Denise Unland
Denise M. Baran-Unland is a features editor who uses food and local businesses as a way into human stories about everyday life and community institutions. Her coverage blends service details - what a place serves, when it is open, how an event works - with the history, owners and patrons behind them. She works across food, faith, health, arts, and people features, with food stories sitting inside a wider focus on how residents gather, celebrate and remember.
Local restaurants and food businesses
Food openings and long-running eateries are a central strand of Baran-Unland’s work. She covers new restaurants such as a Mexican cuisine venue opening in Shorewood and a new bar and grill launch, focusing on the concept, menu and atmosphere as they enter the local dining scene.
Her reporting on Dutch Bros Coffee arriving in Romeoville outlines the range of drinks and the broader retail development around it, situating a national coffee chain among other new businesses. In her feature on Submarine City, a decades-old, family-owned restaurant in Lockport, she traces the evolution from sandwiches to a wider lineup of “traditional Chicago fare,” specialty hot dogs and house-made items, showing how a menu reflects family decisions over time. A roundup of area fish fries during Lent reads as a detailed service guide, with times, prices and menu specifics, but also highlights the mix of churches, cultural clubs and venues that host them.
Across these stories she consistently pairs practical information - what to order, when to go - with owner voices and origin stories, making her food coverage as much about local identity as about dining options.
Community events and everyday life
Baran-Unland frequently reports on community events that frame how residents spend their time and support local causes.
Coverage of Shorewood HUGS’ “Lovely London” chocolate ball describes the themed fundraising experience and the volunteer energy behind it. A story on an Easter egg hunt pivoting to a drive-thru format because of heavy rainfall explains how organizers adapt traditions in response to practical challenges, noting logistics and impact on families.
Her piece on a day care’s winter ball shows how even small-scale events are treated as occasions for recognition and celebration, focusing on participants and the atmosphere they create.
When writing about Joliet City Center Partnership businesses recognized at a chamber awards celebration, she documents which downtown organizations were honored and why, tying recognition back to ongoing efforts to sustain the local core. These event-driven stories emphasize the people who plan, attend and benefit from gatherings, rather than treating them as calendar listings.
Business changes and neighborhood institutions
Beyond restaurants, Baran-Unland covers business openings, closures and rebrandings that affect the local commercial landscape. Her reporting on a UPS center closing explains the decision and its implications for the area, aligning a corporate development with how it touches workers and services. A piece on a boutique floral design business changing its name focuses on the shift in branding and what it means for the shop’s identity and customers.
Stories about multi-tenant developments, such as the project bringing Dutch Bros Coffee and an Indian restaurant to Romeoville, show how specific tenants fit into a larger plan for a corner or corridor.
In the Submarine City feature, she treats the restaurant as a neighborhood institution, detailing extended hours, menu breadth and generational ownership as part of the local fabric built up over nearly 50 years. She also covers how public policy intersects with residents’ daily realities, as in the article where a state representative discusses a new law intended to lower prescription costs. Across these stories she presents business and policy changes through their concrete effects on access, choices and long-standing places, rather than through abstract market language.
Tribute features and human stories
A distinctive element of Baran-Unland’s portfolio is her recurring tribute work and human-interest features. She writes a long-running weekly series called “An Extraordinary Life,” focusing on local people who have died but led notable or inspiring lives.
In one installment about an anesthesiologist, she recounts family memories and character traits, using close detail and quotes to build a narrative about ambition, intensity and relationships. Even when assigned to harder news such as a multi-vehicle fatal crash on a major interstate, her work signals a continued attention to the individuals involved and the community context. More broadly, across features on pets, faith communities, arts and health, her author description notes that she covers a wide range of human-interest stories, reinforcing that food and business coverage sit alongside narratives about people themselves.
This mix of tributes, profiles and everyday stories gives her work a through-line of documenting how ordinary and notable lives shape the place where they unfold.
Across these areas, Baran-Unland’s reporting is defined by its combination of service detail and human storytelling, with food and local businesses used as anchor points to explore community habits, histories and relationships. Her beat encompasses dining, events, faith, health and memorial features, unified by an emphasis on how residents gather, support one another and remember the people and places that matter to them.
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.