YumSugar.com, a shopping recommendation website targeting women, lists Antoine Amrani Chocolates among their “must haves” for September.

http://tinyurl.com/npr4nl

Amy Sherman, who writes her “Cooking with Amy” food blog, and contributes to other popular food websites, reviewed Antoine Amrani’s Chocolates today.

Check out what she had to say here.

Antoine Amrani Chocolates is the latest company to use our social media press release.

Antoine Amrani, which exhibited at the Summer ‘09 Food Fete media event in NYC, wanted to create another push to talk about updates since their spring launch.

Here’s a link to their FoodSmart release: http://pitch.pe/19614

Bonnie Tandy LeBlang, a highly respected and widely read food writer, gives her (and her product review team’s) take on Senor Sangria on her “Bite of the Best” website.  Glad to see they liked it.

Read the review here. http://www.biteofthebest.com/senor-sangria/

The reviews are starting to come in for Senor Sangria.  Drinks blogger Chris Null of Drinkhacker.com offers his opinion.

http://www.drinkhacker.com/2009/06/12/review-senor-sangria/

I’m helping out with the media launch of Senor Sangria, a new premium, bottled sangria developed by an ex-techie with an interesting backstory who’s putting everything on the line to make his dream a reality.

Here’s a link to the social media press release: http://pitch.pe/11577

I wrote this several weeks ago, but The Bulldog Reporter, a public relations industry newsletter, ran my bylined article on permission-based PR this morning.

http://tinyurl.com/crsmnn.

I invite your comments and questions.

I’m really excited about an upcoming move to Portland, OR. In fact, I’ll be loading up and heading from Houston to the Pacific Northwest later this week.

So, why Portland? The reasons are both personal and professional, but I’m wanting to enjoy the benefits of living in a major “foodie” city — which definitely applies to Portland — plus be in a region that better supports my food events and PR business.

Beginning April 27, I can be reached at 503-227-0601 or 281-727-8248 (mobile).

It’s a classic scenario for small food companies who have a new product coming out, and want to get some market and media attention via a press release.

The problem is they probably don’t:

• have someone in-house who is skilled at writing effective releases
• have much of a budget (if any) to hire an agency or unknown feeelance writer; or worse
• know how to pitch the story, and who should receive the release when it’s done.

Having seen this situation time and again, I’ve decided to become that short-term PR resource for food and beverage companies.  Not only will I write a strong new product release, I’ll distribute to my list of opt-in food editors and bloggers who have agreed to receive FoodSmart client information.  Not all of the current 165 opt-in writers will be appropriate for every product announcement, so you’ll have to trust that I’ll do the right thing. With this package, there are no long-term contracts, commitments or retainers.

See today’s release: http://pitch.pe/5485.

The turnkey fee for this package is $500, which I believe reflects recession-sensitive pricing.  The fee, which is not based on a set number of hours, includes working with you to figure out topline messages, key selling points, product differentiators, writing the release and distributing it.  Since I’ve also promised my editorial subscribers I won’t follow-up by telephone “to see if they got the release,” the  follow-up will be minimal, but highly prioritized.

If you saw our launch anouncement, FoodSmart only creates social media releases (SMRs) using the Pitchengine SMR tool. Trust me, once you see a well-done SMR, you’ll never go back to the old school narrative releases that take too long to create and — at the end of the day — don’t accomplish very much. If you’re on Twitter or Facebook, the SMR can create even more value in how you communicate to your customers and friends “what’s new.”  All Pitchengine social media releases are also automatically submitted to Google News, and ususally appear within 1-2 hours.

Contact me at 503-227-0601 or jeff.davis (at) foodsmartpr (dot) com to discuss what you have coming up.