How to be a Beacon of Hope|Nicole Duncan of FSR Magazine (DH 028) - a podcast by Shawn Walchef

In trying times, you can become a beacon of hope for others.

The current quarantine conditions the country is in has everyone reflecting and revising how they go about both life and business. For Nicole Duncan, editor at Full Service Restaurant (FSR) magazine, she’s made it her mission for the last decade to profile the food industry and become an expert on the ins and outs of the business. In this time of crisis, she’s been able to use her voice to educate owners and operators in the restaurant space who are feeling the pain of COVID-19 on their business and their staff. 

“We want to be not just a beacon of hope but also a resource for restaurants,” says Nicole Duncan from FSR Magazine.Based in North Carolina, Nicole Duncan serves as the Editor of Full Service Restaurant’s magazine day in and day out. With an appetite for the industry and a pedigree in journalism, Nicole is far from a food critic nor does her publication operate in that space. Rather, FSR’s recipe for great content focuses on the money, metrics, and marketplace that is the food industry.

“We write about the trends and techniques that are up and coming,” says Nicole Duncan about FSR magazine. “But we’re always looking at it through the lens of restaurants being a business first and foremost.”A purveyor of print, Nicole is old school in her approach to content but savvy enough to pivot in these changing times. As an editor in a time of panic and uncertainty, Nicole is assisting her staff in making the most of this moment for her writers and readership.
“We have a robust digital presence that keeps growing and has really proven itself during this experience,” says Nicole Duncan about running a publication during the COVID-19 pandemic.“The new way of operating is still changing. We’ve had to suspend any freelance work for the time being. Right now, we are pulling stuff from online for print. Just the same, all of us on print are contributing online as well. It’s all hands on deck right now.”
Adjusting to the Times:Adjusting to the times means that every other day FSR has an editorial check-in meeting. The team often uses Google Meet so they can have a meeting remotely. 

When it comes to print, proofing has proven difficult digitally but might just make PDFs the new techniques for edits as it’s an already surfacing solution. “Print will never go away, but print will see more of its lifeblood go to digital,” according to Nicole Duncan. “If you look at our digital presence today versus five years ago it’s become this wonderful thing that’s its own entity and it couldn’t be cooler. I’m an old school print girl but I do understand that this is the way of the future.”

Writing aside, voice content is also of value in these times of change as art imitates life in her conversation with Cali BBQ Media.“Podcasts are a little more personal than the written word,” says Nicole appropriately on the Digital Hospitality Podcast.
Feast or Famine:Just like the restaurant industry, the world of content creation can be feast or famine in times of change. Nicole Duncan knows this firsthand as her entry into the writing world coincided with a low point for the American economy.

“I graduated college having studied journalism right in 2008 when the recession hit,” reflects Nicole. Following a magazine internship, Nicole did everything from teaching English overseas to working in marketing and communications. Eventually, she’d begin freelancing at FSR to go on to take an editor role at the magazine. In doing so, she’d play a large part at a small independent competing against big publications – a parallel of which many local restaurants can relate.“A lot of our competitors are publications under bigger umbrella groups,” says Nicole. “We are a small, independently owned publishing company. We’re kind of like Mighty Mouse: we might be small, but we’re a bit more nimble and in control of what we do.”

Further episodes of Digital Hospitality: A Cali BBQ Media Podcast

Further podcasts by Shawn Walchef

Website of Shawn Walchef