Getting Your Restaurant in the Spotlight

Amy Stern - 04/01/2025

Find out how publicity can help you to build your restaurant's brand equity, drive reservations and establish thought leadership in one of the toughest industries on the planet.

alt=Chef-Justin-Lee

If you’re a restaurant owner with one or perhaps multiple restaurants in your portfolio and have often wondered how a competitor in the category has been featured multiple times in local media, secured a LIVE cooking segment with his/her executive chef on regional or national television, or been profiled in legendary culinary publications like Food & Wine, Saveur, Forbes and others, here’s the secret to garnering the publicity you crave. Publicity, otherwise known as PR, can help you to build brand equity, drive reservations and establish thought leadership in one of the toughest industries on the planet.

As a longtime food publicist who has represented restaurants, chefs, cookbook authors and national food and beverage brands for over three decades, my recipe for success includes three key ingredients:

A well-connected publicist with long-standing relationship that span print, digital and broadcast outlets; including agility with new media from social platforms to podcasts as well as an influencer strategy program.
A media-trained spokesperson which can include the owner, chef, bartender, etc. that can clearly articulate your point of difference in the marketplace and communicate your assets from food and beverage offerings to interior décor, signature events and more.
Stellar visual assets including stills, video and a secret weapon that’s rarely talked about – a top-notch food stylist.

As a publicist who has been charged with promoting a multitude of food brands (French’s Mustard, Duncan Hines and Perugina Chocolate), culinary tools and kitchen equipment (Cuisinart), as well as personalities such as cookbook authors and/or restaurant chefs, the importance that an experienced food stylist brings to the table cannot be understated. For my clients, having a food stylist on our team is integral to our success and I insist upon it as their ability to deliver an artistic aesthetic can be the difference between a TV segment that goes over like a lead balloon, or one that drives interest enough to fill the seats front of house night after night.

Today, we’ll focus on #3 and its ability to catapult and communicate your brand into homes, phones and tastebuds of your key target audience. (Stay tuned for future installments where we’ll address the value of media training your spokesperson and how to evaluate a publicist that meets your needs.)

Why do I need a food stylist?

Visual assets in your portfolio are just as important when pitching digital or print media because even if the publication prefers to take their own photography your publicist will be charged with sending preliminary visuals as part of the pitching process in advance of confirming an on-air appearance. In addition, if you really plan to make a splash on Instagram or other social channels, given the competition for eyeballs, if your food and beverage images don’t elicit a mouthwatering response that makes the reader want to dive into that plate of ooey gooey eggplant parm or sink their teeth into a perfectly grilled New York Strip, you will have little hope of them every visiting your website to review the menu, let alone jumping on Resy to reserve a table. An example of a new restaurant that we put on the map, check out this case study.

How to Identify a Superior Stylist

When I’m in my local area, which means the Tri-State, basically the corridor between New York and Philadelphia, I’ve been able to choose my go-to food stylists, but there have been multiple times when I’ve had media opportunities for my clients that dictated travel to other markets, Boston, Miami, LA and I still recall the pit in my stomach when I had to book a stylist “sight unseen” for a high-profile Super Bowl segment on the Today Show that was being filmed onsite in Tampa.

So, what criteria should publicists, brands and others be looking for when hiring a food stylist, especially when they have no direct contacts in the area?

Visit the food stylist’s website:
- Start by reviewing their online portfolio – if you’re not overwhelmed with the images and videos you’re seeing, you won’t be impressed with the end product either.
- Take a look at their client list and how recent their projects are – if you’re seeing footage from Emeril LIVE, they probably haven’t been active in the industry for quite some time.
- Review testimonials
- Have a good understanding of the types of media they’ve worked with – some folks are very versatile, but creating an amazing digital campaign is not the same as preparing for a TV segment where the talent will need to showcase both finished aka “beauty” dishes of their recipes as well as having a tray of ingredients (mis en place) at the ready for those recipes slated for step-by-step on-air demos.

As the publicist for a brand new ice cream brand, it was imperative that the food stylist I selected had experience with ice cream brands – as ice cream is one of the trickiest products to make look good on air and if your segment gets delayed even minutes due to breaking news, you will want to be sure the integrity of the product is stellar vs your talent reaching for the ice cream scoop only to discover he’s left with a pourable elixir more suitable for a glass than a cone. To see how we took Frutero Ice Cream from incognito to center stage, read our case study.

Use local media as a resource.

When I travel out of town, I often reach out to the local broadcast outlets I’m pitching for suggestions. If it’s a program that has a lot of culinary segments, the producer is often familiar with the local stylists for have assisted with previous food segments.

Contact local or national culinary schools and organizations. When in Florida, I discovered that Florida International University had an amazing culinary program. Some of their students were not seasoned enough to assist with a broadcast segment, but they’re knowledge and expertise was perfect for a big food & wine expo we were hosting during Super Bowl weekend. For folks in NYC or LA, there’s always the Culinary Institute of America (Hyde Park, NY or Greystone on the West Coast), the International Culinary Center better known as ICE and a host of other resources.
I have also reached out to other publicists who I have known over the years, and they are generally happy to share the stylists that they’ve worked with who can make a client shine.

Food Stylists Where Many Hats

Another key point to keep in mind is that your stylist will need to be a good cook. Most broadcast segments include a tasting segment, and you’ll want the recipes to taste as good as it looks or better. In addition, the difference between an average stylist and an outstanding one, is their ability to be a prop master, as well. When my restaurant client was featured on WPIX-TV during Lunar New Year, it was my seasoned stylist who evoked the holiday thematic for viewers with props and serving pieces that authentically represented Asian culture, transporting those at home across the globe. So, a quality stylist is a great cook, an organized cook, a prop master and last but not least, don’t forget the dishes! Yes, your stylist will take care that, too, leaving you to savor the opportunity to promote your establishment and then just walk out the studio door.

alt=amy-stern-headshot Are you planning for a grand opening or looking for ways to keep your restaurant top of mind, reach out to me at Astern@3epr.com and I’d be happy to share some sample clips as we discuss the culinary possibilities.