Seattle DINING!

The first 25 years

25 years ago I was winding down a 25 year career in the music industry, which was crashing and burning as a result of the introduction of the MP3. That little piece of technology completely changed the playing field for record companies, and it’s taken 20 years for them and the artists to adapt to how things would play out. I didn’t want to try and make a go of it there. I had other plans brewing.

Other forms of digital media were up and coming, and online publishing was the next road I wanted to take. I wrote a business plan, got funded, and was on my way to creating several online magazines, all of which launched within the first six months of 1999.

The second out of the gate was Seattle DINING! with a commitment toward enriching readers’ lives by sharing the best things about food and beverage in Seattle and beyond. While lots of startups adjust their mission over the years, I’m pleased that we have been able to stick to this one for 25 years.

Back then there was no Open Table, Eater, and Microsoft’s Sidewalk (later City Search) was just getting started. Besides editorial about where to eat, we took a stab at taking reservations, faxing reader request to local restaurants, with a pitch for advertising included. Crazy times.

I met Connie Adams in 2002 during a wine dinner at Serafina and we hit it off. She had been doing editorial for both print and online publications. We had both crafted restaurant directories for various publications and merged both mine and hers together to create a restaurant directory for Seattle and the surrounding areas sortable by location, food type, and specialties.

Later, when Connie needed some steady work, she became the front of the house at Seattle DINING!, leaving me in the kitchen, actually office, to be the back of the house handling all the coding, admin, and many of the marketing and sales strategies. In the meantime, Connie crafted great editorial, restaurant directories, calendar, news bytes, wine tastings, services, happy hour, archive (stories + biographical info about culinary folks), beverage columns, Chef’s Kitchen, and went to work selling the advertising that kept us in business.

Fans of food shows eventually began turning away from the radio and getting their foodie fare from podcasts. Having a background in recording production, I bought a few nice microphones, a nice mixing board, loaded up several different software programs and in 2014 we launched the first monthly Seattle DINING! Show. The show had an 8 year run. Not only did it feature our chatter and special guest interviews, but we had reader/listener inserts tipping listeners off to their favorite restaurants and local celebrities providing show IDs. It was a great extension of the magazine and I really enjoyed getting it together each month.

The pandemic struck in 2020 and the restaurants who could survive it were on the ropes. I took a bold step and told Connie to go to our best advertisers and chefs/restaurants who had supported Cooking with Class, Connie’s fundraiser, and let them know ads would be free to them until we could all see light at the end of the tunnel. Obviously, we took a heavy financial hit, but my thought was – who was going to be able to buy advertising when they needed to let people know they were open (they could barely get enough staff to get food out the door on to-go orders). Having an extremely low overhead ourselves, we survived that and it all bounced back.

All the time, no one was getting any younger. We enjoyed taking road trips 3-4 times a year. Getting a monthly publication and podcast together every 30 days got to be more than we wanted to continue with.

So, this is our final issue of Seattle DINING! as we know it. We are working together with an outside team to continue publishing future issues and steer the magazine in new marketing ways. We’re hoping for good things from that.

If that does not pan out, the assets will become available if someone wants to make a reasonable offer to keep it going. And just what are those assets?

Domain name – What restaurant entrepreneur wouldn’t want this sweet domain.

Editorial content – Our editorial content includes over 1,000 articles about dining in and around Seattle. It’s a beautiful 25-year snapshot of food and beverage in Seattle during the first quarter of the 21 ^st century. Beyond that we’ve got more than 500 recipes and chef’s kitchen articles that could be put to use as a cookbook or otherwise. We’ll sell the content to an exclusive buyer, and if one does not come along after an as-yet undetermined period, we’ll have it available on a non-exclusive basis for purchase for use in AI and historical archives.

Podcast content – During it’s 8-year run we produced 98 Seattle DINING! shows. Again, we’ll sell the content to an exclusive buyer, and if one does not come along after as-yet undetermined period, we’ll have it available on a non-exclusive basis for purchase for use in AI and historical archives.

To discuss a lock, stock and barrel purchase, or any non-exclusive purchases, contact tmehren@seattledining.com.

So, what are Tom and Connie going to do now you may ask? The plan is to walk a few dogs, cook a few grand meals, enjoy time dining out, doing more travel, drink a martini now and then, fix a few things around the house, do a little wine tasting, take a few naps with cats in our laps, publish a kitchen tips book and enjoy the coming years.

TM/February 2024