Public relations is one of those jobs everyone thinks they understand. Send a press release. Invite some influencers. Get the restaurant into a magazine. Secure a few awards. Voilà, publicity.

Yeah. No.

For this episode, I sat down with Larry Carrino, president of Brustman Carrino Public Relations, whose career in hospitality PR spans more than 30 years. He started at the agency as a 20-year-old who didn’t really know what a press release was and eventually bought the company. Along the way, he has represented chefs, restaurants, hotels and major culinary events, and spent 18 of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival‘s 25 years as part of the massive PR machine behind it.

We talked about what happens when a restaurant hires a publicist, the difference between creating a narrative and creating complete bullshit, and the expectation Larry shuts down immediately: no publicist can guarantee you a MICHELIN star, a James Beard Award or any other major accolade. The restaurant has to earn that part.

Then we went where things naturally go when you put the two of us in a room: influencers, inflated analytics, paid versus earned media, PR favors, impossible clients, crisis management, restaurant egos and why a million followers may be considerably less valuable than one well-connected local who actually gets people through the door.

Larry also takes us behind the scenes of SOBEWFF, including the staggering amount of infrastructure required to essentially build restaurants on the sand and the annual media-ticket Hunger Games.

And because this is Miami, we eventually land on something we both feel strongly about: supporting restaurants and people that actually tell the story of this city...instead of treating Miami like another landing pad for concepts already found in New York, Las Vegas and everywhere else.

A few things we get into:
• What PR can and cannot do for a restaurant
• Awards, expectations and the myth of guaranteed recognition
• Media relationships and why trust matters more than one client
• Influencers, creators and what “influence” actually means
• Why analytics don’t tell the whole story
• Earned media, paid media and where each belongs
• Hospitality crisis management
• 18 years behind the scenes at SOBEWFF
• The problem with expecting PR results overnight
• Why Miami needs to keep championing what is uniquely Miami
• Larry’s advice after three decades in the business

There are opinions. There are F-bombs. Flanigan’s receives an impassioned endorsement.

Basically, we covered everything.

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Audible, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Grab a glass of wine. Sit back. Listen in. Subscribe for more candid conversations with the chefs and hospitality leaders shaping Miami and the wider culinary world.

Cheers!

Brenda