Isle restaurant
magazine to quit
next month

A hospitality publication
also is getting scaled back

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

The slowdown in Hawaii's restaurant business has claimed another casualty.

In December, Hawaii Foodservice News, the official magazine of the Hawaii Restaurant Association, will publish its last edition and go out of business after 16 years.

The magazine's circulation of 6,000 may be small by some standards but the significance is that the 6,000 include "every restaurant and hotel and food service professional in the state," said Barbara Holm, the magazine's marketing director.

However, when their business is down, so is the business of the suppliers who sell to them and it's the suppliers who pay for the magazine by buying advertising, she said.

Holm, who started the magazine with publisher Neil Gustafson of San Diego, has spent the last few years concentrating on selling advertising, a task that became steadily more difficult, she said.

Donna Shanefelter, editor of the magazine for the last 10 years and now also business manager, said the publication wasn't losing money but profits had shrunk to the point where it wasn't practical to keep going.

"We can't see increases in salaries or any investment in the company," she said.

The owners, San Diego-based Gustafson and his wife Kathleen, asked the staff to think about the future. "I wrote a proposal . . . suggesting that we shut down," Shanefelter said.

She said it was best to go out before significant debts were run up. "We knew December was going to be a good issue" and everyone wants to be remembered well, she said.

"Nobody's going to walk away from this project in debt," she said, but Shanefelter, Holm and sales and marketing assistant Sharolyn Ah Yo will be looking for other work after the end of the year.

The magazine carries news of the Restaurant Association and is also the official journal of a chefs' association, the Hawaii chapter of ACF Chefs de Cuisine. Gordon Lum, executive chef at Sea Life Park and president of Chefs de Cuisine, said he sees the magazine's decision to close as a strong indication of the industry's poor condition.

"People just don't have the money to buy the advertisements to help the magazine stay open," Lum said.

Kathy Masunaga, executive director of the Restaurant Association, said the restaurant industry is "managing to survive" but it is increasingly competitive. So are ways by which the suppliers get information out about their products and services, such as faxes and the Internet, she said.

In related news, there will be another cutback in the local hospitality industry publications businesses. John Black, editor and publisher of Hawaii Hospitality magazine, said he is scaling down the publication.

Since 1984 the magazine has been a glossy quarterly for the lodging industry. The quarterly is being dropped and Black will concentrate on Hawaii Inn the Know, a monthly he produces for the Hawaii Hotel Industry.

Hawaii Hospitality will become an annual, published in conjunction with the yearly joint trade show of the Restaurant Association and the Hotel Association, Black said.

"People just aren't buying ads like they used to," he said.