Bev Shaffer
Bev Shaffer maps the food and drink landscape of Stark County with a mix of business reporting and service-minded dining coverage. She focuses on how restaurants, ice cream shops, breweries and cafes open, grow, adapt and sometimes close, always grounding her stories in clear details that help readers understand both the experience and the stakes.
Tracking openings, closures and the restaurant business
Shaffer’s core beat is the movement of Stark County’s hospitality scene, with regular coverage of new concepts, expansions and shutdowns.
She reports on new diners such as Heather’s Place, explaining the concept, menu focus and opening plans in straightforward language that highlights what will be different for local breakfast and lunch crowds. She follows national and regional brands as they enter the market, covering chains like Chicken Salad Chick and Dave’s Hot Chicken as they launch Stark County locations, and setting those stories in the context of area growth. When established restaurants close, as with Bravo!
Italian Kitchen and Doc’s Bar & Grille, she treats the story as business news, noting timing, bankruptcy or other pressures and documenting the effect on high-traffic retail corridors. She also writes on operational disruptions and recoveries, such as Katana Buffet & Grill reopening after a fire, with practical information on dates and status so readers know what has changed. Across these pieces she consistently includes addresses, hours and basic contact details, making her work useful reference material as much as it is news.
Spotlighting local brands, growth plans and food trends
Beyond individual restaurant stories, Shaffer devotes significant attention to local food businesses in expansion or transition. Her coverage of Almost Heaven Ice Cream’s new production facility and fifth location explains both the construction timeline and the company’s strategy, reflecting an interest in how a homegrown brand scales while staying rooted in the community.
She follows Pav’s Creamery as it acquires land to launch a coffee business, treating the move as a diversification story and spelling out how the new venture will sit alongside existing scoop shops.
Breweries and bars appear in her reporting when they intersect with broader trends, such as a Stark County brewery serving as an alumni watch location for an Ohio State championship game, where food, drink and sports fandom converge. She also picks up food-related community efforts like a Girl Scouts garden project, showing how youth programs and local agriculture tie into the region’s food culture.
These pieces emphasize ownership, concept and future plans, positioning her as a reporter who watches the business side of the hospitality world as closely as the menu.
Service-driven dining coverage and food writing
Shaffer’s stories frequently function as guides to eating out, with structured write-ups that make it easy to understand what a place offers.
In her lunch visit to Grinders Above & Beyond, she describes the meal and the range of familiar favorites, using plain, descriptive prose rather than stylized criticism. Her review of Hog Heaven focuses on smoky comfort food and playful sides, pairing sensory description with practical details such as location and hours to deliver a complete snapshot of the experience.
In her ice cream coverage, including roundups of standout Stark County treats and updates on scoop shops adding new concepts, she highlights flavor variety, house specialties and what distinguishes one shop from another. Across these pieces she tends to organize information around where to go, what to expect and how the food fits into local habits, maintaining an accessible tone that reads as service journalism more than opinion writing.
Culinary background and perspective on food storytelling
Shaffer serves as the Food & Drink reporter for The Canton Repository, covering the full spectrum of Stark County’s food scene from quick-service counters to modern bistros and craft breweries. She brings decades of experience working in professional kitchens, developing recipes and writing cookbooks, and that background shows in the specificity of her menu descriptions and her attention to how dishes are conceived, not just served. Her career has included culinary brand strategy, product and recipe development and cooking instruction, giving her an insider’s view of how restaurants and food companies operate behind the scenes.
She uses that perspective to translate industry decisions into clear stories, whether she is explaining the return of a pasta bar at a modern bistro or unpacking the business rationale for a chain’s multi-location expansion. The through-line across her work is an emphasis on clarity and completeness: she writes about food as both an experience and an enterprise, and her reporting gives equal weight to the flavors on the plate and the decisions that bring them there.
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.
Alana Edgin
Alana Edgin is a business reporter whose strongest focus is food, restaurants and consumer-facing businesses. She works at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and has also had work syndicated across AOL and Yahoo News. She covers new openings, closings, expansions and franchise growth, along with retail, health, services, corporate news, data incidents, business support programs and sponsorships. Her reporting includes detailed roundups of new restaurants and businesses, coverage of El Pollo Loco’s opening, and stories on burger trucks, dessert shops, Vietnamese sandwich restaurants and gourmet markets. She also contributes to food and drink reviews, including fall coffee and jerky comparisons. Edgin reports with practical “what, when, where” details, structured comparisons and clear explanations of how offers, partnerships and business changes affect consumers and the local economy.