Emma Hall
Emma Hall reports on the business side of food and retail for The Sacramento Bee, tracking how restaurants, cafes, markets and other consumer businesses open, expand and close in the local economy. Her coverage links day-to-day business moves with the character of neighborhoods, highlighting how new concepts, closures and corporate decisions reshape where and how people eat and shop. Alongside food and retail, she reports on Indigenous and Asian American and Pacific Islander communities through the Equity Lab, connecting business coverage with questions of access and representation.
Food and drink openings, expansions and closures
Hall consistently covers new food and drink businesses as they arrive, grow or shut their doors, with particular attention to location and format.
She reports on a taqueria known for oversized burritos opening a fifth location in Natomas, laying out what the expansion means for that corridor and the chain’s footprint. She follows an Asian supermarket chain adding a new store in south Sacramento, explaining how another planned location will extend its reach and offerings.
Her work includes a record store opening a second regional location, showing that she treats music retail with the same lens she applies to food businesses when it comes to local culture and commerce. On the restaurant side, she covers a barbecue spot expanding with a new location and Cajun-focused menu, as well as a longtime sushi favorite closing, giving equal weight to growth and contraction in the dining landscape.
She also reports on Starbucks shuttering hundreds of stores, detailing which Sacramento and Roseville locations are affected, and compiles a round-up of businesses that opened or closed in June, offering a clear snapshot of churn in the area’s retail and restaurant scene.
Multicultural and niche food concepts
Hall’s food coverage favors concepts that bring distinct cultural or thematic experiences to local streets. She writes about a new cafe in South Natomas that serves sweet and savory pastries inspired by South Pacific flavors, including influences from Fiji, describing its menu of meat pies, pizza, cake, coffee, lemonade, sodas and sandwiches.
She profiles a midtown dessert shop built around Italian-style treats that draws a line between Sicilian traditions and Sacramento’s dessert culture, framing it within the broader wave of international bakeries and cafes in the city. Her reporting on a Filipino-style coffee and tea shop in downtown emphasizes specialty drinks and the way the cafe introduces Filipino flavors to a wider audience through its beverage program.
She covers a Vietnamese street food restaurant planned for south Sacramento, noting classic dishes such as banh mi, pho and vermicelli bowls and situating the opening within the growth of Vietnamese options in that corridor. In East Sacramento, she reports on a cat-themed cafe and bakery, blending coverage of its concept with details on its baked goods and atmosphere.
Across these stories, she shows a consistent interest in businesses that offer a specific cultural perspective or playful thematic focus, rather than generic fast-casual openings.
Retail, business operations and customer experience
Beyond restaurants and cafes, Hall reports on the operational choices retail businesses make and how those decisions shape customer experience.
At the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, she covers the introduction of self-checkout stands, explaining how the grocer implements the technology and why it views the change as a way to improve service. Her Starbucks closures story presents corporate restructuring in terms of its local consequences, naming affected stores and clarifying what customers can expect as locations go dark.
The recurring round-ups of openings and closures frame individual business decisions within a wider pattern of turnover, giving a concise but comprehensive view of which sectors are growing and which are contracting.
Even in music retail coverage, such as the record store’s second location, she focuses on how expanded physical presence alters shopping options and the wider mix of brick-and-mortar outlets. This steady attention to openings, closings and operational shifts positions her as a reporter who makes the mechanics of retail and food service legible to consumers and business watchers alike.
Community and equity reporting
Hall also reports as part of The Sacramento Bee’s Equity Lab, covering Indigenous and Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
In that role, she focuses on stories where business, culture and community intersect, including coverage of Asian supermarkets, Vietnamese street food, Filipino-style cafes and South Pacific-inspired bakeries that serve as gathering points as much as commercial ventures. Her equity work extends beyond specific openings to examine how these communities are reflected in the city’s retail and food infrastructure, and how new ventures answer gaps in representation and access. Taken together, her business and equity reporting present a coherent picture of how community identity, economic opportunity and the local food and retail landscape are tightly linked.
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.