Seems everyone with a computer and a fork is starting to enter the restaurant space with tech schemes. Most seem to be ideas designed by people trying to solve their own problem — I wish I could register for restaurant coupons instead of a toaster — without a lot of thought to execution, scalability and the realities of The Restaurant.

One odd one that crossed my path in the past month or so was a deal where a bunch of people go eat dinner somewhere, tweet about it and supposedly the restaurant ends up being busy because of the great word of mouth. Be damned, FTC!

I was invited to join in the inaugural dinner, presumably because I am seen as having a lot of followers and as one who promotes restaurants (which I actually do for a living, not in exchange for a dinner).

It felt weird to me, the whole model. Not because of the implicit exchange of delicious food for positive access to followers, but because I wondered if the whole thing would seem authentic or not.

It didn't.

More, it read like a bunch of drunk people who didn't really know much about food but were excited to feel like they were in the restaurant spotlight for 15 minutes. I wasn't sure how anyone else was viewing the whole exchange that night, including the limited number of Twitter followers, but it all felt way too inauthentic to me.

Then, I was reading a blog about marketing over the weekend and it all fell into place for me.

And I realized why I pretty much try to keep my gushing — rather than just sharing information — about restaurants contained on Twitter, because if my stream really reflected the shocking amount of amazing food I am served, well, no one would believe it.

I also have a little personal rule where I don't write about anything I don't like. I am a publicist and my job is to promote, sure, but I am aware that communication is changing and my ability to have a solid reputation in the food world is likely going to be important to my clients in the future. So, I'm happy to share about something I love, but I'll not say much at all if I don't. I know my clients are watching my feed and wondering — why not, why no yumaroo tweets?

They think it is my job to just get the damn gushy tweet up there. I don't. I don't care what anyone says about my role as a publicist. Just as I guarded my reputation as a traditional flack, I will guard my reputation as a techie flack.

Which gets me to my point: PR doesn't solve problems. It doesn't make your crappy food somehow magically taste good and doesn't make a concept people don't understand somehow make sense. Nor does it make your misguided promotion somehow compelling for all.

If you are looking to a publicist to solve these kinds of problems, you are wasting your money. Because all it's gonna do is make more people come into your restaurant and confirm the crappiness of the food, so they can tell their friends; or make more people talk about how weird your concept is; or make you think your promotion has legs because it was on Fox Thing in The Morning — even if the promotion dirties your brand.

So, chefs, stop hiring publicists to solve your problems. Solve your problems first.  Then, when you've fixed up your restaurant, gotten the right chef in the door, had a come-to-Jesus about your pricing structure, or developed a year's worth of promotions that sell themselves — and only then — start spending money on marketing.