Dan Macdonald
Dan Macdonald is a staff writer at the Jacksonville Daily Record who covers residential real estate and the business side of restaurants and food venues. He treats food stories as business stories, tracing how openings, closings and new concepts intersect with property deals, pricing and broader market trends. He has written for the Jacksonville Daily Record for several years, with work appearing at least as far back as 2020.
Restaurant openings, closings and food concepts
Macdonald’s food coverage centers on restaurants as businesses rather than lifestyle destinations. His work includes pieces on brands such as Dick Mondell's Burgers, reflecting an interest in fast-casual and contemporary dining concepts. He reports on major milestones for operators, including the closing of Catullo’s Italian in Nocatee, treating the end of a restaurant’s run as part of a larger commercial story rather than a purely cultural loss.
Across these food stories he focuses on ownership decisions, location changes and concept shifts, framing them as strategic moves in competitive local markets. The emphasis is on how restaurant operators manage expansion, consolidation or closure, and what those moves signal about demand, neighborhood change and the economics of running a food business.
His restaurant beat sits at the intersection of dining and commerce, making his coverage useful when a story involves investment, growth plans or market repositioning rather than solely menu or ambiance.
Residential real estate trends and high-value property deals
Residential real estate is the other main pillar of Macdonald’s beat, and he covers it with a numbers-heavy, trend-oriented approach.
In a story on home prices stabilizing but remaining high, he links price movements to inflation, rising interest rates and low inventory, showing how macroeconomic forces play out in the housing market. He treats these pieces as market analyses, highlighting how conditions affect buyers, sellers and the pace of transactions.
Macdonald also reports closely on standout sales, such as a record $16.25 million oceanfront home sale in Ponte Vedra Beach. In that coverage he not only notes the record-breaking sale price but also details the buyer’s profile as a motivational speaker and author and calculates the price at $2,100 per square foot, underscoring his focus on both human context and precise financial metrics. His real estate work extends to development pipelines, with articles on permits issued for 500 apartments across two communities and project costs approaching $100 million, demonstrating attention to construction volume and capital investment.
Commercial property deals receive similar treatment. In his report on Weston Inc. buying the One Imeson building for $68.25 million, he specifies the 1.64 million-square-foot size of the building and notes the leasing situation, indicating a clear interest in how ownership, tenancy and asset scale fit together.
Taken together, these stories show that his real estate coverage tracks both market-wide trends and individual deals, always grounded in transaction values, square footage and development costs.
Business profiles and sector coverage beyond food
Beyond restaurants and housing, Macdonald writes broader business profiles that explain strategy and innovation in other sectors. In a feature on a retailer leaving Town Center to launch a new concept, he frames the move as “Business Strategy” and presents the CEO explaining the reasons behind the shift, signaling his focus on executive decision-making and brand evolution. He uses these narratives to show how companies reposition themselves in response to changing consumer behavior and retail environments.
His reporting also reaches into health care and technology. A piece on Telescope Health, titled “Health Care Innovators: Telescope Health helps direct patient treatment,” profiles the company’s role in directing patient care and highlights its model as an example of innovation in health services.
These stories align with the Jacksonville Daily Record’s emphasis on news, profiles and articles of interest to business, financial and legal communities, and Macdonald’s work contributes by making complex business models and strategies intelligible through concrete examples and clear explanation.
Deal-focused, metrics-driven reporting style
Across beats, Macdonald’s reporting is distinguished by a consistent use of hard numbers and deal specifics. He routinely includes sale prices, per-square-foot calculations, project costs and unit counts, whether he is covering a record home sale, apartment permits or a major commercial property acquisition.
This approach positions his work as a resource for readers who need actionable detail about transactions and developments rather than general commentary.
He brings the same perspective to restaurant coverage, treating openings, closings and concept changes as business decisions tied to leases, investment and market positioning. His focus on residential real estate trends and the business of restaurants means he operates where food, property and local commerce meet, making his stories especially relevant when a narrative involves both what's happening on the plate and what’s happening on the balance sheet.
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.