We at Restaurant Business appreciate the efforts of restaurant publicists and other potential sources to help us decide what to cover. Indeed, our appreciation falls only a few lightyears short of the delight we take in paying taxes or undergoing dental work.
That’s because many of the pitches for coverage are clearly the work of the woefully confused. Somehow or another, the senders seem unaware that we cover the restaurant business, even though the very name of our website is a pretty strong hint. It’s not unreasonable to expect the suggestions would pertain to the industry. In reality, astoundingly few do.
Instead, our inboxes are clogged with invitations to cover dentists, standout moms, World War II heroes, the medical use of LSD, marriage counselors, a new bathtub design, the current-day careers of 1970s-era child actors, and fanatical promoters of everything from urban murals to Georgian author Jane Austen (any business person can learn from her these 200-or-so years later, the sender explained).
Presumably many of the coverage subjects may have eaten in a restaurant. But that’s about as close as the targets come to the business we’re chartered to cover.
No wonder such a tiny fraction of the more than 300 emails I receive daily elicit more than a kneejerk push of the Delete button. The proportion of pitches that actually trigger a story is that much smaller.
My apologies to the PR contacts who do a good job of keeping us informed of what’s happening within their charges. They truly help us do our jobs. But they should sit down their less-analytical associates and explain the importance of pertinence and appropriateness.
Here's some fodder they could use. Presented below are the most ridiculous story pitches we received in 2024. Of course, we still have three weeks left in the year, so consider it a preliminary list.
Hope the bike seats are comfortable
The record for prompting editorial spit takes may well belong to the lawn-maintenance company LawnStarter, which reached out in June to see if we’d be interested in covering its compilation of the best U.S. cities for naked bike-riding. Just to avoid any confusion: It’s the riders who are nude, not the two-wheelers.
The research was sound. LawnStarter said it evaluated 500 U.S. cities, looking specifically at each one’s “naked biking events, local interest in nude cycling, biking infrastructure, and public nudity laws, among 17 total metrics.”
If you’re a cyclist, you know that nude riding is really a thing; there are groups devoted to riding au natural, usually in big cities and often in the wee hours of the morning. But the connection to restaurants remains unclear, underscoring the need for one member of our staff to check it out.
Presumably the afficionados cap their outings with a stop at a bar or restaurant. Let’s hope the selected establishments provide big napkins.
10 best cities for sex
Bad news, residents of Dayton: Your city didn’t make the cut.
Turns out the sexiest city in the world during 2024 was Sao Paolo, Brazil, which presumably has its share of nude bike rides, too.
The ranking was done by a company called Emisil, which specializes in prosthetic penises. We kid you not. You have to wonder if it has any sort of sponsorship deal with naked bicycle excursions.
The company got our attention with a press release entitled, “53 Sex Events Make This the World’s Sexiest City!” It explained that a “sex event” is an adult-themed party or festival, presumably along the lines of Rio de Janeiro’s infamous Carnival celebration.
Also factored into the ratings were such metrics as how often residents of the city typically have sex, and how many partners they count in a routine year.
Between the events and the nude bike-riding, there’s clearly far more happening at night in major cities than going out to dinner.
You can begin planning your next trip here.
Planning that ideal post-assassination event
This pitch needs no explanation. “Are you interested in an interview opportunity with Dutch Mendenhall, co-founder of RADD Cos., regarding what it takes to put on a highly sought-after event post-President Trump’s failed assassination attempt?”
It’s a kind offer, but we’ve not detected much demand from readers for how-to help on hosting parties after a presidential candidate is almost killed.
Fortunately, we didn’t get a follow-up offer after the second attempt on Donald Trump’s life was interrupted.
Ashes to ashes—for Fido, too
Hopefully a company called Better Place Forests didn’t pitch us on covering an alternative death rite because it knew the age of the recipient. The concern specializes in cremating the recently departed and using the ashes as a forest mulch. “The ashes are mixed with soil and spread at the base of the tree, becoming forever part of the forest,” Better Place explained. It added that the process can be customized to have the departed’s pets similarly incinerated and strewn.
“Would you be interested in an on-site interview with a local family who has chosen this option?” the pitch read. “Happy to coordinate!”
And we’re even happier to pass.
Sunspot fever
Assassination attempts weren’t the only news developments that publicists tried to leverage for coverage in 2024.
The summer brought a stretch of intense solar activity, with meteorologists warning that the resulting sunspots might interfere with TV and radio reception. They didn’t, or at least not on a widescale basis. But that didn’t stop the Boca Raton Museum of Art from trying to use the extraordinary phenomena to land a mention on RestaurantBusinessOnline.com.
An upcoming exhibition was entitled Eating Sunshine. Why wouldn’t that be of interest to a website focused on the business of serving food?
Maybe it’s because there was no restaurant connection. The exhibition in question featured sculptures and what the museum said were other multi-dimensional depictions of the solar activity. Even if we did cover art, I think we would have passed on graphic depictions of sunspots.
Now there’s an idea
The last inductee into our hall of shame is there because it provided a perfect illustration of why a pitch that’s relevant to restaurants might still end up in our online trash bin.
The publicist for a European chef named Luigi Gallo tried to sell us on writing a story about the Italian transplant’s new U.S. venture, a pizza concept called NA Slice.
And what exactly would Gallo reveal to us and our readers via the interview and story? Nothing less, the flack assured us, than “the importance of using fresh ingredients and high-quality food in restaurants.”
Whoa. Talk about a breakthrough way of thinking! That approach would have never occurred to our readers.
They’d be left speechless, just the way we greeted the pitch in utter silence. The Delete button didn’t even clack when we hit it.