Vanessa Alcala
Vanessa Alcala reports on local food and community life for Grice Connect, focusing on how new eateries and shared meals bring people together.
She works as a summer intern at Grice Connect, bringing experience in media outreach, content development, earned media reporting, and client communications into her reporting.
Across her work, she treats food as part of a wider civic story, linking restaurant openings, volunteer efforts, and local ceremonies to the people involved and the places they care about.
Exciting new flavors at Qdoba Mexican Eats
Alcala’s food coverage is anchored in the arrival of new restaurants, especially chain concepts that are entering her community for the first time.
Her reporting on Qdoba Mexican Eats tracks the opening as a multi-stage story, from a sneak peek event where the restaurant “opened its doors for the first time” to welcome community members, to coverage that highlights the “exciting new flavors” now available.
She frames the opening as an experience, emphasizing special events and the chance for locals to try the menu ahead of launch, rather than treating it purely as a business transaction.
Practical details like dates, occasions and what residents can expect from the new location sit alongside a celebratory tone, making the piece useful for readers planning a visit and for operators looking to position themselves as part of the local fabric.
Blaze Pizza celebrates grand opening
Alcala extends this event-driven approach to her work with The George-Anne Media Group, where she has reported on Blaze Pizza’s grand opening.
In that coverage, she uses the language of celebration and countdown - “celebrates grand opening tomorrow” - to signal both urgency and excitement around a new dining option.
The focus is again on the moment when doors open and what that means for the surrounding community, rather than on reviews or long-form criticism of the food itself.
By tracking these openings across outlets, she builds a consistent thread of interest in how branded food concepts slot into everyday life, student routines, and the wider mix of local restaurants.
Locals and students unite at the food bank
Alcala’s food beat also includes coverage of food access and volunteerism, most clearly shown in her story on locals and students packing meals at the Statesboro Food Bank.
That piece centers on people like volunteer Ken Wang, shown bagging food alongside fellow volunteers, and uses images and captions to underline the collective nature of the effort.
Rather than focusing on the institution alone, she highlights how different groups come together in the same space to support meal distribution, connecting food to service and solidarity.
This attention to who is in the room, what they are doing, and how they work side by side distinguishes her food coverage from purely consumer-focused reporting and shows an interest in the infrastructure behind community meals.
Community milestones around food and place
Beyond explicit food stories, Alcala routinely covers local milestones that shape where people gather, live, and celebrate, giving her beat a strong sense of place.
Her article on the historic Jaeckel Hotel, now serving as City Hall, looks at a landmark that anchors downtown life and civic activity.
She reports on musical and cultural events like the Bulloch County Community Band’s first public concert, treating performances as community moments that bring residents together.
In pieces on a Habitat for Humanity home dedication and a ceremony honoring high school graduates through Statesboro Youth Connect, she shows the same pattern: highlighting ceremonies, recognitions, and gatherings where people mark progress and support one another.
Taken together with her food-bank story and restaurant-opening coverage, these articles show a reporter who consistently ties food, venues, and civic institutions into a single narrative about shared spaces and collective experience.
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.