Be Visual: Whenever you have access to a compelling image, use it, especially on Facebook. People are attracted to good design and quality photography. Social media contains a lot of noise – be the signal.

Be Fun: Social media is where people go to blow off a little steam between work projects. No one wants to read your thesis on the fluctuations of the Euro in response to American fiscal policy (did you even make it to the end of that sentence?) Engage, be funny and real, think of yourself at the cocktail party and let your personality shine through.

Ask the right questions: It’s become a given that one should ask questions in social media posts in order to engage your audience. But ask the right questions. “What did you have for lunch?” is maybe a little too general and does nothing to position you as a thought leader. “If you could have lunch with any CEO, who would it be?” Creates the opportunity to talk about business leadership, management trends and current events. (I’d buy sandwiches for Marissa Mayer, personally)

Create Content: Empower a team to write a blog, take photos and otherwise create compelling content from your company’s point of view. By creating content you can better craft the messages that will attract customers to your business. Blog posts will increase traffic to your site. Quality photos will generate more click throughs and increase your presence in Facebook streams.

Don’t take tips as a given: Think for yourself. There are many lists of social media tips (5 ways to increase your social media ROI!) but really, you should think for yourself. Social media is constantly evolving and to be successful you have to change with it. Experiment whenever you can. Create new strategies. Accept that even if a post doesn’t give you the desired results that there is a lesson to learn.

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Three Is A Magic Number
Nostrana and Imbibe Magazine Present Negroni Week: Celebrate The Third Negroni Social With A Citywide Celebration

PORTLAND, Ore. (May 21, 2013) – On Monday, June 3, Nostrana restaurant will celebrate its third year of the quintessential Italian cocktail by bringing together an invite-only crowd of Portland’s greatest bartending and culinary talents. And for a third year, Nostrana’s blowout bash will benefit Outside In, an organization that provides much-needed medical and mental health services and resources to homeless youth.

But this year, for the first time, the whole city is invited.

In the week leading up to the Negroni Social, Nostrana has partnered with Imbibe Magazine to recruit bars and restaurants across the city and country to serve their own unique Negroni variations. Inspired by the ever-changing and ever-creative monthly Negroni at Nostrana, bartenders like David Shenaut at Raven & Rose and Jacob Carey at Dig A Pony will offer their own variations, with a dollar from each Negroni sale directly supporting Outside In’s work to move homeless youth towards health and self sufficiency.

“The Negroni is the best cocktail – complex, flavorful, and truly Italian – and the Negroni Social has always been a great party for a great cause,” says Negroni Social founder and longtime Nostrana bar man Douglas Derrick. “This year I wanted to find a way for all of Portland to take part in the celebration. More importantly, with the help of Portland’s tight-knit bartending community, we’ll be able to raise more awareness and more funds for homeless youth than we ever have before.”

Since 2010, The Rooster Bar at Nostrana has given special attention to a unique Negroni variation every month. In 2011, in honor of a year of creativity, the Negroni Social was born. The Social is a costumed celebration of all things Negroni, featuring a retrospective of the last twelve “Negronis of the Month,” as well as the classic, traditional cocktail.

During the week of May 27 through June 3, sippers in search of a good drink for a great cause will find Negroni variations at the following Portland bars and restaurants:

• Irving Street Kitchen
• Kask
• Raven & Rose
• Grüner
• Dig A Pony
• Smallwares/Barwares
• Metrovino
• Oven & Shaker
• Bluehour
• Ración
• Aalto Lounge
• Lardo
• Riffle NW
• Imperial
• St. Jack
• Laurelhurst Market
• clarklewis
• Firehouse

The Negroni Social, scheduled for 10:30 p.m. on Monday, June 3, is an invite-only event. This year’s party will feature 13 Negroni variations served by 13 great bartenders, including Jeffrey Morganthaler from Clyde Common, Lacy Hawkins of Luc Lac, and Art Tierce from Ransom Spirits, as well as the unveiling of three upcoming Chef’s Negronis from Naomi Pomeroy of Beast, Johanna Ware of Smallwares and Cathy Whims, Nostrana’s founder and executive chef. Guests are invited to don masks and costumes based on this year’s themes of magic, the number three and, of course, the Negroni.

Portlanders who want to join the party can win the coveted Negroni Social invites at imbibemagazine.com/blog this Thursday, or at EaterPDX and Nostrana’s Facebook page at various times leading up to the event.

About Nostrana:
Nostrana – literally ‘ours’ in Italian – serves classic regional Italian cuisine built on simple preparations, fresh, local ingredients, and the traditional method of cooking with fire. Nostrana was founded in 2005 by executive chef and owner Cathy Whims and in 2006, Nostrana was named Oregon’s Restaurant of the Year by The Oregonian. Cathy Whims is a five-time James Beard “Best Chef: Pacific Northwest” finalist and winner of the coveted 2011 “Leccio d’Oro Osteria Prize” instituted by the Brunello Consortium of Montalcino. Nostrana is located at 1401 SE Morrison, Portland OR 97214. For more information, please call 503-234-2427 or visit nostrana.com.

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Virtue Cider is now available at The Green Well in Grand Rapids, 8th Street Grille in Holland, Crunchy’s in Lansing, Wally’s in Saugatuck, The Buck Burger in St. Joe and Salt of the Earth in Fennville, with more locations coming soon.

“The U.S. cider market is projected to take a 3% market share in the next five years and is a category that we’ve been paying close attention to,” says Brendan Gary, Craft Brands Manager at Kent Beverages. “The addition of Virtue Cider to our portfolio positions us to be the leader of this burgeoning category in West Michigan. We’ve worked with Greg Hall in the industry for many years. When you combine his knowledge, his name recognition and the quality of the products, we’re confident that the Virtue brand will be a major player in our markets.”

“We’re thrilled that our ciders are now available in Western Michigan,” said Hall. “Fennville is our home, as much as Chicago, and we can’t wait to share our ciders with our local community as well as visitors to this beautiful area.”

Virtue purchased a 48-acre farm in Fennville, Michigan in March 2012 with the vision of creating a sustainable, authentic cider house experience where guests could tour the farm and taste locally made ciders. Cider House No. 1 was unveiled in December 2012. The building houses the apple press, fermentation tanks and a small bottle shop and tasting room that celebrated its grand opening on Wednesday May 1.

Guests will now be able to see first-hand the process of pressing apples, taste a truly authentic cider, and purchase growlers of Virtue Cider to take home. The bottle shop also sells beautifully crafted Virtue Cider ceramic mugs made by local artists at the Khnemu Studio on Fernwood Farm as well as assorted Virtue apparel.

Tasting Room Hours
Starting Saturday May 3, the cider house and bottle shop will be open to visitors Saturdays from 12:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. and Sundays from 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Memorial Day Weekend hours will be Saturday 12:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., Sunday 12:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. and Monday 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

And thereafter, it will be open Thursday through Saturday, 12:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., Sundays and Mondays, 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. And closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Virtue Farms is located at 2170 62nd Street, Fennville, MI 49408.

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Here’s the situation: You’re a PR/Marketing company and you want to make the “case” to wine writers and influencers that Oregon pinot noir styles—including those from a client or two—are moving to a more elegant expression of the heartbreak grape. What’s a marketing firm to do?

You could go the hackneyed route of sending a press release touting the fact that your clients are “leading the charge” to more elegance in Oregon pinot noir and then follow up with an email or two from your intern and hope you get some hits from the writers. That kind of “campaign” happens all the time.

But the folks at Watershed Communications in Portland think different. To make their “case” that Oregon pinot noirs—including those from a client or two—are delivering elegance over power to consumers . . . they actually delivered a case of Oregon pinot noir wines to select media.

So began local wine writer Cole Danehower’s coverage of a program Watershed created to gain visibility for wine clients, foster good relationships with key media, and help to build the Oregon wine category. He continues…

The proof, they felt, was in the bottle. They called the program “Best Case Scenario”. It’s a brilliant, ingenious, and effective campaign.

Katie Bray, Watershed’s Wine Division Director, spearheaded the project. She had spent a goodly stint at the Oregon Wine Board and has an intense interest in marketing Oregon’s wine brand, as well as the winery clients of Watershed.

The Best Case Scenario began when one of Watershed’s clients, Rudy Marchesi, owner/winemaker at Montinore Estate, became inspired by something he read [in Eric Asimov’s column] in the New York Times.

“Once upon a time, American Pinot noirs were known as bridge wines, perfect for restaurant dinners because they were versatile to bridge diverse dishes. Then a powerfully fruity style became popular, which won high ratings but obliterated the dinnertime harmony. The 2010 Montinore reverts to a time when Pinot noir could be counted on as fresh, energetic, and subtle.”

Danehower delves into the meaning behind those words – Oregon’s winemaking style in the early years of the industry and how that style has evolved over time. He points out producers who have remained committed to elegant wines and critics who have been recognizing their efforts.

But reading about something as purely personal as wine style preferences is very different from actually tasting the stuff yourself. Hence the brilliance of Watershed’s Best Case Scenario: instead of just reading about “elegant Oregon pinot noir” it gives the media an actual taste-it-for-themselves experience of the wines. Best Case Scenario substantiates—makes real—what elegant Oregon pinot noirs are all about.

Watershed’s box of evidence proves the case: the pinot noirs provided, while each of a different character, cumulatively achieve a consistent expression of refined varietal fruit, lovely balance of acidity, and urbane personality that makes them a joy to drink.

For many in the media who don’t live in Oregon, it can be difficult to find out for themselves what Oregon pinot noir is all about. Most of the state’s wineries are small by nearly any standard, and very many of our boutique wines simply don’t make it out of the local market. One of the smart aspects of Watershed’s campaign was that it got Oregon pinot noirs into the mouths of media across the country who likely could not taste such wines without coming out to visit.

Also smart: Watershed didn’t just limit their samples to wines from their clients, they offered the opportunity to participate in the Best Case Scenario to other like-styled wineries. The result is a selection of 12 quite fine Oregon pinot noirs that represent the new wave of Northwest pinot stylings.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

For the full article click HERE.

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Founded in 2011, Virtue Cider produces a series of ciders out of carefully sourced fruit from family farms located in Illinois and Michigan. The entire process is local, sustainable, and practically waste-free. “I recognized early on that Virtue could be a much more environmentally friendly business model than brewing beer,” says Hall. “Since making cider only requires apple juice and yeast, I knew that many more areas of cider making could be made with reusable or recyclable materials.”

Each step of the cider production process holds true to Hall’s environmentally responsible vision. Apples clean the air and their trees hold the soil tight with their roots providing shelter for countless birds, small mammals and even beneficial insects. The trees don’t need to be replanted, watered or fertilized, and produce a bounty of fruit year after year. Virtue Cider receives and transports their apples in wooden crates, which are recycled with every harvest. Once pressed, the spent pomace is delivered to farms to be used as animal feed. The juice is then fermented with no added heat or water. Currently, Virtue’s ciders are sold in kegs, for draft format, which eliminates wasteful packaging.

In its seventh year, the Green Awards honor Chicagoans who are pioneering smart and new environmental ideas. We’re especially excited when a client like Greg Hall, a client that inspires us, is recognized for their efforts to make the world a little bit better. Ideas like sustainability need strong and dedicated advocates like Hall who can not only have a vision, but also execute a plan from start to finish. We look forward to working with Hall, and clients like him, who create great products out of great ideas.

For full profile of Greg Hall and the Chicago Monthly Green Awards click HERE

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I’ve long hoped for a lighter, healthier alternative. In Portland this niche has been filled with a number of food carts that offer simple, nutritious and affordable fare (not that I never sneak off to Tabor to have a schnitzel-wich.)

We were thrilled to see Veggie Grill included in this article. Kevin Boylan and T.K. Pillan are seeking to change the way we think about fast food. They are making something forward thinking, but also familiar, comforting and as American as anything under a golden arch. While Bittman seems reluctant to accept plant-based proteins, I’ve found Veggie Grill’s crispy chicken to be as satisfying as any other fast fried chicken sandwich, with significantly less calories. Veggie Grill has been my go-to lunch for days when I want the kind of food I grew up with – Wendy’s chicken sandwiches, anyone? – without having to take a nap afterward.

Veggie Grill is what we like to refer to as a “catalytic client.” A catalytic client is one who seeks to change something about the market for the better, to the benefit of everyone. By creating an alternative to traditional fast food, and doing so on a scale that will lead to lower prices and faster service, companies like Veggie Grill have an opportunity to introduce a new vision of eating to Americans brought up on happy meals and dollar menus.

We look to work with catalytic clients because their sense of purpose drives us to be better communicators and strategists. It also feels good to know that our work has real meaning beyond measuring impressions. While we are interested in gaining market share, margins and profits (or just plain old butts in seats) we love pursuing a mission.

Read Bittman’s article HERE. What do you think about the turn toward healthier fast food? What are you’re favorites? And what do you hope to see more of?

- Jack Hott

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Nancy Van Brasch Hamren is a perfect example. Nancy is the namesake of Nancy’s Yogurt – long believed to be the first yogurt to add beneficial probiotics such as L. acidophilus to yogurt more than 43 years ago – and the Executive Board Secretary of the International Probiotics Association.

In a nutshell, Nancy knows probiotics.

We thought we’d tap into her deep well of knowledge and shed some light on the mysterious topic of probiotics. Enjoy, and we hope you can take away some new knowledge!

Q: We hear a lot about the importance of probiotics to our health and immunity. What are they exactly and why are they so important?

A: Probiotics are a group of bacteria that have the unique ability to locate on special receptor sites of the lining of our lower digestive tract. They survive digestion, improve nutrient absorption, defend against harmful invading organisms and act as messengers to our immune system to regulate inflammation.
Q: Do probiotics occur naturally in foods?

A: There are many fermented foods that are good for you, like sauerkeraut, kimchee, tempeh, wine, beer, miso, etc., but they are not precisely probiotic because those organisms are generally transitory in the gut – they do not attach and continuously provide health benefits.
Q: Are there differences in the health benefits of taking probiotic supplements and getting them through food, and if so, what are they?

A: A supplement of isolated strains is handy for traveling or perhaps augmenting a difficult gastric situation, but fermented foods such as Yogurt and Kefir provide not just those valuable strains but also nutrients to live on. Like a Vitamin C tablet versus a nice organic orange or salad. Yogurt or Kefir are not only a haven for good bacteria, but also are nutrient dense with calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, protein, CLAs, calories for energy, essential fatty acids, whey proteins etc. You get so much more when you eat a cultured food, whether it’s dairy or soy, vs a supplement.

Q: Do probiotics have a shelf life, and if so, how do I ensure that what I’m getting is fresh?

A: Yes, whether it’s a supplement or a yogurt, always look for the pull date, as live cell numbers go gradually downhill. It’s best to look for documented strains usually identified with a number (eg B. bifidum BB-12) that have been proven by research to be beneficial. Also look for high bacterial numbers at pull date, matching those that created the positive outcome. This information should be on the label.

Q: What makes Nancy’s Yogurt taste so good – is it the probiotics?

A: Yes, it is! Essentially, our yogurt is alive! It’s its full of lives cultures and probiotics — this is the Nancy’s difference and the backbone of signature tang. It’s the taste of health!

Springfield Creamery
Nancy’s Cultured Dairy and Soy products have been restoring the natural balance in our bodies,
in our lives and in our culture since 1960.

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The inaugural Sunday Roast will be an Easter feast featuring a choice of roast beef ribeye from Niman Ranch or pork shoulder carved for the table, with a selection of contemporary, seasonal takes on traditional accompaniments, such as Yorkshire pudding, mashed roasted vegetables and tender young brassicas.

When: Sundays, starting on Easter Sunday, March 31, 2013
Reservations starting at 4 p.m.
Where: Raven & Rose, 1331 SW Broadway, Portland, OR 97201
Cost: $25 per person for roast, delicious sauce, potatoes, and a choice of side.
Served family-style at the table. A la carte menu also available.
To Reserve: Call Raven & Rose at (503) 222-7673 or go to www.ravenandrosepdx.com

About Raven & Rose: Raven & Rose offers classic farmhouse cookery and fine cocktails in Portland’s historic Ladd Carriage House. The dining room menu draws inspiration from the Irish and British countryside, driven by simple, pristinely sourced ingredients and exceptional execution in an atmosphere that is warm, welcoming and attentive. The Rookery—the upstairs bar—provides an exclusive hideaway for sipping cocktails inspired by the building’s exuberant history.

# # #

Media Contact:
Watershed Communications
Jessica Moskovitz
Jessica@watershedcom.com
503-827-6564

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