Cassidy Waigand
Cassidy Waigand tracks how restaurants and food businesses change across the Peoria area, with a steady focus on new openings, seasonal favorites and the stories of the people behind them. She covers food for the Peoria Journal Star, and her reporting turns routine dining news into clear, service‑oriented coverage that helps readers decide where to eat and why these local spots matter.
Restaurant openings and local dining landscape
Waigand’s core coverage follows new restaurants and food ventures as they launch and evolve in the region. She reports on openings across formats and cuisines, such as a piece highlighting new restaurants serving dishes from fajitas to pizza in East Peoria, laying out what is new, where it is located and what diners can expect. She routinely breaks down the concept, menu focus and ownership story for new spots, giving readers a quick but concrete sense of the experience on offer.
Her work emphasizes the broader dining landscape rather than single‑dish reviews. When she covers a new restaurant in a notable building or neighborhood, she situates it in the local context and explains how the business fits into existing options nearby. The reporting is practical and descriptive, built around details like location, hours, menu style and price point, which gives communications teams at restaurants and food businesses a clear sense of what information she is likely to prioritize.
Seasonal food coverage and recurring traditions
A second strand in Waigand’s work is seasonal food coverage that tracks openings, closures and rituals tied to specific times of year. In a guide to when area ice cream stands open for the season, she lists individual stands and their opening dates, providing a calendar‑style snapshot readers can use to plan outings.
She applies the same approach to other seasonal openings, such as long‑running ice cream shops returning under familiar owners, where she combines operational details with brief history and quotes to show the continuity of a local favorite.
Her seasonal pieces are built around utility: they foreground operating hours, opening windows and any changes from prior years, and they often group several businesses into one roundup. This makes her work a reference point for businesses that rely on seasonal traffic or special events. She gives attention to long‑standing establishments as well as newer ventures, reinforcing the sense that traditions and novelty sit side by side in her food beat.
Profiles of owners and signature local spots
Beyond openings and calendars, Waigand also writes more narrative‑driven pieces that spotlight particular restaurants and their owners. In a feature on longtime ice cream shop owners who revived a Morton creamery, she details how the business operates seasonally, outlines its hours, and uses quotes from the owners to convey their motivation and the joy they take in serving the community. These stories blend informational coverage with human interest, showing how individual operators shape the region’s dining scene.
Her work frequently touches on standout local spots that have become favorites, whether through personal selections or reporting on what makes a restaurant a “go‑to” choice for diners. In these pieces, she highlights factors like consistent quality, atmosphere and service, offering a concise portrait of why certain venues hold a special place in the area’s food culture. She keeps the tone grounded and fact‑focused, relying on specifics rather than superlatives.
Newsletter and ongoing dining updates
Waigand extends her food reporting into a regular dining newsletter that delivers restaurant news and updates directly to subscribers. In social posts promoting this newsletter, she references “PJStar Dining” and teases upcoming coverage, including new food and drink businesses and plans across the dining scene. The newsletter format allows her to compile multiple items in one place, from openings and menu changes to special events.
This newsletter work reinforces her role as a continuing source of local restaurant intelligence rather than an occasional feature writer. It suggests an ongoing, beat‑driven approach where she tracks incremental changes, stays in contact with owners and readers, and surfaces smaller updates that might not merit a full standalone article.
The combination of beat reporting, seasonal guides, owner profiles and newsletter updates marks her coverage as systematic and service‑oriented, closely tied to how people in the area actually choose and experience food venues.
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.