Contact: Leigh Vincola
617-441-8600
Leigh@BostonChefs.com

For Immediate Release

The Shiny New BostonChefs.com
A Decade of Boston Dining Information
on the Ever-Evolving World Wide Web

March 25, 2009 -- Boston, Mass.-- BostonChefs.com announces the launch of a brand new version of its flagship website. Using visitor input and adapting to the way people spend their time on the net, BostonChefs.com has created a new site that's still chock-full of the same insider content it has always offered, but now in a sleeker and cleaner design engineered to make it easier than ever for users to share what they've found.

With ten years of experience covering Boston's thriving food scene, BostonChefs.com continues to celebrate the talented chefs and restaurateurs in Boston; only in 2009, they are doing it better than ever before. 



HISTORY
Think about the state of the Internet ten years ago. No bloggers, no social media, no YouTube. Instant messaging was just catching on, and the Web as a whole was the preoccupation of only a narrow slice of the general population. It was a vastly different world, but BostonChefs.com was there.

In 1999, few restaurants had their own website, and the very idea of using the Web for marketing and promotion seemed avant-garde. But BostonChefs.com founders Chris Botello and Chris Schiavone saw where the Internet was heading and knew that the restaurant industry needed a simple way to plug in and reach the thousands of diners who had begun to do their preprandial research online. This was the inspiration behind BostonChefs.com, and today the company has established itself as the oldest continuously-live dining website in the Boston area.

The concept is simple: to showcase the area's finest eateries in an aesthetically pleasing format that is easy to digest. Each BostonChefs.com member is represented by an online portfolio that includes menus, mouthwatering food photography, and chef bios. In its News and Events section, BostonChefs.com has become a premier source for the scoop on everything from special promotions and wine tastings to cooking classes and charity events. Rounding out the site is the ability to make reservations online, a section of recipes from member chefs, and a handy food glossary.

Since its approach to covering fine dining is to begin with how restaurants see themselves, BostonChefs.com has also developed a strong industry following. The site's Industry Insider section was created specifically to give people in the business an easy way to connect with each other and find out what's new at their respective restaurants, including front and back of the house job listings.


GROWTH
BostonChefs.com launched with a dozen members; ten years later, it has ten times as many. As both the member base and the number of site visitors grew (about half a million page views consumed every month!), BostonChefs.com launched e-licious in 2003 which delivers the latest news on the area's many restaurant, chef and culinary happenings directly to subscribers' in-boxes every other week. Like most great ideas, e-licious started small and grew with a grass-roots following. Today e-licious has more than 21,000 hungry subscribers. In 2004 BostonChefs.com rolled out a companion website, CapeCodChefs.com, to highlight the culinary talent and fine dining options on the Cape using the same online format. And in 2006, the company developed RestaurantWeekBoston.com, the Unofficial Guide to Boston Restaurant Week in order to provide more robust coverage of the beloved semi-annual dining event. 

Throughout this time, BostonChefs.com has conducted user surveys about once every eighteen months, enabling it to continuously improve overall usability and culminating in the recent re-launch. The result is a site that provides diners the restaurant information they're actually looking for in a format that's enjoyable to use. Reaction to the new version has been enthusiastic. One user commented in the recent survey, "The overall look and feel is more friendly and luxurious. It is also more captivating. . . like a choose-your-own adventure book . . .with many happy endings!" Many commented on the ready access the new version provides to the wealth of content on the site: "I like that everything is up front on one page, and you can get a small snapshot of things like upcoming events and news all at once, rather than to click a link to get any information at all." As one particularly enthusiastic visitor put it: "Looks like you did a great job. No other site could compare before, but now it's even better."


SUCCESS 
Needless to say, BostonChefs.com is a team effort. Talent and experience in creative services, web development, editorial, marketing, sales, and business development are all represented in a team of full- and part-timers that now numbers eight. Some, like General Manager and Executive Editor Honor Lydon have been part of the team since the beginning. Others, like Leigh Vincola, in charge of media relations and advertising sales, have come more recently. But all of them--regardless of tenure or skill set--share a passion for food and an enthusiasm for the culinary industry in Boston. 

Of the future, BostonChefs.com President Paul Schiavone has this to say: "BostonChefs.com is in an incredibly fortunate position and we're really excited about what's to come. In the short term, we'll be rolling out a variety of new features and content on our BostonChefs.com and CapeCodChefs.com sites; making the sites even more robust both in terms of content and functionality.  In the longer term, we're looking beyond New England and hoping to bring our unique approach to covering the local dining scene to other metro markets with thriving, chef driven culinary cultures."


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