Rona Gindin - Ghostwriter

I’ve been writing about restaurants and travel my entire career. The two subjects are entwined with each other and with related areas including food, cooking, beverages, wellness, agriculture, weddings and events. Let me use my expertise to help your company.

Restaurants
I began my career as a junior editor a Restaurant Business, a B2B for the foodservice industry. Over 5+ years, I traveled around the country interviewing executives, watching chefs cook, attending conferences and touring commercial kitchens. Over time, I delved into the areas of market trends, management styles, franchising, sanitation, safety, recruitment, training, human resources, dining room design, kitchen design, purchasing, marketing, advertising, equipment evolution, recipe editing and point-of-sale systems, for starters.

I did much of the same next at Food Management, which focused on noncommercial foodservice including the facilities in factories, schools, office buildings, colleges and hospitals. I then stepped into the freelance world, where I immediately got hired by several competing trades. These included Cheers, Food Arts and Nation’s Restaurant News, as well as a B2B for the spirits industry. I also handled media relations for two foodservice associations, and created their newsletters.

Over time, I moved more into consumer writing. I’ve been a restaurant critic for 20 years, hosted an on-demand TV show about restaurants, chat with local TV hosts about restaurant happenings, and authored books about restaurants for Zagat and Where. I contribute restaurant features to media including Epicurious, Food Network, airline magazines, national blogs and other clients. I created the original website for the magazine Saveur, and assisted in starting up the publication Saveur's Wine Country. My work has included food, wine, beer and spirits.

I’ve been transitioning to corporate work, and now write website content and branding packages for a national restaurant company that owns multiple concepts around the country.

Travel
In the beginning, my travel writing was related to restaurants: I featured the food and beverage programs in hotels, on airplanes, in theme parks and within cruise ships. My early freelance years included long-term relationships with travel trades, covering business and destination pieces.

Now I work within the travel field for both editorial and marketing clients. Notably, I wrote fresh marketing copy for dozens upon dozens of Wyndham timeshare website pages during the course of two intense projects. For five years, I was the founding and sole editor of two custom travel publications, Caribbean Travel Planner, a twice-yearly magazine with three sponsors, and Discover St. Thomas – St. John – St. Croix, a hardbound hotel-room book. Overlapping with those, I became the go-to copywriter for the promotional features in Bonnier Corporation’s travel magazines including Caribbean Travel & Life, Destination Weddings & Honeymoons, Islands, Spa, and Resorts & Great Hotels. For these projects, I was handed a theme, then reached out to all participants, got their input, wrote their sections, sent and handled revisions, solicited photos and handed in a polished final product, always on time.

For a consumer audience, I authored the Little Black Book of Walt Disney World for seven years, aggressively updated two Insight Guides to Florida, cover the attractions and events industries for trade media, and write destination features for outlets including the National Geographic Travel website, Endless Vacation and airline magazines. I live in Orlando and cover its theme park, cultural and natural attractions for magazines, websites and corporate blogs (Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, Dollar, Hertz, SelfStorage), plus I contribute features about other destinations around the world to multiple outlets – even fishing-specific pieces for the online booking agent.

I know the restaurant and travel industries from several angles, and can use that experience for corporate marketing and other projects. I'll take on any topic, delve into it until I'm an expert, then hand you a thorough, on-point, accurate, clearly written, engaging feature, book, website or branding package, on time.