Great Editors And Thank You, Dear Reader

We don’t toot our own horn that often. A former boss taught us long ago that the best promotion for a great magazine is the magazine. This issue is another fine example: It includes an article by our Founding Editor Brian Ward on how to gear up the E&S supply chain for fast growth; a couple of teamed stories on how the latest ASHRAE standards affect ventilation design and how to maintain hoods; and one of our signature product evaluation articles on double-sided grills.

And that’s just July. I’ve been very, very impressed with what Editor-in-Chief Beth Lorenzini, Managing Editor Megan Hernandez, Art Director Julie Wilhm and our staff and contributing editors have been doing the past few months. I love the “Anatomy of…” series. We had one on prep tables in April and another on bar specifications in May, if you need a reminder. What wonderful, quick visual reminders of what to keep in mind when spec’ing critical equipment! Simply put, we have great editors who do things that no one else in this market do or can do.

Of course, I’m hardly an unbiased observer. So it’s nice to have others also recognize the job we do. And that includes you. 

We just received the results of a new readership study from the folks at Harvey Research, Fairport, N.Y., one of the leaders in business-to-business magazine research. We don’t like to fool ourselves, so every few years we ask Harvey to evaluate how our readership stacks up against all of the other leading magazines in foodservice and foodservice equipment and supplies. We came out on top of all of the categories we care about again this time, just as we did three years ago.

Our tag line for advertisers has been that FER is the “most widely received, best read and most trusted publication covering the E&S market.” We know and urge all of you to read other magazines in the field. Hey, you are a very diverse lot from big chain E&S specialists to foodservice directors across all of the noncommercial segments to dealers, distributors, consultants and service agents. We just want to be your preferred source when it comes to equipment and supplies information. And you clearly reported again that we are. Thank you for your loyalty, but we’ll take it as an indication that we’re doing our jobs. 

And we’ve also just heard that we are finalists in seven different categories of the American Society of Business Publication Editors’ annual Azbee Awards program. We’ve won a slew of editorial, design and meeting excellence awards over our nearly 20 years. You can see a list on page 2 of this issue that doesn’t include the new citations. As you can see, we’re beginning to run out of room.

Thanks again for reading us. We promise to keep being as good as we can be.