On Monday, Dec. 5, LANE PR was honored to join the culinary community in celebrating Portland’s Rising Stars together with sponsor (and LANE client) Wines from Spain.

The event, which took place at the Nines Hotel, named the best-of-the-best on the Portland food scene, including:

Chefs:
• Aaron Barnett, St. Jack
• Greg Perrault, June
• Sarah Pliner, Kat Whitehead & Jasper Sheen, Aviary
• Naomi Pomeroy, Beast
• William Preisch, The Bent Brick
• Gabriel Rucker, Le Pigeon

Pastry Chefs:
• Kir Jensen, The Sugar Cube
• Kristen D. Murray, Paley’s Place

Baker: Tim Healea, Little T American Baker

Community Chef: Jenn Louis, Lincoln

Sustainability Chef: Sunny Jin, Jory at the Allison Inn & Spa

Hotel Chef: Andy Arndt, Aquariva at Avalon Hotel & Spa

Concept: Elias Cairo, Olympic Provisions
Restaurateur: Kurt Huffman, ChefStable

Mixologist: Jeffrey Morgenthaler, Clyde Common

Sommelier: Jack Hott, Castagna

Host Chef: Matt Christianson, Urban Farmer at the Nines

Guest Chef: Anthony Cafiero, Tabla Mediterranean Bistro

Congrats to each Rising Star!  We sure enjoyed tasting through your selections.

Earlier this month, the LANE PR Portland office was pleased to have Wines from Spain’s director, Katrin Naelapaa, join us for a few days out west. It was her first time to Oregon, and we promised a good time.

We started Katrin’s tour by visiting Portland’s Pearl District, NW 23rd Avenue and Reed College. We then made our way out to the Willamette Valley for lunch at The Dundee Bistro and wine tasting at Stoller Vineyards and Sokol Blosser.

The day concluded with Katrin and Wendy Lane Stevens celebrating Portland’s Rising Stars with a dinner at Bluehour.

Last week, KGW’s Drew Carney visited the Dutch Bros. in Vancouver to announce the opening of the company’s 173rd location – and free coffee all day!

He was there from 5 a.m. through 7 a.m., interviewing franchisee Jessica Chudek and customers.

Watch clips from Drew’s venture into Vancouver here: http://www.kgw.com/community/blogs/drew-carney/Dutch-Bros-Coffee-Grand-Opening-134557693.html

“It doesn’t matter how many Facebook fans you have.  It matters how many people are talking about your brand.”

NY Life’s Social Media AVP, Gregg Weiss, believes you can measure social media. 

First, companies need to get people talking about them, in a positive way.    Benchmark existing, relevant conversations online then have your company begin participating. Once you get the conversations going,  you can measure the impact by analyzing:

1.  How many people are actively talking about your company/brand?

     o  Utilize Facebook’s “people talking about” metric to help you measure conversations.
     o  Example metric: NY Life had 116,000 fans, 2,800 conversations going on and 2.4% of fans participating.

2.  What are people saying?  Do the comments, and the tone, indicate they think well of your company/brand?

     o Example metric: 1 Billion positive impressions about your company.

Earlier this month, I attended the IFEC Conference in Washington, D.C. on behalf of LANE PR.  IFEC, the International Foodservice Editorial Council, is an association of editors and public relations professionals in the food, beverage, and foodservice industries. 

The annual conference brings together members to share ideas for everything from future feature stories to social media promotions, and even features speed pitching (and you thought speed dating was tough!).

The most  enjoyable part of the conference—aside from getting the chance to sample creations from some of D.C.’s best chefs—was the keynote speech given by Whitehouse Senior Food Policy Advisor, Sam Kass, on politics and policy in foodservice. 

Sam gave an overview of the steps that he and the White House are taking towards building a healthier nation, such as instituting a “5 pillar” approach towards healthier kids (including benchmarks like physical activity, access to healthy food, etc).  What an interesting way to kick off a week in the Capital!