Food bloggers as the new food critics

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at September 19th, 2007

I wrote a piece for the September issue of Rogue Magazine on “the new food critics,” revealing food and travel bloggers as authorities in the art and science of degustation.

In the 1950′s, the dawning of the food critic gave rise to a certain fear in the food and beverage industry. The New York Times, one of the pioneers in the food writing industry, released a weekly column that reviewed restaurants and hotspots. By the decade, the food critic wielded a powerful pen as reviews could literally make or break a restaurant. [buy the latest September 2007 issue with Cristina Garcia for the rest of the article]

Rogue sells for P180.00 and boasts an impressive lineup of contributors including Andy Maluche, Lourd de Veyra, Yvette Tan, Eggy Tioseco, Arnold Arre, and Quark Henares.

Emergency Food Supply

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at July 24th, 2007

Holy cow, I knew this was possible, but highly improbable — that you can actually commercially survive with $500.00 worth of food in a year. Here in the Philippines, that’s roughly P100.00 a day excluding weekends.

What you get in each bucket of Emergency Food Supply:

Basic preparation will impact the probability of your family’s survival in an emergency. Delicious and Easy to Prepare. Each bucket contains 275 servings of Pre-mixed and Pre-seasoned 100 % Vegetarian and Vitamin Fortified food for you and your family. With a 20 year long shelf life, this kit is perfect for the preparation of natural disasters such as hurricane, tornado, earthquakes or even a camping/hunting trip.

* 30 Servings – Potato Bakon (Note the “k.”)
* 25 Servings – Corn Chowder
* 25 Servings – Ala King
* 25 Servings – Cacciatore
* 25 Servings – Western Stew
* 45 Servings – Whey Milk
* 25 Servings – Blueberry Pancakes
* 25 Servings – Barley Vegetable

You can literally buy a handful of these tubs and stay in front of the computer for one whole year surviving with just $500.00. I actually found this entry after reading a bit on trimming down the clutter which eventually led me to this site.

Looks like carbo loading to me. Is this stuff even healthy? (Yeah, yeah, the tub is meant for emergency situations only … like for a nuclear fallout … ) Back here in the Philippines, I’ve seen less fortunate families of four survive with just one dollar per meal – for the entire family. But I don’t think I should draw the line of comparison there.

Blogger Down!

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at July 15th, 2007

So it finally hit me. The GTalk banter of CJ telling me to go to sleep were all unheeded as she would see me online at 3PM her time, which is about 12 hours in time zone difference.

Repeated late nights online and the preference to walk around the city (instead of taking a cab) under the rain with no umbrella has resulted in me catching the flu. Aching bones, nosebleeds, fever. Haha! And I’m still up blogging! (I’m crazy!)

But seriously, In really need to get some rest and figure out how I can best organize my daily tasks so I don’t end up working till 3 AM.

In this light, I’d also like to thank everyone who attended the first blogger food critique class I organized with the help of Christine and Markku. You can view some of the photos and experiences at Noemi’s blog.

I’m off to bed, with a blanket and drugged.

P.S. If you’re looking for really refreshing dalanghita juice (our local green orange), Juned’s family sells by the bottle. You can buy them in juice form or in the concentrate. I took five glasses so far and I’m feeling much better.

Blogger Breakfast at Portico, Serendra

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at July 11th, 2007

Yesterday morning, I brought my family to a mini breakfast meet up with Dine, Noemi, their husbands and Chats. My mother was quickly assimilated into the group and boring talk about child rearing and childbirth were brought up. The small meet was held at Portico, at Serendra by invitation of the marketing group of Chateau.
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P45,000.00

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at July 10th, 2007

I’m going to make an educated assumption that SM Hypermarket / Taste Asia spent no more than P300.00 per head for the Taste Asia Blogger Meet. Factor in the 150 guests and we come up with a magic figure of P45,000.00 for the food.

What can P45,000.00 buy in terms of advertising?

• It can buy a half page or a full page advertisment in a commercial publication
• It can barely pay for a 30 second spot in a TV ad or radio ad
• It is the overpriced talent fee of a nobody endorsing a product

Or it can be used to revive a product using not so traditional marketing. Taste Asia had been refurbished with air conditioning, wireless Internet and flat screen televisions.

It dispels the notion that marketing people look ONLY at demographics. Frankly, traditional marketers don’t really look at content, because they don’t have time to do this. The line “I don’t care about your content — what I care about is guaranteeing me 500,000 impressions.” is fairly common in traditional advertising. In this case however, the “less is more” principle pays more attention to the credibility and experiential writings of people who came and enjoyed the event and wrote about it online.

It may be safe to say that pass on readership for one magazine could lie in the one hundred thousand — and that’s pushing it. That’s a little bit over P45,000.00. Think of how many bloggers it takes to generate a hundred thousand visitors in a month. The surprising answer is … one or two really good ones.

So is it actually cheaper to do online campaigns, or is my logic completely flawed?

Do You Have a Remarkable “Taste Asia” Networking Plan?

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at June 27th, 2007

On Tuesday, roughly five days from now, there will be a huge blogger event at Taste Asia. Over a hundred and fifty bloggers will be there in attendance. Wouldn’t this be a great opportunity to network with other bloggers? Jeremy Wright of Ensight gave some good advice several months ago as he gave away b5media calling cards that had the name of the event listed onto the card apart from his other information. This helps other people recall where they met you just by looking at the card.

We might be able to set up an open mic session where anyone can just come up and play guitar. I heard Punzi is going to bring his brass and Lauren will be taking her Squire gee-tar too.

All in all, there will be a truck-load of opportunities for bloggers to get to know other bloggers. Wouldn’t it be remarkable if you did one thing to blow all 150 bloggers away?

Back in Cebu for ICT 2007: Day 1 at Acqua and Cowrie Cove

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at June 25th, 2007

Tiramisu at Acqua, Shangri-La Mactan Hotel and Spa Resort

Conferences are all about food, food, and more food.

I’m at Cebu right now, staying at the Shangri-La Mactan Hotel. As a guest of Globe Telecommunications, I’ve been invited to witness ICT 2007. The conference starts tomorrow and will take up the better part of the day till Wednesday. I will be staying in Cebu from Monday to Thursday.
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SM Hypermart: 100 Bloggers Eating Simultaneously!!!

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at June 19th, 2007

I’ve been asked to act as one of the food marshals for a big blogger event in July. Here are the details:

WHO: Bloggers of all ages and sizes
WHAT: SM Hypermarket Invites Bloggers to get a “Taste of Asia”
WHEN: July 3 2007 7:00PM
WHERE: Taste Asia, SM Mall of Asia

To join just leave a comment on this blog or over here and we will gladly accommodate you.

To view the updated list of registrants, please visit this page.

As an aside, the event marshals were classified by blog niche. I really found it shocking revealing how our Google country representative classified my blog as a “lifestyle blog” (as opposed to tech) based on the contextual advertising that was being generated on my sidebar. A Bugged Life is a lifestyle blog. I have a life after all.

“Ultra Cultured Night” — Blogger Wine and Cheese Night

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at June 16th, 2007

After enjoying a stimulating retreat over at Juned’s place a few nights ago, fellow bloggers Markku and Joey, Gail and Marc have been wondering what the deal was with wine and cheese. In this light, I am organizing a blogger wine and cheese meet up tentatively on the evening of June 29 2007 or sometime in July. I guess this is also a call for help from Christine, Lori, Noemi and I guess the fab women from the Pinoy Moms Network (you know, the guys should start a Pinoy Dads Network… but I digress).
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Should restaurants charge you for using their power outlets?

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at June 2nd, 2007

I’ve coined Serendra and the Bonifacio High Street my official satellite office. With Serendra sporting FREE wireless Internet from the areas of A Different Bookstore to Miss Desserts, the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf area as well as Bo’s Coffee, I can find so many reasons why working in that area can be so relaxing.

I must admit, the Bonifacio High Street – Serendra strip is a bit pricey, but the atmosphere conveys such a relaxing tone to your spirit that I wouldn’t mind spending the extra bucks lounging around. Here are two observations of the best places to chill with a computer: The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf has an ample amount of wall plugs, and the staff allows you to plug in your laptops without charging. A Different Bookstore would have been another good choice to park yourself in for some mobile computing, but they have sadly started charging you for plugging in computers.

Should restaurants charge you for using their power outlets?
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How long does it take you to compose a weekend post?

Posted by Jayvee Fernandez at May 27th, 2007

For this particular weekend post, it took me roughly three hours. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with wine, cheese and chocolates, having attended some cultural appreciation classes at Enderun Colleges in Ortigas (truffle making and chocolate centerpiece styling demo with Valrhona chocolates) as well as attending a sushi rolling class with Noemi, Annalyn and Rache, Anton’s wife.
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