Brittany Taylor
Brittany Taylor is a digital journalist at KPRC 2 who uses everyday food moments to tell broader stories about Houston’s culture, trends and local businesses. She writes concise, highly shareable pieces that sit at the intersection of dining, pop culture and community life rather than traditional restaurant criticism.
Food as culture and community shorthand
Taylor’s food coverage treats meals and restaurant choices as an entry point into how people in Houston live and gather. In her piece on World Cup visitors stopping at Whataburger, she focuses on what out-of-town fans choose to eat and how social media captures that ritual, tying a fast-food stop into the larger experience of a global sports event in the city. Her food stories often use a specific restaurant, menu item or viral moment as the hook, then widen out to show how locals and visitors engage with Houston through what they eat.
Rather than long-form reviews, she favors quick-hit explanations and roundups that orient readers to what is new, noteworthy or suddenly crowded. Her writing highlights the emotional pull of familiar chains and local favorites, and she pays attention to how online buzz - from influencers, TikTok trends or visiting creators - can send people flocking to specific spots.
That approach makes her food coverage less about fine dining and more about how ordinary people choose where to eat and why that matters to them.
Trending restaurants and the “effect” of online buzz
A recurring thread in Taylor’s work is the impact of viral attention on local restaurants.
She covers stories where a single visit or review from a prominent online figure materially changes a business’s day-to-day traffic, capturing the surprise and strain on owners when a quiet operation suddenly turns into a destination. In coverage of the “Keith Lee effect” on a local restaurant, she amplifies the owner’s reaction to the sudden surge in customers and uses their words to show how quickly the dining landscape can shift once a place catches the right spotlight.
Across these pieces, she writes in clear, conversational language and centers the voices of owners, workers and customers.
She tends to foreground details that show how a spike in attention affects staffing, wait times and supply, making the operational side of a food trend part of the story. Her focus stays firmly on the business and human impact of food virality rather than on the influencer’s personality.
Quick-turn digital coverage with a Houston focus
Taylor works as a senior digital content producer at KPRC 2, writing and curating stories for an online audience that expects speed and clarity. Her author bio emphasizes her background in digital storytelling, social media and trend tracking, and she brings that sensibility into her food coverage.
She writes in a tight format built for mobile reading, with straightforward headlines that clearly state the restaurant, event or issue at hand.
Her digital role means she frequently connects food stories to broader news or lifestyle coverage, whether tying a dining choice to a major sporting event, capturing how a viral review changes a neighborhood spot, or surfacing local places that residents are newly excited about. She relies heavily on social platforms and user posts as both source material and distribution context, which keeps her food pieces grounded in what Houston diners are actually talking about online at that moment.
Voice, audience and recurring themes
Taylor writes in an accessible, informal tone that assumes readers are looking for quick context on where people are eating and what is buzzing right now. Her pieces often lean on direct quotes from diners or owners and embed the kind of specific details - a familiar drive-thru, a suddenly packed dining room, a short clip from social media - that make the story easy to visualize. She aims her work at readers who follow food as part of local life rather than as a specialized hobby.
Across her body of work, consistent themes emerge: the pull of familiar regional chains for visitors, the power of viral reviews to transform small businesses, and the way major events in Houston inevitably show up through its food. Her coverage treats food as a social connector and a barometer of what the city is excited about in a given week, staying close to the lived experience of diners while using digital tools to surface the stories worth a click.
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.