Chris Borrelli is an edge case.

Yesterday, Chris wrote a super large article in the Chicago Tribune about being recognized at restaurants and being treated like a regular.  Unlike most people who crave some sort of special attention in life, Chris seems to downright hate it.

The article, more than anything, elucidates some of the awkward ways restaurants approached his regularity. New waitress telling him and his girl what they were going to order, a hostess spouting out that he had been at the restaurant twice before -- to no apparent end. This all apparently gleaned from computer-tracking. 

Chris seemed to lament the days of old when being a regular was more about being plain-old folksy than marketing.

Only I seemed to remember the days of old quiet well, in The Days Before Computers, when I was a waitress at a diner and had plenty of regulars. And I can assure you, that folksy showing up with the orange juice just as Mr. O.Jerk was parking himself at the stool was all about marketing -- because it was all about tips.

To me, I think the biggest difference is that in the past, being a great server was about using your Emotional Intelligence to read a table. If you had regulars, you watched their patterns and slowly, over time, began to anticipate their actions. It all came together slowly and in human time.

Today, with the advent of technology, that learning curve is compressed. And it seems restaurants are going through a little awkward teenager phase now that they are getting a handle on data collection.  But it doesn't mean that the technology should be thrown out with the bathwater, because really, restaurants are in business and dealing with customers is about marketing.

So, what's the real learning here? Customer data is something you use to inform the guest experience, not something to show off.

Just sharing that you know Chris has been at the restaurant twice is a pretty selfish act, if you think about it. That hostess wasn't trying to improve his experience, she was just flexing her muscles and hoping Chris would be impressed.  And really, why should he? She had done nothing except show off some rudimentary data collection that had no purpose.

But if that customer data shows that he liked the window table and during pre-shift and that hostess had done her review, she could just go a head and silently sit him at that table. Magically, Chris will feel great about the place and probably not even know why (and really he doesn't have to know why, he just has to feel good).

As for the robot new girl who spouted out his order before even handing him a menu. Frankly, I woulda done the same thing as Chris, which was to order something else just to spite her. So small minded, I know, and he seemed to know, but there is a bit of bizarre-o big brother in that scenario as he laid it out.

The smart move is to remember how he likes his French Toast cooked, no matter who is working the shift, or remembering to bring the milk skim the time he forgets to clarify.

Technology, after all, isn't something to fear, it is something to use. It doesn't have to be a tyranny in our lives, it can be a tool to make it all a little less hard. Because I am sure if the establishments Chris frequented used it with some subtly and generosity rather than as a trophy to show off, Chris would silently marvel at how comfortable and content he was at those places. He wouldn't notice, it would just be.

Again, we revisit hospitality.  And the idea that hospitality isn't about you, it's about the guest.

Calculating? Sure. But I'll tell you, with this kind of approach to marketing, I was even able to soften up Mr. O.Jerk back in the day.

Let me admit up front -- I had forgotten my coat.

It happens, sometimes, when I get distracted with my work and get so singularly focused on what I am doing that when the alarm rings to get me moving to a meeting, I have to scramble to re-enter the world and get out the door. I'll forget my coat, put my sweater on inside out, forget I parked the car in the garage where I always park it, what-have-you.

So, when I found myself standing outside a restaurant in 25 degree weather, it was clearly my own fault I was cold.

But I guess I was also shocked to find myself standing outside a restaurant, waiting to get in. Their posted hours indicated they would be open. A guy who was standing nearby had called shortly before to confirm when they would open and had been told the same time as posted, which was about 10 minutes before. There were people milling around -- warmly -- inside, looking at us like we were some kind of strange. After all, we were standing outside in the cold.

Now I'll concede that I have been indoctrinated in The Blackbird Way. Here is a place where the owner is known to drive people to the opera to make sure they get there on time, where the chef will gladly run food, run the dishwasher -- who cares what needs to be done, just get it done. And where guests have been known to show up at 3:00 in the afternoon and have a drink at the bar even though the place is clearly closed and the staff is getting ready for service, having family meal, conducting pre-shift meeting.

But I think, sometimes, there is this overboardness when it comes to "making sure the guest's experience is exactly how we want it."  Like the kitchen staff that gets angry at the customer who orders well-done steak. Or the front of the house staff who stands around sniggering at the the guest who orders Diet Coke with their meal.

I dunno. At the end of the day, it's a business. Sure, we want people to experience our brilliance. But it is a business first and last and every which way in-between. I know, I know, I am gonna get lambasted for not understanding that the guest just don't know better and has to be educated. The chef is the one who knows how you like your steak, thank you very much. 

But sometimes I think people tend to get a little too freaky-deaky with their self-absorbed obsession and it begins to make the whole experience completely inhospitable.

Like the restaurant who wouldn't even let guests come in from the cold and stand quietly in the vestibule while they finished getting ready for service so that the experience would be perfect. Really, we were all too cold to notice and too angry to care their special kind of perfect. 

I love seeing journalists start to blog for chefs. OK, I have really only seen On My Plate, from Plate Goddess Chandra Ram. And she has only just started. But I wanted to draw attention to it nonetheless because, well, isn't this post about recipes and journalists something we should be addressing?

Recipes are a hornets nest for most restaurant chefs. I'd even go so far to say they are a pain for restaurant pastry chefs (all the ingredients for pastry chefs are metric weights, not your standard cup and teaspoon). Having to write recipes means having to step out of the raging river of work that chefs and pastry chefs are confronted with each day and step in front of a computer and, with some sort of mental quiet, parse out the actions and methodology that come as second nature.

But being able to write a legible, clear, lucid, not ridiculous recipe is important for the chef who wants a little time in the spotlight.

After all, being able to write usable, audience-specific recipes can be the difference between getting in a national magazine or not. The reason: most of the magazines that write about chefs are recipe books.  And, if you ever are in a national magazine and end up having the potential for being a media darling, you'll find real quick that one of the primary tasks of the media darling is, you guessed it, recipe-writing.

So, if your goal is to be a media darling, you might want to first read Malcom Gladwell on the importance of practice, and then realize that while you may have been cooking for 10,000 hours, you likely haven't been writing recipes for 10,000 seconds.  So, it is time to get practicing. 

While you do, here are a few things to remember for the majority of recipe requests:

1) No one judges the size of your toque by the complexity of your recipe. So, when a journalist calls you for a recipe, they are needing something a home cook can accomplish. Home cooks do not have flat tops, eight burner fifty billion BTU stoves or sous chefs (or dishwashers!).

2) The recipe has to fit into a reasonable space in the publication.  So, you are likely supposed to put the whole thing into one recipe with one set of instructions, using some reasonable shortcuts (like store-bought mayonnaise/chicken stock/tomato puree) that can keep the recipe short.

3) Your Excel spreadsheet recipe, developed for restaurant quantities, does not convert if you simply change the number in the serving size field from 30 to 4.  It doesn't work. Ever. Really. If you can't manage the conversion responsibly, ask your brightest cook to do it for you, for the love of all things Holy..

4) Type up your recipe. Chandra's comment that she got a recipe scribbled on a napkin and faxed to her is believable, to me.  I once got a whole recipe for venison ragu scribbled on a bevnap.  It said, use venison, make ragu. I didn't punch the chef.  For the record, I still want to.

5) The recipe is for the reader, not about you. So, be reasonable when the writer needs to tweak and pare down your recipe.  No one is going to look at that recipe and think you can't cook because you made substitutions.  The readers are gonna look at that recipe and judge you on if they can make it (muse on that for a few) and your chef peers are just gonna stare at the recipe and wonder why no one called them.

And for all you misguided chefs who still claim that you don't share your recipe because it is a secret, blah, blah, blah, well, I can't even think of anything funny to add, just stop with that nonsense.  It's nonsense.

Recently, I got a call from a food-related charity. The same call, it seems, I get from chefs every day.

The charity was frustrated with a recent article because it didn't tell even a portion of the story they needed told. And this was after years of sending the journalist scads and scads of information. The charity had spent time educating the journalist on their mission and value. They had done the job building the relationship.

And what they got back was a whole big pile of just this side of nothin'.

They were at a loss. So, they called me up because they wanted to know what chefs want to know every day -- Why isn't the media really telling the whole story they could tell about me?

Well, the answer is this: why the hell should they?

The media's job is to find news they think will interest their readers (and make their editor/boss happy), filter it through their perspective, and write it in a way that will inform, entertain or provoke. Their job is not to make story subjects happy.

In a small food community like Chicago, that concept sometimes butts up against the reality that we, all of us, know each other pretty darn well. And we're all pretty friendly, essentially becoming each other's friends over time, rather than just acquaintances. And friends, in the real world, take care of each other -- they get each other's backs.

But often, "journalist friendships" are another matter.  Journalists make great friends, I'll say that first. I have a few that I treasure greatly. So this isn't about whether journalists can be great friends, they are.

What it is about is all those people who are subjects (or not) of stories that journalists write about (or don't).

Because journalists make lots of contacts with sources for stories and, because of their job of needing to get the source to cough it all up, they need to make sure they conduct themselves in such a way that they become a trusted recipient of that subject's interesting news. So, by design, they are friendly.

They are also, on the whole, amazing listeners. They are such great listeners, in fact, that one can only assume that they start out life as great listeners.  Then, every day, they practice being even better listeners as part of their job. Resulting in listening skills that rival the best shrink. (For the record: that shrink isn't your friend either.)

In a world where it seems everyone is so busy that no one has time to listen, being around someone who actually does is intoxicating. It's hard not to think that they care, intensely, about you.

And I'll say this, on the whole, journalists are pretty awesome peeps, so likely, they do care about you. But this doesn't make them your friend. It simply makes them awesome.

But just because they are awesome people and good listeners and might even care about you, as a person, doesn't mean they are gonna print what you want them to print. Because if that is what they did, it would put them straight out of a job. And then, because you are their friend too, right?, you'd have to let them sleep on your couch.  Likely, you are their friend, but not that much of a friend.

In which case you can now begin to understand what I am talking about.

The Moral:
To befriend journalists, give them great compelling stories with a news hook and some sort of relevance to today's world and how about tossing in some sort of uniqueness that makes it interesting. Trust me, the journalists will end up writing what you want them to write if you do that kind of work. Then you can think they are your friend all you want.

After a babillion years in restaurant PR, I began to think that I have seen everything when it comes to restaurant promotions. Wine dinners, seasonal specials, maybe the adventurous dinner and a movie.  Same same.

Then, something like Province's yoga class and dinner event floats past my radar screen and I 'bout fall off my exercise ball. The event is part of a Yoga for Foodies thing that Yahoo is putting on and features an hour-long yoga class and dinner.

How out-there is that? So cool made me even think that maybe Yahoo has it in 'em to climb out of the wreckage of their business!  Turns out, these classes are selling out all over the country!

Randy Zweiban, chef/owner of Province, is a pretty aggressive marketer of his business. At the very core, he gets that his restaurant is more a business than a place where he can be an artist.  He gets that if the business is solid, he can be an artist.

So, he hosts tons of events, he blogs, he makes sure he has current food photos available for media. 

When he booked it, it seemed a possible long shot.  Who would have known if the event would sell out. I can't imagine why it wouldn't, really.  I mean food and yoga -- toss in a puppy/kitten and you've pretty much wrapped up the trigger points for a lot of people.  But it is out there, as far as events go.

But even if it doesn't (sell out, that is), even if the Yahoo yoga guy is the only person eating Randy's food at this event, it is going to be a huge success.  That's right, I said even if no one goes, this event will do what it needs to do.

• No journalist who covers restaurant events in this city can ignore an event this unique.  So, he'll get coverage. 
  
• By hosting this event, he'll reach a whole new audience -- yoga teachers. Communities are like magnets for information that supports their passion.  The yoga teachers will hear about this class, trust me.
• The yoga teachers will likely think good thoughts about the restaurant and end up going at some point -- if not for the class, for a dinner out, or maybe lunch.
  
• Randy's restaurant is pretty uniquely "fresh" feeling, due to the design and the lack of chemicals, and his food is delish and the portions are flexible.  So, the yoga teachers will undoubtedly like the restaurant.
• Like hairdressers, yoga teachers are a particularly trusted bunch of people. And people tend to develop relationships with their yoga teacher because of it. So, the Province-loving yoga teacher becomes a particularly powerful evangelist for the restaurant.
  

So, does all this mean that the next time you go to Province you'd better wear your Lululemon capris if you wanna fit in?  No, it doesn't.  But it does mean that Randy is looking at tribes of people and working hard trying to figure out 1) who those tribes are that will most love Province and 2) how to get them into the restaurant.

And that, my friends, is getting it.

Soft openings are this weird thing that restaurants do to pretend they aren't open when they are. Those of us who make a living of living in the restaurant world see this, it seems, every week -- these weird non-openings and all the mutated forms of non-marketing restaurateurs can think up to hide, while not hiding, the truth. And the sad truth is that even seasoned restaurant folk attempt this.

All this, I'll note, is different from the concept of Friends and Family, which is when friends and family go to a restaurant for practice nights prior to opening. It is customary to receive no bill for the check, fill out a feedback form, and tip the server really well.  REALLY WELL, in case you are ever invited to one. Don't let me catch you being stingy with that server.

The idea of the soft opening is to open the doors without telling the media or the general public in order to practice on a small group of unsuspecting people, likely walk-ins, best customers from the last place everyone worked that were frantically called, etc. Of course, this is all done full-priced because the restaurant is desperate for cash at that point, likely because the build-out dragged on and on.

And the cash exchange is the telltale sign, in my book, of an open restaurant.

But wait, there's more! It also requires dealing with the media, who have been watching the restaurant build out as if their job depended on their reporting on the opening (OHMIGOSH! WAIT! IT DOES!) and likely have called the restaurant to ask, repeatedly, about opening day.

And what these soft opening perps do is, well, not tell the media the actual opening day -- because the restaurant has decided, cleverly they think, to try out "spin" for a day. "It's not opening (wink, wink), it's "soft opening!" Which of course means the restaurant has now lied to the media.

Because spin is not lying.

Lying is never a good idea. It often seems like a good idea, I'll admit that. But really, it never is. Wait. Do I have to tell you that? Your mother didn't teach you? Life experience didn't teach you?  Common freaking sense didn't teach you?

So, how should the media know, when they call to ask about the opening date, if they are dealing with one of these restaurants?

Well, thanks to watching a few seasons of "Criminal Minds" and thus clearly understanding profiling, I have been able to mock up a profile of the restaurateur who attempts this soft opening hooha.
 
Restaurateurs who have never heard of The Interwebz
As an experienced profiler, I know to start with the most obvious. And the most obvious clue is that people who go to restaurants on opening night Tweet they were there, Facebook that they are going, Yelp! a review.  So, my first conclusion is that the restaurateur must not even know about The Interwebz because they don't even recognize that the word is going to get out right away, that night, from a cell phone in his very own restaurant.

Restaurateurs who are Buddhist
A correlated concept to the above is that people who go to opening nights of restaurants are generally doing it so they can be first in and they use that status to increase their own status as an important diner-in-the-know. And thus, they will be compelled to share with others that they are going to the opening and Are. Thus. Important. To not know this, you'd have to believe people act with non-attachment and that everyone who is in the restaurant on the first night isn't there because of some sort of "first in vanity" but because the universe sent them there on opening night simply to be in the moment.  Thus, I can conclude that the restaurateur is Buddhist.

Restaurateurs who believe TV is real
Just like how a chef can tell a publicist to spell "crab cake" "crabcake" and expect his wishes should be honored, a restaurateur believes he can tell a journalist to not print the news and his wish should be honored. That's right, the restaurant attempting a soft opening believes journalists can, actually, not print news and keep their jobs -- because, in fact, printing in a press release whatever garbage a restaurant can dish up is precisely HOW a publicist keeps her job. So, it makes sense to believe the same of journalists, right?  And the only person who believes this would believe Ted Baxter is a real journalist. So, it is obvious that the restaurateur who believes a soft opening would work believes TV is real. See, I am good at profiling, I am sure the FBI, MI-5, CSI and NCIS are all calling me right now!  As well as that guy who is The Medium's boss. really, I am clearly more advanced.

Restaurateurs who live in caves
Because the restaurant wants to let some people know they are open (how else can you practice unless there are actual people there), they have to tell some people to come. Their hope is that anyone who receives one of these super secret invites surely can't be friends with any of the food journalists in town. Because, of course, people don't have friends because ... are you ready for it ... people live in caves! (Buddhist monks have been known to take to caves.)

Restaurateurs who don't read or watch movies
The concept of eternal recurrence, though visited upon again and again in projects as diverse as Finnegan's Wake and "Battlestar Galactica," has escaped the restaurateur attempting a soft opening. The restaurateur actually believes they are the first person to attempt this subterfuge. No one will recognize it for what it is, because this has never happened before!  Thus, I can add to my profile that these restaurateurs don't read or watch movies.

Restaurateurs who are afraid of boats
The restaurateur who attempts the soft opening has to tell their staff that they are opening so they can show up and be ready, and they seem to forget that their staff is likely to leak the information. That no one is going to absentmindedly answer the phone and, without thinking, confirm the opening date. No one is going to complain to their friend that, dang, halcyon days of between jobs is over and work begins anew. No one is going to just all up their best friend the journalist and flat out tell them the actual opening date. My profiler training tells me that I can infer that these restaurateurs must not spend time on or near boats, likely from a fear, possibly a fear that the boat will leak.

I am developing a new questionnaire for restaurants who want to hire me to do their opening PR.  Rather than ask if they understand the concept of why soft openings are bad, I am going to ask them how they feel about boats, what movies and books they read, if they think Ted Baxter is a real journalist, or if they have ever heard of the Internet. If they fit the profile of the type of restaurateur likely to do a soft opening, I am running for my life.

Google buzz launched while I was on vacation so I thought I could conveniently ignore it since, well, I was on tech-free vacation and who reads up on a new social networking site while on tech-freaking-free vacation! 

The fact that the roll-out was a bit of a train wreck helped solidify my decision to remain solidly on vacation. I had ostensibly forgotten about the whole thing until this morning, when I happened upon Marketing Tips for Using Google Buzz and lo, first thing it says is get started right away.

So, naturally, I did. You may assume that is because I am an insane overachiever.  The reality is, I tend to believe in the theory that the world is changing so fast, one is better off preparing for everything a bit.  Just in case.

And while Google Buzz seems still a bit lackluster, I kinda have to share my hope that it takes off. Mostly, because it is obvious how helpful it could be to chefs/restaurants to be able to friend and follow people -- customers -- just from email addresses.  You see, Google Buzz is integrated into gmail, so rather than trying to find your customers on Facebook or Twitter, trying to get them to follow you or cough up their Facebook name or whathaveyou, when you get a gmail from someone, your friend/follow relationship is set up right then and there.

Before you get too excited, there are a few kinks: 1) a hot mess regarding privacy laws and 2) a grand total of just about no one is using it (see above link).

So, what's a chef to do now?  Well, two things.  Go set up a gmail account for your business and a new professional-only account for yourself and fill out the profile a bit.  Then, you can ignore it until Google gets its bearings. Likely, because they have more money than both Oprah and Jordan put together and squared, it will.

I have an earlier post about capturing your restaurant's Google Page.  I am hoping you did that already but suggest you do if you haven't.  The world is going mobile (you are too, you with that fancy smart phone) and it is tough to deny think that the future of restaurant marketing is going to miss that tectonic shift in human communications.  If you follow along, step by step, we are hoping to get you where you need to be.

A lot of chefs thumb through Big Fancy Glossy Magazines. They see their peers in the magazines, people they are convinced they can cook better than, and decide they too should be featured in the magazine. Why not? So, they call up the publicist and order up a New York Trip, complete with meetings with a number of editors at Big Fancy Glossy Magazines. Easy peasy and that's what they pay the publicist the big bucks for anyway, right?

There's a great story about a chef who wanted one of these Big Fancy Glossy Magazine spreads. Every month, he bought the magazines he most loved and studied them from cover to cover. He didn't just look at the articles about other chefs and wonder "why not me."  He read the whole thing, from the lists of editors and publishers on the masthead to the articles to the back page. 

It took a lot of time, and a lot of time it really frustrated him to be reminded, month in and month out, that everyone else was famous but him.

He did get some attention, though he wasn't featured in the articles; a few national writers had tried out his restaurant when they were in town. With each, he made sure to visit the table, talk a bit about his food, and grab a business card.

In time, the chef had a bit of a relationship developing with a national writer. Like he did with all the writers he knew, he had been diligent about keeping up the correspondence. Just a few notes here and there, and over time advice, ideas, and a phone call of congrats when the writer published a piece he particularly loved. During one such phone call, the writer mentioned an important editor at a Big Fancy Glossy Magazine. He recognized the name, of course, having seen the name on the masthead time and time again.  And he recognized that that name was connected to precisely the Big Fancy Glossy Magazine in which he most wanted to be featured.

Balls out, he shot back that he'd love a meeting with the editor. 

Of course, of course!

After all, the writer knew a bit about the chef at this point. The guy had been writing for a year, never asking for anything, just to touch base and let the writer know what he was up to -- no pressure, no expectation.  The writer felt comfortable that the chef wouldn't make him look bad -- rather the chef would show up on time, act like himself and be generally respectful.

For the writer, making the meeting was a matter of one email. After all, the writer had been working with the editor for years and thus could be trusted to respect the editor's time. Flights were booked.

The rare opportunity of a few days off -- in New York? Most any chef's dream -- well, the American version, of course.  The real dream is traveling abroad but sometimes New York is the best one can do. And when you are there to eat and meet important people, it's a pretty damn awesome best one can do.

Well, as the story goes, the meeting with the magazine editor went great. The chef entranced the editor with his passion for food -- and he was just being himself, talking about what was important to him, how great was that, he thought!

The meeting went so great, the editor-in-chief actually asked him to lunch after the meeting. The rub: he had his pregnant wife and young son waiting for him back at the hotel.

So, the chef had a choice: do the responsible thing and let the editor know that he needed to get back to the family as his wife -- his pregnant wife -- would be expecting him back and they had plans. Or. Do the responsible thing and take advantage of an opportunity of a lifetime to really connect with the editor of a Big Fancy Glossy Magazine.

He decided to let his wife choose.

The rest, of course, is history. And you know the history since you read about the guy in Big Fancy Glossy Magazines. That's magazines, plural, not magazine.

The moral

You only get one chance. Of course, you have to know the chance has presented itself, which usually takes doing the work to 1) know the information you need to know with respect to that chance and 2) create an actual scenario where that chance could happen. This, of course, is made more difficult by the fact that you can't precisely know what that chance is going to look like when you start out, so it actually takes a lot of work laying a lot of different kinds of groundwork that is sorta in the general direction of the goal in order for a chance, any chance to be able to present itself. 

That's a lot of work, but wouldn't it just suck if the chance happened and you didn't even know it?!

You only get one chance. Of course, you need to make sure that one chance is the chance you want to happen. Life doesn't just fall in your lap. It is molded and crafted by thousands of actions both big and small that one takes. Usually, having to do the work one has to do to create an environment where chances can present themselves is a pain in the ass.

That's a lot of work, but wouldn't it just suck if the change that happened wasn't the chance you even wanted?

You get one chance. Of course, that one chance usually comes at the expense of other things in your life. If you've built up enough capital before the chance, and are the type to replenish capital after the chance, you can usually ask those around you for a lot of sacrifice and they'll support your dream.

That's a lot of work, and wouldn't it just suck if you had that chance but couldn't take advantage of it.

As a client, your job isn't to create the work, your job is to create a platform so the work can be done.

Most chefs skip that second bit.  They figure if they hire someone who feels right, that person will figure out what needs to be done.  Some chefs, in fact, figure the person they hire should "just know" what needs to be done and do it.  I did that when I hired my first web team and, lo, I got a steaming hot mess on a plate. 

It takes discipline to create the right platform. It involves learning about the job, understanding limitations, making difficult choices about what you really want and making sure the right work is getting done. It isn't about set it and forget it.

So, I thought it might be helpful to lay out a few pointers to get everyone started:

1) Before talking to anyone outside the restaurant about anything, make sure you and your staff are on-board and ready to be disciplined about the work you are going to have to do. It doesn't matter a hoot if some important journalist is in the restaurant if your chef de cuisine can't articulate the passion behind the food.  Believe me, I've lived that ridiculous disaster. Recently.

2) Be clear about what success looks like. Be so clear you can write it down. If you can't write down clear ground rules, precisely how is the publicist supposed to figure out what matters to you? (read: what you want to pay for)

3) After you write down the goals, go cross out all the ones that are on the list because of "old thinking" about media, marketing and getting butts in seats.

4) Simplify your goals, relentlessly and continuously. And be prepared to accept the solution, without wondering what you are missing.

5) Hire the right person for the job. You wouldn't ask the HVAC guy to tile the kitchen backsplash. And you shouldn't hire a publicist to do social media. And while I am at it, stop freaking hiring publicists with no restaurant specialty to do restaurant PR work. Really, you're surprised that person then "invited Phil Vettel in to review your restaurant"?  Thank God Phil is a gracious guy and didn't hold it against you -- though I am sure he rolled his eyes at having to deal with yet another clueless publicist wasting his time.

6) Be honest and up-front about resources. I am continuously shocked that not one restaurant I dealt with had any idea what their PR budget was. While I am sure half were scary enough to actually not know, I do know the other half figured by not telling me, they'd get a deal (guess what, my hourly rate is what it is, you want me to do the work for less money, you get less work. Duh.).  The people you're working with demand your respect and no one respects anyone who doesn't tell them the truth.

7) Pay what needs to be paid in order for you to reach your goals. Unfortunately and depending on the ridiculosity of your goals, this may be far more than you want to pay. The reality is, if you pay less than needs to be paid, you will be shelling out money that doesn't help you reach your goals, which means wasted cash.

8) Park your ego at the door. Your ego is the biggest money waster out there.

9) Either get a God damn personal assistant or learn to freaking type. Because, and I think I mentioned this before, the world now works on computers, via email and the internet. I know that this is more difficult for you than regular office folk, but, it is the way things are. You need to either jump in or hire the people around you that you actually need. 

P.S.  I have a personal assistant whom I hired when I was flat broke and she was the best investment I made.

10) If you find yourself with a craptastic publicist, run. The number of people who stick with PR people for lame reasons is, well, scary in itself.  Lame reasons include: feeling bad for them because times are tough; not wanting to work with the right person because of some bad blood; thinking that you are their most important client and there's something valuable in that; fear; loyalty.  If they aren't reaching your goals (now), dump 'em.

Bonus Tip:  Celebrate when your publicist succeeds. Even small successes. Publicists are people, actually, and tend to respond well to people who treat them well -- and that also means that they tend to not care as much about the asshats. 

I just got back from vacation and had a lot of time to read while I was gone. One of the books I revisited was The Histories by Herodotus. So, time for some Greek mythology!  WOOT!

Just kidding. In a nutshell, The Histories follows the conquests of four Persian kings during their empire-building and demise. And to cut to the chase, the overarching theme is how the lazy thinking of this empire and its understanding of the world led to their demise. The hows and whys of the particulars, of course, aren't really important. The important lesson of history is that blind belief in the old ways of doing things will always lose.

Which is why I was reading about Xerxes and thinking about chefs.

Xerxes thought that he could follow in the footsteps of the Persian kings before him and get the same result. Well, I ask you this: have you ever even heard of Xerxes?  No, you haven't.  Because he couldn't just do his work like the kings before him did it. The world had changed -- and he should have changed with it.

He didn't and he lost.  And now you don't even recognize his name.

The Moral
If you want people to recognize your name, adapt to the new battlefield.

I've been on vacation for the last two weeks. So, three weeks ago, I sat down one day and cranked out nearly 15 blog posts in one day.

The last time I went on vacation was back in July. I actually signed off of my blog for two weeks that time, choosing to put the blog on the same vacation I was taking because I felt that pre-preparing the posts seemed, well, off.

My thoughts at the time were that blogs are more like conversations and so if I wasn't there to have the conversation, it would be weird.

Then I proceeded to blog for six more months and despite the fact that complete strangers who aren't even in PR or restaurants tell me they read my blog religiously, hardly anyone ever comments.

I kinda hate that no one comments. It makes me feel my effort has no impact, even when I check the numbers and see that it does.

My resolution for 2010 was to comment on more blog posts. I thought I would do it for a number of reasons, but mostly because human interaction is a good thing. 

Mostly, I have failed at my resolution. I commented on some chef blogs I like. Once or twice. And I commented on some marketing/PR blogs here and there. But I am pretty sure I would classify my effort as a D-.

That said, our new paradigm is one of interaction and communication and maybe if I persevere, I can drag our community onto blog comment areas and encourage everyone (or maybe just one other person or maybe just myself) to participate. And maybe that will get some more chefs blogging, which will help their careers.

So, now that I will be coming back rested and, hopefully for the sake of my staff and clients, sane, I resolve again to comment on blogs. Because that is the best part of resolutions, you can make them fresh every day and every day you have a new opportunity to succeed.

Unplugged got a not embarrassing amount of traffic in 2009. I'll say, for someone who is not a writer and committed to writing something lucid five days a week, I sorta feel like I can pat myself on the back a bit.

For one series, though, our traffic spiked through the roof. It was the series on media comps. 

Seems a lot of media were shocked and appalled that I would be so bold as to write about the dirty little semi-secret and others were shocked and appalled that it occurred.

I was reminded of this series just now because a client forwarded an email from a writer who, balls out, asked for a free meal at a primo weekend reservation time and the client wanted some advice.

I got a lot of private comments about those blog posts. Mostly from chefs who appreciated that I pulled back the veil and gave them some advice. A lot of those chefs weren't clients and have no PR firm so they have nowhere to turn.

And I got into a lot of discussions with journalists on both sides of the fence.

Mostly, I got into a discussion with (no typo) my BFF, an ex-journalist herself of the old-school variety, about the hypocrisy of it all. I have spent too much time sitting in the seat where I sit, watching great stories get passed over because the chef wasn't popular -- the excuse being that they been written about two years prior. 

Mostly my side of the discussion with her was about my frustration. Which I keep on writing about here and deleting.

Maybe I should wait and revisit this topic next year.

In the meantime, chefs, it is a dicey situation, dealing with that media person who asks for the comp. My advice, though, is to set up some sort of meal that won't bite into your profits too much and direct them to a time that won't take seats away from paying customers.

Comps are a reality of business, you happily give them to the visiting chef dignitary who does nothing for you but makes you feel better by simply eating your food. If someone else can get the word out about what you are doing and possibly put more butts in seats, it will likely be a wise investment.

There's one blog post that kept creeping to the top of my head and then got hastily deleted before making it to the proofing queue.

It's the blog post about how frustrating it is to promote famous people.

You see, famous people get press no matter what they do. Often times, it is a fine state of affairs -- especially when they are the type of celebrity who gained celebrity status off the sweat of their brow and real honest hard work.

Kudos to them!

But there are others, the ones who happened on their celebrity for some oddball reason. These celebrities open a restaurant and it is kinda ill-conceived with definitely dated decor, and a writer from the other side of the country, who has never been there, decides it is one of the year's best.

I know what you are thinking: "What gives with this cranky crankmeister, she'll bitch about anything! They are your client! They are getting press! Be happy!"

Well, the truth of the matter is, it is a difficult situation for many reasons:

1. The restaurant doesn't get realistic feedback and so believes everyone who works there thinks the restaurant is all that and a bag of chips when they really need to be working hard on ironing out all those funkadoo kinks.
   
2. People who do go and aren't starstruck will see it for what it is and start yapping, loud, because everyone loves to out a celebrity as an unsuccessful schlump.
   
3. The celebrity chef's numbers eventually fade because, likely, their celebrity status also made them lazy and they really don't try that hard despite the fact that restaurant work is damn hard.
   
4. And for the publicist, well, the ultimate rub is that likely you have a roster of fine, hard-working clients with good stories who get no love because our entire society feeds like leeches on celebrities.

So, for me, repping celebrities is a last resort kinda thing. I'd rather champion the David with killer saucisson than hawk the Goliath with an ego the size of Texas. And so I think I am partial to the chef who wants to do what he can to keep up with marketing but spends the rest of his time cooking in the kitchen, caring more about the bottom line than if a line of fans would come to see him walk the red carpet.

Of course, now I look back and realize that this blog post isn't the one I have I wanted to write all year. Maybe next year.

(P.S. No, my friend, this is NOT about you, so don't write me and ask me if it is.)

Back in June of 2009, I wrote a post entitled "Ridiculous Conversation #14,198."

It outlined a ridiculous conversation I had with a restaurant manager who preferred to shoot himself in the foot each and every day rather than listen to what he was actually saying.

In sum: He got so much press he couldn't keep up with it and was pissing off journalists but rather solve the problem by having someone help him ensure the right information was getting out, he demanded he didn't need to work with a PR firm because he got "tons of press."

Add that to the follow conversations and I feel I am summing up my life:

"I don't have time to do Twitter or Facebook or a blog. I am working on a chef cookbook."
Chefs are still trying to do a chef cookbook as a means to get discovered. Enough that I am even curious if anyone even buys chef cookbooks anymore.

"We are gonna do a soft opening."
For the love of God please...STOP with the soft openings: 1) you can't actually execute them anymore because your diners will tweet about it, and 2) the one time you are actually newsworthy is just before and when you open.  Don't throw it away.

"Our numbers are so down, I am really scared, but I don't understand it because everyone loves us and we have tons of regular customers."
I talked about this last week. I still don't get it.

"Food & Wine hates me, I am sure of it."
No statement makes me want to punch someone in the nose more than this.

"Can you get me in Esquire Best New Restaurants?"
OK, except that statement.

"Did you talk to Gourmet about me?"  "They are closed." "What about Ruth Reichl? Can you talk to her?" Speechless.

From a non-client: "I always knew I could count on you, could you get me into James Beard house?"
We are all in business, lads, we're not friends.

From a restaurant with no Twitter feed "We can just sell the event through Twitter, like they did for X event last week."
Oh, I am gonna love watching that.

I am knee-deep in this new blog and writing something every day.  Blogging, it seems, is now a habit. So I thought it would be fun to take a week and go back to some favorite posts and see how I have developed as a blogger over time.

My first post was, I am not shocked, called "I hate blogging."

And you know, I still do. In many ways I am quite sure I probably hate it more now than I did when I wrote that first post because in the nine months since I have started blogging, people have started writing about me and my blogging; I've teed up blogs before vacation, doubling my workload when it was already doubled because I was leaving on vacation; I've considered drinking whiskey in the morning because I write my blog in the morning and often I feel like I could use a little liquid courage to jump back in the deep water.

So, what's changed since that first blog post is that while back then I merely THOUGHT I hated blogging, today, I can say I know I hate blogging.

And yet I blog and so should you. Because the other thing that changed in this time is that I've gotten to know more people who've gotten to know me. 

• Mike Gebert told his readers that my blog was some of the best commentary on the food biz as a biz.
• Peter Romeo told his readers I was an "uncelebrated changemaker" of 2009.
• And Chef2Video selected Unplugged as one of the top 10 "Thoughtful Food Blogs."

And so I blog. And so should you.

I don't often walk away from a Tom Foremski blog post without wondering if he is a little afraid of shadows.

In this one about the Killer Pitch, I am definitely feeling the guy has decided that PR people are goblins. He postulates that PR people could influence writers to write certain stories by letting them know that in exchange, they would drive traffic to the story and increase the reporter's own cachet with the increased traffic.

That said, I think he is onto a good idea. Mwwaaahhhh...

No, really. I agree with Tom that paying reporters for pageviews is wrong, but on the other hand, any PR firm that isn't driving traffic to a client's press hits isn't doing their job.

In fact, if you, as a restaurateur, started concentrating on building your friends and followers now, when you got a great press hit, you could actually maximize its reach and use it to drive business.

I've been harping on Social Media a lot this week and last. Mostly because I feel like more and more chefs are starting to see it as the necessary evil it is (necessary because it is and evil because they'd rather just go cook).

We've covered what social marketing is, how you can use it, why.  I would love to get some comments and questions.

I picked up a story a few weeks back on the Small Business Trends website about Public Relations Trends for 2010.

Of course, any article that talks about trends in Public Relations in the year 2010 has to talk about social media.  Mostly because anything that has anything to do with communication online has to do with social media. And particularly with publicists, whose job it is to be connectors, social media is a godsend -- after all, social media is, at its heart, a way for people to connect with one another and with information.

There were a few subheads in the story that struck me that I thought would be helpful for my cheffie readers.

Social media returns the P in PR to "people" -- going well beyond "promotion."
God, I remember back in the day having to develop events and promotions for restaurants in order to develop something the media would want to talk about. I mean, sure, as a publicist, I thought up scads of stories about my clients that I would hope and pray someone would write. I was actually pretty good at developing story ideas, thankfully, but even someone who was good at it couldn't base an entire PR strategy on it. 

Journalists would inevitably get sick of reading about and hearing about your client, or all the great stories would get told, and we would go back to "Tomato Time at Tip Top Grill" or something like that. It didn't matter what a pain in the ass it was for everyone to get on board with the promotion -- the staff training, developing the menu, writing the release, begging the journalist to write about it -- it was really the only option to keep the restaurant's name out there between the big stories.

Today, publicists can go back to what they do best -- developing and maintaining quality relationships. And social media makes that happen. The great publicists have embraced social media as a savior of their sanity and are making it work for their clients to boot.

Great PR professionals become influencers in their own right.
I remember getting a misfired email from an important journalist in which the journalist called me a flack. It was an odd slap in the face, especially as he was forwarding my original email to a colleague to highlight a good idea I had that they should pursue. So, even when I had a good idea, I was a flack.

It was, actually, a cultural norm rather than anything personal. Journalists are trained to be skeptical, it is actually part of their job. Why would they not be skeptical of someone paid to puff up their client?

That said, the Internet has given great publicists the opportunity to build up their own communities of friends and followers. They have become influencers in their own right, with opinions and insights that are respected and appreciated. 

As social media continues to define our world, the number of publicists who embrace and master this new opportunity will surely grow.

The myth that social media makes PR obsolete will be crushed.
I am not even too sure what is the difference between a social media professional and a public relations professional any more. They seem rather intertwined and the hairsplitting as the two sides duke it out is unproductive.

As long as someone smart is out there thinking through the messaging and positioning and executing in a reasoned, effective way, I personally don't care if it turns out to be my dog. 

Transparency in business communications will weed the great PR executives from the bad.
For real, this is gonna happen. It is happening already. And Thank God. 

So how can you, the chef, determine if your PR firm is one of the good ones or one of the bad? I'd say keep an eye out for who you feel communicates in a compelling way, who has an audience of their own and who is doing the PR of those you admire.

Businesses will see more value than ever from PR and marketing.
The focus of PR is shifting from media hits to actual business value, which is a good thing. After all, no one can even measure, effectively, what media hits do for a restaurant these days. There's speculation, for sure, and a lot of people who overlay a lot of assumptions on their media hits.

Did I ever tell you about the restaurant who claimed a review really bumped their business until I encouraged them to look at their comps from the months and years prior and they saw their numbers had decreased?

But business value is, in fact, easily measured and a publicist today should be able to deliver specific, understandable reports on mentions, traffic to your website, numbers of friends and followers that join a social media campaign, and actual media interest by way of online activity (actual click-thrus on press information and/or media traffic on web sites that contain your press information). 

It all bodes well for the restaurant that is more interested in their bottom line than the ease of sticking with what worked in the past, the fear of working with the unknown, the recognition of working with any given firm, or maybe the desire to hang out with people to whom you've grown accustomed. 

I failed math in college a few times before the professor just passed me out of sympathy. I had attended all the study sessions, done all the homework with the aid of a tutor who also happened to be the professor's roommate, asked questions, you name it. Nothing worked.

But the night before the final, I did face some math I understood. There weren't enough points on the final for me to pass the class -- even if I got every question right. The professor urged me to take it anyway, and when I got my grades I had a C- for algacalculus or whatever it was.

I still struggle with math, unless I am shopping for shoes, but I do understand one thing: If a restaurant is dying, it can't possibly be true that everyone that dines there loves it and that there are a ton of repeat customers.

Mathematically, if you have a lot of repeat customers and new people come to dine at your restaurant and love it, you would end up with a slowly increasing customer base. A and B eat there, A turns into a regular customer. C and D eat there, meaning three people are dining in the restaurant, A, C and D. D turns into a regular customer. So, when E and F eat there, you've got four customers in the form of A, D, E and F.  And so on.

Please, tell me I am wrong. Tell me my professor did the restaurant world a disservice when he passed me, even though I never understood one of the problems of that algecalculus class.

Because whenever I speak to a restaurant that isn't doing well, even if it is obvious why they aren't doing well, I need them to admit that 1) if they aren't doing well, everyone doesn't love them, and 2) if they don't have a growing clientele base, they don't have all those regular customers (there are some, sure, but not enough, which is the point. There aren't enough.).

Because until they embrace that, really, something is off in their concept or their execution, they aren't going to get to a place where they can improve their business.  Which is why they called me in the first place.

Last week, CNN Technology posted a story asking "Has Twitter Peaked?"

There are a bunch of statistics and numbers and some postulating that Twitter was a victim of its own success.

But before you get all excited and go committing Social Media Suicide, it is important to know that understanding Social Media isn't necessarily about being on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn -- it is about building platforms for people to interact online.

After all, most techies guess that 2010 will be the year of location, in much the same way that 2009 was the year of Twitter. Now that FourSquare is in bed with a newspaper, it's easy to see how that type of service can worm its way into most peoples' lives.

But Web 2.0, which is a shorthand way to refer to all the social media sites and activities online, isn't going anywhere.

It has changed armed conflict.

It has changed presidential elections.

It has changed education.

And actually, it is best not to think of Web 2.0 as the technology or the web sites at all. Think of it instead as a shift in web design that encouraged regular Joes to participate online. No longer do you have to be a geek to put your thoughts out there -- or your photos or videos or music or art. 

That desire -- the need to participate in conversation and share -- goes back to the time before spoken language, when cavemen left etchings on walls. Twitter, you see, is just a modern form of that.

Yeah, I just said that.

So, quite possibly, Twitter will fall out of vogue as something new and more efficient and effective comes along, just as etching on cave walls fell out of fashion when papyrus came along. But make no mistake, something new will come along and now that we've all had a taste of blasting our thoughts out to a community and getting a little recognition for being funny or insightful or, well, maybe scary if that's what floats the boat, it is going to be hard to turn back. 

Just as it was impossible for mankind to turn back to cave etchings after discovering the convenient portability of papyrus. After all, when was the last time you even visited a cave to check the news?  

Every week, it seems, I get a call from a chef who wants to be on "Iron Chef."

The appeal seems natural, of course, because it seems a somewhat easy way to solidify oneself as a "player."  And a quick check with Paul Virant confirms that his appearance on the show certainly upped his customer counts.

But getting on -- of course, there's the rub. Most chefs conclude that a high-powered publicist can get them on -- and surely there are some who can (hint: they live in NYC and hang with the producers). But even still, I am more of a mind that the bump from the publicist comes after the chef has achieved some stature. 

It is easier to make a call like, "Hey, Paul Virant is a Food & Wine Rising Star chef and a James Beard nominee, you should consider him" than it is to make the call, "Hey, John Smith cooks really well and is great on TV."

So, who gets on?
There were 28 episodes of "Iron Chef America" last year. Six of the episodes featured chefs from other countries, four were special episodes. Leaving 18 episodes featuring chefs from around the country. Let's break those down.

First, there were the pretty darn famous ones:
Art Smith, Chris Cosentino, Amanda Freitag, Gavin Kaysen and Anthony Amoroso, each of whom has their own Wikipedia page. Nate Appleman is also included in this group, though he doesn't have a Wikipedia page (but should because he won James Beard Rising Star Chef, was a Food & Wine Rising Star chef, and has an award-winning book. Come to think of it, he should also have someone do a soap opera of his life, it is quite a fascinating life.

Beyond these folks, the cheftestants tend to have a third-party endorsement of their awesomeness.

James Beard nominees and winners:

• Fabio Trabacchi, winner Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic
• David Kinch, nominee for Best Chef: Pacific
• Koren Grieveson, nominee for Best Chef: Great Lakes
• Paul Virant, nominee for Best Chef: Great Lakes
• Gavin Kaysen, winner James Beard Rising Star Chef and, of course, famous for the Bocuse d'Or chicken wing incident
• Charles Phan, nominee for Outstanding Restaurant

A few were also Food & Wine Best New Chefs:

• Paul Virant
• Koren Grieveson
• Fabio Trabocchi
• Gavin Kaysen

A few others have some sort of celebrity or at are least dialed-in somewheres:

• David Walzog, who has a book and used to work for Michael Jordan
• Philippe Excoffier, who is a chef at the American Embassy in Paris, which is just cool, really, and would make great "theater" to announce on the show
  

Leaving the "not yet celebrities" who seem to have secured a coveted spot without some sort of prior "seal of approval" but are otherwise generally connected:

• Akhtar Nawab, who worked for Tom Colicchio at Gramercy Tavern, Craft and Craftbar (more often than not, it's who you know, right?)
• Sue Torres, who seems to have put in an astounding number of years at the stoves and has been on "The Martha Stewart Show," "The Rachael Ray Show" and The TV Food Network and so was already national TV-tested and is a woman making ethnic food
  

Two cheftestants seem to have earned their berth on their talents, though they are definitely at ground zero of being discoveredom, working in NYC:

• Sam Mason, who will likely dig up some sort of Food & Wine or James Beard Award this year, mark my words
  
• Brad Farmerie, who is generally respected, earning enough Michelin and New York Times stars to ensure that people in the know would at least know who he is

Leaving the one random person I could find on the list.

• Sabrina Tinsley, who claims they called her out of the blue.

Putting the data together:
So, the chefs who want to be on "Iron Chef" have some choices:

1. Get selected as a Food & Wine Rising Star chef or at least nominated as a James Beard Chef, preferably both, or at least appear to be a super likely candidate for both;
   
2. Work for someone incredibly important like Tom Colicchio, who can likely make a phone call that is both answered and honored;
3. Get on "other" major TV programs;
   
4. Earn Michelin or New York Times stars;
5. Sit by the phone and pray you are the one person in a bagillion that they will call "out of the blue."
   

The alternative:
"Iron Chef" can sure boost your numbers, as Paul Virant found. But it's also quite a crapshoot to put a bunch of eggs in that basket and hope for the best, even if you are a James Beard/Food & Winer (after all, the list of each is far longer than the lists above).

I think it is awesome that chefs try to uncover every pathway to success, but sometimes I wonder if they spend more time trying to clear brush from the paths that include fame than other, more modest, paths.

There are other ways to boost your numbers -- things that you can do that you will have more control over than if you are the random one person they call to be on "Iron Chef" this year. And a lot of those things can also bring you a modicum of fame to boot.

I write about what those things are nearly every day on this blog.