PR for Restaurants in India: How to Get Featured

On a Monday morning, a food writer who covers Goa opens her laptop to 40 emails. Thirty-eight of them begin with a version of the same sentence: we are excited to announce. New menu, new chef, new branch, new season. She clears them in about a minute.

Two survive. One is from a place in Panjim whose owner read her piece on monsoon cooking and wanted to tell her what happens in his kitchen when the boats stop coming in. The other is from a bakery that has been making the same bread for 30 years and has just run out of the flour it always used.

In house restaurant at Park Inn by Radisson, Candolim

What PR for Restaurants in India Comes Down To

Writers need a story their editor will approve, and "we are excellent" has never been one.

The good news is that most restaurants are sitting in several rooms without noticing. A dish that changed because a supplier changed. A cook who learned a recipe from someone who is no longer alive. A room that used to be a printing press. A menu that shrank on purpose. A tradition your kitchen keeps that nobody outside your family understands.

These feel too ordinary to mention when you live inside them every day. To a writer looking for the fourth story of the week, they are the entire reason to pick up the phone.

Sound Like a Person

Here is the difference between an email that gets deleted and one that gets answered, in two sentences.

"We are delighted to launch our exciting new seasonal menu, crafted with locally sourced ingredients."

Or: "We took the fish curry off in June because the boats stopped for three weeks, and what we cooked instead was what our grandmothers made during the rains. It stayed on the menu."

Both describe a menu change. Only one contains a story. Writers are looking for the second kind, and so, as it happens, are your guests.

Mrs Naik of Peep Kitchen, Panjim

Learn How Each Writer Likes to Be Approached

Most writers tell you exactly what they want, and most restaurants never look.

They post on Instagram about the story they are researching. Their published work tells you what they cover, whether that is openings, people, sourcing, or the politics of a place. Spend 20 minutes with the last month of someone's writing before you email them, and mention it in your first line. That single sentence separates you from everything else in the pile.

One thing worth knowing: many publications will not write about a meal they did not pay for. A free table is a courtesy, and offering it as a trade can end a conversation before it starts. Invite them because you would like them to eat your food, and leave it there.

Make It Effortless

Writers skim before they read, and they work to deadlines you cannot see.

Keep a folder ready with high resolution photographs of the room and a few dishes, a short paragraph about the place, the chef's background, and the correct spelling of every name including your own. When a request arrives at four in the afternoon for images by six, the restaurant that sends a link within 10 minutes is the one that appears in the piece.

What Happens After the Story

Say thank you. Put the piece somewhere permanent on your website, since it keeps working as proof long after the traffic settles. Keep reading their work.

Do this across a couple of seasons and the direction reverses. Writers begin calling you for a quote when they need someone to explain what is happening in the local food scene, and being the restaurant that gets called is worth more than any single feature you could pitch for.

FAQs

What does PR for restaurants in India involve?

Finding the genuine stories inside your restaurant, identifying the writers who cover food in your region, approaching them individually with a short and specific email, supplying images and information quickly, and maintaining those relationships between stories.

Does a restaurant need a press release?

Not always. A short, personal email to a writer whose work you have read does more for an independent restaurant than a distributed release, which tends to reach many inboxes and very few people. However, if you want to share your perspective on the story in detail, a press release is helpful. 

Should we offer journalists a free meal?

Offer hospitality warmly, without conditions attached. Several publications have policies against covering comped experiences, and treating a table as payment for coverage tends to end the relationship early.

Blurb has spent years telling stories for Goa's restaurants and hospitality brands and we know which ones travel and who is waiting to hear them.

Sitting on a story worth telling, or want a fresh look at your marketing? Schedule a free strategy call and we will map it out with you.