those conversations and providing information, like a strategic liaison. I was able to create fun environments and give one-of-a-kind gifts that helped amplify our brand and message, but really at the end of the day it was those memorable conversations along with a dish that a chef cooked or a song an accordionist played.

A genuine interaction can’t be bought and there’s just something about it that sticks. So many times I’ve been pleased to hear that media still kept up with some of our partners many years later, which resulted in additional coverage or even business development opportunities. We all win when genuine bonds form.

How a Media Event Can Be a Success

As part of the aforementioned Canadian media mission, a lively and interactive way of showing San Antonio was to plan a media event in Montreal. The city was strategically chosen as last year we hosted an event in Toronto and try to rotate around. There were similarities between the two events. Both were food driven as having a visiting chef and interactive cooking component is always a great draw.

For Montreal, I brought a bilingual pastry chef from San Antonio and we hosted the event at a boutique cooking school. It was a very intimate and cozy space, almost as if you had walked into someone’s home and that person had a spacious professional kitchen. We were lucky that the staff were great to work with and very accommodating. It’s always a challenge to meticulously plan an event from far away. Their resident chef did all the shopping for our ingredient lists and helped prep and work alongside our guest chef for the event. Support staff such as kitchen help and front-of-house staff is always a huge help with events like these as you need more hands on deck to ensure the event for 20 plus people goes off well. It’s important as once the event starts I wanted as much face time with media as possible so I could tell them all about San Antonio!

We decided on a Thursday brunch event and collaborated with chef on the menu. The menu was a perfect balance of San Antonio’s festive “Tex-Next” food, as we call it, with chef’s personal touch. Prior to arrival, I shipped decor pieces to have on hand so I could enliven the space with some San Antonio spirit—papel picado, paper flowers, embroidered table linens and woven baskets. We even had custom embroidered San Antonio logo aprons for media guests at each of their places at the counter. Everyone donned their apron and got to cooking—it made for some great photos!

The menu consisted of a croissant (a little nod to French heritage) sandwich with black beans, chorizo, guacamole and pico de gallo. Accompaniments were yogurt with dulce de leche and fresh fruit. Parting gifts are always a nice touch, and we decided on Mexican Wedding Cookies. I ordered kraft paper boxes and made custom stickers to brand the boxes. The boxes were then finished with color-coordinated ribbon.

In the end we made a great impression and excited media to visit San Antonio and cover it for their respective outlets by producing a relevant, memorable and fun event.

Reflections on my last media mission

It’s hard to believe that exactly six months ago in March I was travelling among three Canadian cities happily promoting San Antonio. Murmurs about the virus were minimal, and only one journalist asked about the impact to the city. Otherwise it was almost business as usual. “I’d love to visit when things calm down, maybe in May?” said some journalists. But that was not to be.

At the time we decided to proceed with this media mission to Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, and I had no doubt about safety. Things were changing so quickly from day to day that the week after I returned the office was almost entirely working from home.

During the planning stages and the mission itself, things were executed and received as they normally would have been pre-pandemic. I want to give you some insight into how it all came together. These tactics can apply for future Canadian media promotion.

1) Timing - Since March is still very much the throes of late winter for Canadians, they’re more likely to be receptive hearing about great (sunny! warm!) places to travel. Just note their spring break timing.

2) Food Is Always Interesting - Tying in a food component always piques interest. We planned two major culinary components for this trip: I brought a San Antonio partner—a French bilingual pastry chef—to do an on-air cooking demo for a major morning show in Ottawa, then organized a chef-led group cooking lesson media event in Montreal.

3) Hire Local, (Snow Boots) On-the-Ground Experts - We were fortunate enough to have the budget to retain a Toronto-based agency who helped organize logistics and facilitate deeper connections to Canadian media and influencers in these markets. Their help was also invaluable when it came to purchasing things like cooking equipment for the TV segment and sourcing ingredients. We spent much time planning shopping lists and ensuring things could be sourced in Canada because we could not risk crossing the border with any food.

4) Bilingualism - When conducting any business in Montreal, it’s always respectful and expected that materials will be bilingual. We had our invitation and keepsake media event book (recipes, pitches, info) with side-by-side English and French Canadian copy.

These are just some quick points on how we structured a successful media mission in Canada. In future posts I’ll elaborate on a few components.