Alana Edgin
Alana Edgin is a business reporter at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal who covers local commerce with a strong focus on food, restaurant openings and consumer-facing businesses. Her work tracks how new concepts, franchises and local operators enter and reshape the market, often through detailed roundups of openings, closings and expansions. Syndication across platforms such as AOL and Yahoo News extends that coverage to a wider audience while keeping the emphasis on local business activity.
New restaurants and business changes
A recurring strand in Edgin’s coverage is comprehensive reporting on restaurant and retail turnover, where she compiles dozens of changes into single, service-oriented pieces. In a July 2026 story, she documented more than 20 new restaurants and businesses, noting fresh eats, a returning live music venue and multiple franchise expansions in one monthly wrap-up. That coverage included a detailed account of El Pollo Loco’s Lubbock opening, outlining its citrus-marinated, fire-grilled chicken positioning, giveaways and expansion plans within an already crowded chicken market.
Similar work on November 2025 business changes tracked new burger trucks, dessert concepts, Vietnamese sandwich shops and a rebranded gourmet market, pairing each with clear “what, when, where” information. Across these pieces, she treats restaurant openings and small business moves as core business news, giving readers a structured view of how the local food and retail landscape is evolving.
Food reviews and fall drinks
Beyond openings coverage, Edgin takes part in collaborative review projects that treat local food and drink as both culture and business. In a fall coffee piece, she joined colleagues from the Avalanche-Journal and a local public media outlet to sample drinks from a mobile coffee truck and a brick-and-mortar café, contributing specific tasting notes and judgments on which offerings best fit the seasonal theme.
Her commentary in that review balanced flavor assessment with awareness of how menu design and social media presence influence a business’s profile.
Earlier, she helped lead a jerky review where an A-J team tried 11 products across four shops, then crowned a top choice after side-by-side comparison. That story framed jerky as a travel-friendly snack but also highlighted the range of local producers and products competing for attention. Together, these review projects show that when Edgin writes about food, she combines sensory detail with business context, using structured comparisons to spotlight local operators in crowded categories.
Local companies, services and consumer offers
Edgin’s business beat extends well beyond restaurants into health, retail, services and corporate news that affect local consumers.
She has covered United Supermarkets’ vaccine and coupon offerings ahead of flu season, explaining how the grocer used incentives to drive vaccination and customer traffic. Her reporting on HTeaO’s new Plainview location focused on opening-day deals and franchise expansion, tying promotional specials to the brand’s regional growth.
Pieces on Glo Tanning’s Lubbock opening and a spa and salon studio launch detailed free membership offers, service arrays and the role of franchise leadership, again positioning consumer deals within a business-growth narrative. On the corporate side, she has written about a downtown hotel accepting bids in the context of a bankruptcy filing and a commercial firm naming a new chief operating officer, marking both as significant milestones for the local and regional business environment.
She also covers data and security issues, as seen in coverage of a Texas-based optical retailer warning customers about a data incident, where the focus was on the company’s response and communications with affected customers.
Business infrastructure and partnerships
Another thread in Edgin’s work follows the infrastructure that supports entrepreneurs and institutional partnerships that tie business to sports and community life. She has reported on the Small Business Development Center hosting an open house at a new location, drawing attention to the physical and programmatic resources available to local business owners. In coverage of Western Bank’s name, image and likeness agreement with a Texas Tech women’s basketball player, she treated the deal as a business story, tracing the bank’s hometown connection and the marketing dimension of the partnership. Her event-focused pieces, such as those on a haunted tour at Texas Tech University and the decision not to bring back a local light park for the holiday season, link attractions and tourism to broader business considerations. Across these stories, Edgin consistently frames community events, support services and sponsorships as part of the local economic ecosystem, rather than treating them as isolated human-interest items.
Across her body of work, Edgin’s through-line is clear: she reports on business with particular depth in food and consumer sectors, using openings, reviews, deals and institutional decisions to show how local commerce operates and changes over time. Her articles routinely close with a simple note that she writes about business for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, underscoring that this focus defines her beat.
For story selection, she gravitates toward pieces where a new concept, offer or partnership alters the choices available to local consumers, and her reporting foregrounds practical detail that makes those changes easy to understand and act on.
4 more food journalists.
Aaron Guerrero
Aaron Guerrero is head of the digital department at Miami’s Community Newspapers, where he pairs restaurant coverage with community-facing content. He focuses on how Miami-area restaurants evolve, celebrate, and experiment through new concepts, menus, and neighborhood-focused dining experiences. He reports on restaurant openings, such as an Italian food hall at Plaza Coral Gables, new executive lunch menus, and wood-fired Latin steakhouse brunches, explaining what sets each venue apart. He also covers awards, like a Wine Spectator honor for an Italian chophouse, and events that turn dining rooms into social hubs. His bylines extend to features on sports-themed gatherings, civic renamings, local visits to restaurant programs, sponsored community pieces, and official notices. His work is straightforward and descriptive, helping readers and local businesses connect around specific openings, promotions, and dining experiences.
Aarron Fleming
Aarron Fleming reports on how courts, jails and public safety systems work over time. He is a reporter at The Daily Memphian covering public safety, the local court system, suburban news and business developments in North Mississippi. His work follows trials, sentencing, appeals, plea deals and judicial decisions, including major cases tied to Tyre Nichols and rapper Young Dolph. He also covers jail conditions, inmate deaths, crime data, prosecution units, trafficking, shootings and public-order incidents. His suburban reporting examines cannabis businesses, restaurant openings and how commercial growth affects communities such as Olive Branch. Fleming previously covered education in the same newsroom. He uses clear, unadorned prose to explain legal steps, deadlines, institutional problems and the political, commercial and community effects of public-safety decisions.
Alana Al-Hatlani
Alana Al-Hatlani is a food writer and editor who treats recipes, restaurants, and food features as ways to explore culture, community, and the business of eating. She works on the food team at Southern Living, overseeing and contributing to print recipes and reported features. Her pastry-focused, restaurant-tested perspective comes from time in restaurant and bakery kitchens. She helps plan and write monthly food packages, including “The South’s Most Treasured Desserts,” and wrote “8 Summer Recipes Our Editors Make Every Year.” She also writes recipe tips, ingredient explainers, restaurant guides, and reported stories about workers, owners, and communities. Her subjects include regional specialties, dining scenes, kitchen basics, and food industries. Her work has appeared with OpenTable and Yahoo. She reports on the ground, explains techniques clearly, and connects specific dishes and places to larger stories about food and livelihood.
Alex Mitchell
Alex Mitchell is a New York Post features reporter who uses burgers, pizzerias, supper clubs and ice cream boats to show how people experience food, prices and local culture. He covers restaurants, chefs and food businesses in New York City and Long Island, including openings, expansions, menu trends, tipping, inflation and everyday dining. His stories also follow small operators, consumer losses, family businesses and public wagers. He has written about a $2.55 slider, a Brooklyn café selling 1,300 sliders a day, a Long Island family selling ice cream by boat, and a $23,000 vacation lost to a vanished travel agency. Before his current role, he was a Yankees beat reporter. He reports through vivid human stories, specific details, people’s voices and the links between food, sports, fandom and neighborhood life.