How to get PR and media coverage for your restaurant

As a restaurant owner, there is a lot you can do to leverage public relations (PR), media and news to your advantage. Many reporters and journalists cover the restaurant, food, and hospitality space, and it is a good idea to get on their radar. The publications range from Franchise Times, QSR Magazine, Entrepreneur.com and more. 

As an entrepreneur, it is wise to leverage marketing and PR to your advantage as it will help consumers learn more about you as a founder and operator. In this article, I will share a few strategies and tactics that you can use to get your initial news article or TV appearance out there. On my own, I have been able to gather press in news and TV outlets ranging from ABC News, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg Technology TV, Business Insider, and more. I love to share a few strategies that have worked for me and hopefully they can be effective for you too! 

Have a strong personal story 

Every entrepreneur and entrepreneur always has a strong story. If you look at Jeff Bezos’ story, he talks about how his mum had him when she was 16 years old and needed to struggle through high school with him as a toddler. He also spoke about how the immigrant story of his father who immigrated from Cuba to America on a boat fought to survive in the country early on. He talked about how he wants to empower other small business owners. 

Another great story I heard is one of my partners, Daljit Hundal, who came to America when he was 18 years old, working as a dishwasher till today, when he owns over 50 franchise stores including Pieology, Jamba, and Carl’s Jr. He worked hard tirelessly day by day, and his determination and grit was what set him apart to be a successful entrepreneur. I am inspired daily by these entrepreneurs and restaurant operators who I’m lucky to work with.

Every entrepreneur and operator has a special story to tell, be it about your family, yourself, your parents, or the reason you came out to start a business. It could be about your passion for food, your passion to serve people and give back to the local community, or your passion for efficiency. 

Network with local journalists 

Local journalists from ABC news, South Bend Tribune, Los Angeles Times, to San Francisco Chronicle love to cover local news stories of budding entrepreneurs, restaurant operators and more. You can easily find the correct journalists online via channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or even just searching on Google. Many of them have their positions and cities highlighted in their corporate profile on their company page so that is also a good place to start.

There are a few ways you can connect with them. You can first connect with them via social media like LinkedIn and Facebook, build trust and share content by writing about your views on the local community or the business environment. That is a good way for them to notice you.

If you have a strong personal story, you can also try to look for their emails via LinkedIn or other tools (I can share more if you are keen on this), and send them an email with your story of what you will like to be published. Many journalists and reporters welcome news ideas and they will be glad to give you some feedback quickly too if it’s an area they like to cover. 

Write well-crafted emails 

Journalists and reporters are always open to pitches and learning about your story. A good way to get their attention is really to write well-crafted emails when you are pitching them.

First thing first, you will need to have a good title! If you are a local restaurant owner in Palo Alto, the best thing to do may be using a title like “Local restaurant entrepreneur in Palo Alto opens up 3 more locations”, when you are pitching a local journalist in the Palo Alto Times. 

In the body, you should highlight clearly in a few words at the start, what is your intent and why you are writing in. Are you looking for advice on how to get your story published or are you trying to get the journalist to publish your article? 

Coming back to our earlier points, you will need to have a strong story that readers want to read and engage with. It will be even better if you have certain brand names that people trust and understand, for example you just opened up a new partnership with Cloud Kitchens or DoorDash Kitchens, and you are the first to sign up in the city. 

HARO - Help A Reporter Out

HARO (Help A Reporter Out) is an interesting news outlet whereby it’s a marketplace for reporters and news sources. There will be hundreds of reporters on it daily where they will share the topics they will like to write about from “ I want to interview local restaurants in Florida” to “I like to speak with restaurant franchisees expanding drive-through during covid”. 

This is a perfect outlet and platform to go to, because you will be able to reply to journalists who are looking to cover specific topics, and you can easily sort by each topic. Therefore, it will be very helpful to be able to go through the list and pick the topics that may be relevant for you and then you can reach out to these journalists and reporters and ask them to see if they like to feature you and your restaurant in their articles. 

Desmond Lim is CEO and co-founder of Workstream, a text recruiting tool for restaurants and local businesses. As a former restaurant owner, Desmond started Restaurant Insider, as an exclusive newsletter to provide insights and strategies to help restaurant operators and entrepreneurs bridge the knowledge gap that he himself faced as an entrepreneur. Desmond went to MIT and Harvard, writes for Entrepreneur.com, played professional basketball and represented his country as starting point guard, and is currently based in San Francisco Bay Area.