Portland Food and Drink Rebrands – New Direction

{this, of course, was an April fools post}

Over the past year, I’ve been concerned that PortlandFoodandDrink.com is falling behind in today’s quickly changing food scene. But I’m tired of overblown restaurant reviews that clog our mobile devices with hyperbole, the constant bombardment of “breaking news!” stories about restaurants – and we are just talking restaurants for god’s sake, endless lists – “Top 20 Coffeehouses with Wi-fi Speed over 20gb that Sell Bloom County Chai”, and slide shows that live solely to get someone to click on a page so that they can serve you more ads. I’m over the local food “journalism”. Instead, I’m going to take the site in a new direction; one that is more current and gives more information that is important to you.

I spent quite a while studying reader demographics before I decided to make this change.

• 46% of our readers are female, 54% male.
• 27.5% are 18-24 years old, 33.5% are 25-34% y/o, 15.5% – 35-44.
• Most of you are fairly active – a good thing as you also tend to enjoy your food – 5.5% of readers tend to be very sports oriented, followed by computers & electronics 3.94%, sports/cycling 3.05%, food & drinks, cooking/recipes 2.96%, and Portland travel/tourism 2.45%

With this in mind, I have come up with a new plan which I think will attract more users to the site. You’ll still have the same types of news stories, occasional reviews, and food writing. But we will have more recipes, more product comparisons, and of course a whole new slew of nice, calming graphics in the new website design. Want a new experience for a Friday night? You’ll find suggestions on the home page. Unwinding after a hard day at the office? We have a list of different ways to make your own home infusions. Trying to figure out a difficult pairing? We’ll help you there too. I want this to be your one stop shop for all the information you need to plan your weekend.

A couple of notes. I really appreciate all of you on Facebook who have “liked” the Portland Food and Drink page. But keep in mind that you won’t necessarily see our posts unless you go looking for them. Facebook only passes on a very small number of new post notifications unless I pay. The only way to be notified about all of the new posts is to subscribe to our RSS feed, or subscribe to our email digest which is sent out once a day if anything has been added. You’ll find both of those here.

The name change will take a few days to show on Facebook/Twitter, but you’ll want to take a moment to visit the all new site and check out the changes. As always, thank you for reading, and feel free to leave your feedback!

FD