Our first Substack is here. Inside Job is London On The Inside’s hospitality-industry spin-off, built for the stories and debates that happen behind the pass, not in the dining room. This is where the real industry conversations live: the trends, tension points and truths that don’t always make sense for our consumer audience.
We’ve run London On The Inside for 15 years, and throughout that time our team has also worked across different industries to keep the lights on. Our Co-Founder has worked in global hotel communications and helped develop F&B brands around the world. That inside perspective is exactly where our name came from – we’ve always written about the industries we’ve worked in.
Anyway, let’s get into it. Here’s our first topic, and it’s a hot one…
1. The Great PR Debate
Forget blanket rules – the value of PR depends entirely on your strategy, skills and ambitions.
We’ve had this topic on our list for months, and it feels like the right one to start our first Substack with: the current wave of PR-bashing. As an ex-PR who now sits on the other side of the table, I’ll be honest, I’m surprised by how reductive the conversation has become. The idea that you can decide whether or not you need PR purely based on postcode doesn’t sit right with me. After opening hundreds of restaurants around the world, the thing I’ve learned is this: every restaurant’s comms strategy should be built around its business strategy.
What are you trying to achieve? Who are you trying to attract? What does success look like for your first year, your third, your tenth? PR is just one tool in that wider strategic kit, and its usefulness depends entirely on what you’re building.
It also comes down to what you can actually handle in-house. If you could fix your own pipes, you wouldn’t call a plumber. If you were across changing tax regulations and filings, you might not need an accountant. The same logic applies to PR. If you can keep track of journalists, nurture media relationships, build campaigns, craft messaging, jump on opportunities, and hold the entire comms function in your head while running a restaurant, then great, you might not need external support. But that’s exactly the point: it’s a case-by-case call, not a universal truth.
A good PR does far more than send a press release. Done well, PR can drive covers, shape perception, put you in the eyeline of the right journalists, connect you with brand partnerships, and help you build equity beyond the dining room. And I say this from experience. A strong PR strategy around your launch can be the difference between positive momentum and months of scrambling. Get your launch wrong and you’re fighting uphill for the rest of the year.
But, and this is where the nuance matters, the criticism of PR isn’t entirely unfounded. Just as restaurants have bad operators, PR has its own weak links. There are people who overcharge and underdeliver, agencies that take hefty retainers without any meaningful strategy, PRs who knowingly book influencers with fake followings (yes, it happens), PRs who can’t get the basics right, or who push out half-baked information with terrible imagery. That’s why PR should be treated as what it claims to be: consultancy. If your PR isn’t helping you get it right, they’re not worth the retainer.
We also need to be honest about the state of the media itself. Blaming journalists for being “lazy” ignores the reality that newsrooms are operating on skeleton teams, shrinking budgets and impossible turnaround times. Writers are covering more beats with fewer resources, meaning the pipeline between restaurants and media is tighter, faster, and more chaotic than ever. Good PRs can help journalists navigate that chaos because they understand urgency, accuracy and timing. In many cases, they’re the ones pushing clients to respond quickly, provide assets and share information in a way that supports the story.
So yes, there are good PRs and bad PRs. But the real issue isn’t whether PR is “worth it” full stop. It’s understanding what you need, what you can do yourself, and what role comms actually plays in the success of your restaurant. The industry doesn’t need blanket takes. It needs nuance, clarity and strategy.
From the horse’s....
I had a client who was opening their 10th fast casual place in the depths of the suburbs and couldn’t understand why it wasn’t worthy of a two page spread in a national newspaper.
Anon, PR
We get contacted all the time by PRs who want us to cover their stunt for a HUGE GLOBAL BRAND with a revenue in the billions. There’s never any budget, obviously so instead they offer samples - usually a bottle of booze.
Anon, Journo
I’ve written about places that have no PR or images and don’t reply to messages, so of course we take what we can find online or from the streets and then they complain when it’s wrong. But what do they expect if they can’t send info and our job is to report on openings?
Anon, Journo
I received an email about a client who’s an insanely popular, fully booked, mega-hyped restaurant being asked to cater a party at our huge global brand HQ. The twist? It was for someone’s leaving party - and there was no budget. The assumption was simply that they’d be happy to do it for free because “the office is close by.”
Anon, PR
I worked with a PR agency that came in with loads of ideas in their pitch, but when it came down to it they wanted a 20% commission on those ideas, plus £5,000 a month. And the best part? Most of the comps they put forward were completely irrelevant - one journalist who had only ever written about the Royal Family. Zero quality control whatsoever.
Anon, Restaurateur