Brandon Champion
Brandon Champion connects national restaurant and retail food news with on-the-ground guides to everyday dining, treating food as both business and daily life for readers.
He is a national trending reporter at MLive who focuses on restaurants, food and retail while also contributing broader trending stories.
His recent work spans fast-food chain promotions, beverage launches and corporate restructuring alongside service pieces that highlight affordable meals and neighborhood institutions.
Cheap Eats
Champion is a regular voice in MLive’s Cheap Eats franchise, where he spotlights low-cost restaurants and takeout spots that offer strong value and a clear sense of place.
His Cheap Eats pieces on Westsider Café, Black Napkin, Cousin’s Tasty Chicken, Choo Choo Grill, Uncle Cheetah’s Soup Shop, B.C. Pizza, One Stop Coney Shop and Vanden Brink Sweet Smoked Honey Ham focus on specific menu items, price points and the feel of the room as much as the food itself.
He details what a customer gets for a given dollar amount, such as breakfast plates, boxed lunches, buffets and specialty meats, and explains how each business serves its neighborhood over time.
Beyond that series, he has written lists of restaurants to try in Mason and Oceana counties and covered Polish hall food during Pulaski Days, again emphasizing dishes, costs and simple guidance on what to order.
Restaurant review and local guides
Champion’s restaurant-focused reporting extends into review-style and guide pieces that walk readers through small-town and suburban dining options.
His coverage of Polish halls during Pulaski Days breaks down signature plates like kielbasa, pierogi, golumpki, kapusta and specialty items at each hall, making it easy to navigate a crowded festival.
He has highlighted restaurants in smaller communities, assembling lists such as “15 restaurants to try this year in Mason and Oceana counties,” which mix bar-food favorites with family venues and emphasize variety and familiarity.
In Twin Lake coverage, he promotes local institutions like The Shipwreck Inn and school fundraisers, balancing food-centric angles with community stories tied to a specific place and event.
National restaurant and retail food chains
A major part of Champion’s beat is national restaurant and retail food chains, where he tracks openings, closures, sales and strategic shifts that affect consumers.
He has reported on Starbucks closing 250 stores across North America, framing the closures around how readers can check whether their regular location is affected.
In pizza coverage, he has detailed Papa Johns’ sale of 28 corporate-owned restaurants in a busy tourist destination, weaving in franchise ownership, store counts and same-store sales figures to show what the deal means for the brand’s trajectory.
His reporting on Chipotle’s limited-time margarita tour explains the promotion city by city, noting price, ingredients and timing around the brand’s Halloween tradition.
He frequently covers fast-food burger chains rolling out new menus or promotions tied to football season, outlining each item on lineups like Burger King’s game day menu and comparing them to competitors’ value offers and seasonal deals.
Food culture, promotions and seasonal trends
Champion often treats food as pop culture, writing about promotions, playful brand rivalries and seasonal campaigns rather than only standard restaurant news.
In one bracket-style feature, he uses a tournament format to crown a surprising winner for the best regional hot dog in the United States, blending light competition with regional food traditions.
He has chronicled a fast-food chain “starting beef” with a rival through a promotion that trades a free burger for proof of a “royally disappointing” competitor meal, describing the ingredients and mechanics of the offer in detail.
His beverage coverage includes the phased return of a cult-favorite sparkling mineral water after months of absence, detailing production issues, timelines for restocking and the planned expansion of availability.
Across these stories, he focuses on what a promotion means for customers - what they can get, what it costs, how long it lasts - and situates that information within holidays, sports seasons and broader consumer trends.
Trending news beyond food
While food and retail are central, Champion maintains a broader trending brief that includes breaking news and public safety incidents.
He has covered arson cases where a person injured in an earlier fire is later accused of starting it, fires that displace residents at apartment complexes and intentional blazes at senior centers, presenting timelines, charges and investigative findings in clear, direct language.
His reporting also includes stories on vandalism that caused significant damage to heavy equipment and on drownings and recoveries in large lakes, reflecting his role on a statewide trending team that handles a range of urgent events.
Alongside national sports pieces with an emphasis on the Big Ten and crime and courts coverage, this work shows that he can move between service-oriented food journalism and fast-turn breaking news without losing clarity or focus.
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.