Houston Food Finder founder Phaedra Cook. Photo by Ana Beaven.
Changes are afoot for this online publication. While Houston Food Finder is not closing, it is changing. Article publishing on this website is being discontinued, and the company focus will be on the more successful parts of the business — social media and email.
It’s no secret than running a financially successful local news publication is a difficult proposition these days, so huge thank-yous go to every single person who has ever helped Houston Food Finder’s online publishing for the past nearly nine years. Whether you wrote for us, advertised with us or financed an article by being a supporting reader, please know the publication would not have lasted this long without you. (Also, if you were a sponsor, rest assured that we will be continuing to offer those services across our social media platforms and via email to our approximately 32,000 followers and subscribers.) Special thanks is owed to our current writers and social media/administrative support team of Mario-Sebastian Berry (who continues to do a fantastic job of running our social media accounts), Minh T. Truong, Alexander Gregg, Ryan Kasey Baker, Jo Cook, who’s created our newsletters and direct emails for several months, and our graphic designer, Purvi Baron.
Houston Food Finder is now strictly a social media and direct email company. You will continue to find our work on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and X, and we will continue to email our latest food news to our subscribers. In the coming weeks, the online publication will cease and the URL will be redirected to PhaedraCook.Com, which is where I’ll be posting my future articles (because I’m not going to stop writing; it’s part of who I am). Houston Food Finder will continue publishing local restaurant and bar content on its social media channels.
The way that readers and social media followers consume food and beverage content has changed greatly over the past few years. When I started Houston Food Finder in November 2016, I was ahead of the curve. An online-only publication that focused exclusively on local restaurant and bar news was still a novel concept.
Once again, we have to move with the times and technology lest we become left behind. These days, many people prefer to consume restaurant content as videos and photos with short copy. In addition, we’ve watched while advertising dollars are directed to social media ads and online influencers. In short, journalism, by definition, doesn’t pay. Additionally, the online publication is Houston Food Finder’s largest business expense.
Covering restaurants, bars and other food and beverage companies is my full-time job. It is not a hobby. It’s my life. I’d like to keep doing it, and that means I need to focus on the work that generates an income.
Consumers of online content show a strong need for connection with another human being, and that’s why I’ll be operating more under my own name and well as in conjunction with the Houston Food Finder social media accounts. When I was coming up in food journalism, it was when restaurant critics were expected to be covert operatives, making reservations under fake names and hiding under hats and menus. Even as those practices stopped being relevant years ago (we’re all too findable these days to make any pretense of anonymity), I have continued to hide behind an online publication with a mostly third-person voice. It’s time for me to come forward more as a person with a distinct point of view and 15 years of experience covering restaurants and bars.
Freeing myself from the daily responsibilities of running an online publication is going to allow me to resume my podcast. I’ve really missed it, and I love interviewing chefs and other movers and shakers of the restaurant industry.
Additionally, I’ve been hosting some special restaurant events lately (both in partnership with Airbnb Experiences and on my own), and I absolutely love doing that. There are many more of those to come. I think people are not entirely back to their going-out habits, and it’s been amazing to be an in-person ambassador who encourages them to get back to embracing wonderful restaurants.
I will also be throwing off the constraints of talking about only one city’s food scene. Houston is always going to have a piece of my heart — and I don’t plan to stop covering it. I’ll continue publishing restaurant and bar news via social media, and I’ve got some dining events planned already for September. However, it’s a big, wide world, and I look forward to showing you new places.
I hope you will enjoy my new approach and find the resulting content useful and enticing. Change is usually uncomfortable, but I think this will be fun. I invite you to share my continuing journey.
With gratitude and affection,
Phaedra Cook
Food & Beverage Storyteller
Phaedra Cook has written about Houston’s restaurant and bar scene since 2010. She was a regular contributor to My Table magazine (now closed) and was the lead restaurant critic for the Houston Press for two years, eventually being promoted to food editor. Cook founded Houston Food Finder in November 2016 and has been its editor and publisher ever since.
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