How do you write the restaurant section of a local newsletter?

In my post-subscribe surveys, events win by far. Restaurants are usually number two. That makes the restaurant section the second most important thing you write.

Why start a new newsletter with restaurants?

Because events and restaurants are the easy, engaging part. Covering hard news is much harder. Start with what people want and what you can do well, then grow.

What voice should a restaurant blurb use?

A friend recommending it. Not a reviewer, not a press release.

I learned this the hard way. One of our AI section prompts told the writer to sound like a premium food writer for affluent readers. Our human writer ended up rewriting almost everything, and about half of that was voice. The voice we wanted instead: personal, sounds like an actual neighbor, honest but positive.

What's the format?

1. Headline: 4 to 8 words, without the business name in it.
2. Two paragraphs in the voice of a friend recommending it.
3. One interesting thing about the place, said very directly. Maybe two.

Write a local restaurant blurb.
Headline: 4-8 words. Do not use the restaurant's name.
Body: two short paragraphs, like a friend telling a friend where to eat.
Include one or two specific, interesting details from the source.
No AI language. No emojis. Honest but positive.

How do you set up ChatGPT or Claude to write these?

Tell it what you do and what you want, then feed it the restaurant's website. The setup I gave one operator:

1. Explain the job. "I do a local newsletter. I want to write about local restaurants and businesses."
2. Give it the link. When you paste the restaurant's website, it writes the piece.
3. Pick the length. For a website feature, four to five paragraphs in an SEO style. For the newsletter, three to four sentences.
4. Put the details at the bottom. Address, hours, Instagram link, website link.

Save it as a Claude project or a saved chat. If a draft still comes out a little weird, ask it to redo the piece in a specific person's tone and voice. You get an entirely new version of the same story, and it's usually great.

It takes some tinkering, maybe an hour with the laptop on the couch at night. Once you find a good one, save it and stop tinkering. Do the same for each style: restaurants, businesses, news.

Where do the facts come from?

The full source, not a headline. When our AI only saw a headline and a summary, about half of what our writer fixed was facts: thin, wrong or outdated details.

The best detail is the one AI can't get. If someone on your team actually ate there, give them a quick notes box to type what it was like.

What about photos?

Be careful with copyright. I've told my team no photos for news items in the newsletter for that reason.

For restaurants, we make a five-picture GIF of the place. Build it in Canva as a video, download it as a GIF, and upload it to Beehiiv like a photo. It takes about two minutes once you know how, and it adds a sense of professionalism. More on that in memes and GIFs in newsletters.

More on fixing AI voice across every section in why AI drafts need rewriting.