What Should I Do Next With My Newsletter? A Conversation With Kristen Hawley

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January 29, 2025

When Kristen Hawley first started writing about the intersection of restaurants, hospitality, and technology, she had the niche pretty much to herself. Things started small. The first few editions of her newsletter, back in 2013, were sent from her Gmail inbox to a small group of friends, but it grew into a go-to resource, called Chefs+Tech, for anyone in the industry who wanted to understand how technology was reshaping everything from the way diners made reservations to food delivery.

Chefs+Tech did so well that, three years later, it was acquired by Skift — a large B2B media outlet — and Hawley spun that newsletter into a new restaurant vertical, called Skift Table, where she oversaw a small team writing about tech and restaurants.

Then in spring 2019, Skift decided to shut down the vertical, and Hawley had a choice to make: Move onto the new project, or start over on her beat with a new newsletter?

She chose the latter, and Expedite — a newsletter all about the future of the restaurant and hospitality business — was born.

Since that launch, she’s grown from zero to about 6,000 subscribers. Her engagement metrics are good — most newsletters average about a 50 percent open rate, about 10 percent of her total list pays for additional news, analysis, and interviews. (I usually tell teams that converting more than 5 percent of your list is very good.) A subscription costs $10 per month or $100 per year. She also runs sponsored content in the newsletter. 

(Separately, she has a podcast called The Simmer, which is also about restaurants and tech — but we’ll circle back to that in a moment.)

When Kristen first reached out to me last summer, she told me she was feeling a little bit lost. Other newsletters had started to cover restaurants and tech, though none had focused on the niche the way that Expedite did. She told me she felt like her newsletter needed direction — a clear content strategy to build around, and then the right monetization to layer on top of that. “I need to hone in on Expedite’s mission, vision, and future content strategy to ensure it’s a useful resource for readers in the future,” she said.

The stakes, she said, were clear. She’d been covering this beat for more than a decade. She’d started asking herself: Is it time to move on?

So what should she do next? Kristen and I talked last August about her newsletter and tried to figure out where to take Expedite. We’ve published our conversation — it’s been lightly edited and condensed — and we’re hoping that you might use Kristen’s story as a way to think through similar challenges with your own newsletter.

And below our conversation, you’ll get an update from Kristen about what she did after we spoke. She’s made some significant changes since our chat — some about content strategy, some about revenue — that have started to point Expedite in a clearer direction.

—Dan Oshinsky

August 6, 2024

Dan Oshinsky  

Writing a B2B newsletter about hospitality and tech is an unusual sort of specialty. How did it all start?

Kristen Hawley

When I worked in New York City, in the mid to late 2000s, I worked in magazines at Hearst, and I helped launch a website called Delish. It was very different then — it was about food, culture, and restaurants. I was living in New York, I went to school in New York, and I had sort of fallen in love with the independent restaurant industry.  I started working in restaurant-adjacent editorial at a time when the chef-as-rock-star was coming up, “Top Chef” was new. 

When I lost my job in 2009, I moved to the west coast. I started working in technology, because there a tech editor job opened, and I was like, “Sure, I’ll try it.” I meant to stay in San Francisco for a year or two, just take a break from New York City, and I’m still there. But when I was working in tech, I realized how much I missed restaurants — the beat and covering them. And in tandem with that, I noticed how restaurants in San Francisco were different, from the consumer point-of-view, because the tech industry was just exploding there. Expectations in restaurants and the way that restaurants literally operated and engaged with their customers was very different in the tech-fueled Silicon Valley/San Francisco environment than it was in New York.

My husband is a software engineer, and he was like, “A couple people in my industry are starting these newsletters. You should just do one. Do a newsletter about this really tiny, specific niche.” And those early ones, I’ve scrubbed the internet of them, but it was really just this cool little thing that I was noticing, that I wasn’t reading about, that no one was really talking about. I was noticing this creative energy in San Francisco that was changing the way that restaurants worked, and I identified it and started writing about it. 

And then, a couple well-placed friends — a couple worked for OpenTable — the right people started reading it. It grew from there. It was another friend that introduced me to Rafat Ali, the CEO and founder of Skift, in 2016. They were looking to start covering the restaurant industry from a B2B standpoint, the same way they do travel. We hit it off, and they bought the newsletter outright. They hired me to launch a restaurant vertical, which I did, and I had a team and it was awesome, and we did so much good work. I’m so proud of it. It was called Skift Table. Then, in the early summer of 2019, when my youngest child was four months old, they decided to not pursue restaurants anymore, and they owned the newsletter. 

So I had to start over, and I started Expedite in the fall 2019. It just felt like my work was unfinished, somehow, like the industry was becoming mature. Uber Eats wasn’t a start-up anymore, DoorDash was a public company, and these new ideas that I covered, as a baby newsletter writer, were coming to fruition. Working at Skift gave me a lot of training as a business journalist, a lot of access. So I just continued it from there. 

And then, when COVID hit, it was immediate proof of concept, and suddenly, far more people were interested in how restaurants work. I started doing a lot more freelance for mainstream food publications. Suddenly, Food & Wine was on a policy beat. So it was really cool to do the same work that I was doing, for a broader audience, because, suddenly, people started to care about the economics and the operations and all of the things that make restaurants tick. So that was the early evolution of Expedite. 

Ten years ago, I used to be the only one doing this work, and now there are a lot of people doing it — from different angles and as part of different publications and for different reasons. And because I was the first and the only, I always had a very distinct place, and it’s just getting a little bit muddier now, and I’m trying to figure out what my next turn is. It’s really the first time I’ve had to think about the mission/vision kind of stuff. Because when you’re the only one covering something, you can just do whatever you want. 

So that’s where I have found myself. But, I really just fell backwards into it, and I love it, and I can’t imagine not doing it. It’s become a part of my personality and brand. It’s a gift to be able to do Expedite all the time, but it needs a glow up.

Dan

I want to ask a couple things about the pre-Expedite days. One is, did you work in restaurants when you were younger?

Kristen

No, I didn’t. The restaurant industry was always very foreign to me. I think that’s why my perspective is so focused on consumer experience. Obviously, I’ve gotten a lot of insight now from people who do work and run them, and I know a lot more about how that works. But when I started, it was purely, “I like restaurants, this is how I’m experiencing them, and I want to find out more about how they work.”

Dan

If you go back a decade, when you were the only game in town, what gave you confidence that there was actually a beat to cover? Was there a moment where you went: Am I the only one interested in this? 

Kristen

Oh, yeah. It happens less frequently now.

Looking back, ten years ago, five years ago, I had many moments of being, “Am I the only weirdo in the room?” And sometimes, I would ask that outright, and the response would be, “No, absolutely not.” And I had this small but very passionate group of people that I would call early adopters in the space. But there’s, obviously, clearly an interest now, and so now I don’t feel that way anymore. Now it’s more, “How do I cover this story differently than the five other people that are going to cover this?”

Dan

What was it like starting an independent newsletter in 2013, and how did you monetize it?

Kristen

I didn’t monetize it at all. I think the intention was always to parlay it into what I did, which was a full-time job. I never wanted to run a media company, I still don’t. I call myself a reluctant entrepreneur, but it was a means to an end to me. Also, as a freelance writer, it helped me get work. Now, it still helps me get work in a different way.

Dan

When you sold the original newsletter to Skift, and then when you left Skift, how big were the email lists at those moments?

Kristen

Oh, I sold it at about 1,000 subscribers, and then over a couple years at Skift, we grew to 20k. But that’s with a marketing department and advertising department, and a very different strategy for list growth than I have employed. My metric has always been open rate, and I protect it. I’ve intentionally grown the list slowly with an engaged audience in mind. I’m extremely disinterested in having people sign up and then just never open it.

Dan

I’m curious about what you know about the audience right now, and if they might be different from some of the audiences you’ve written for before.

Kristen

From the surveys that I’ve run, it’s a third restaurant industry operators, which is the category that’s grown over 10 years, as restaurants become more tech-savvy and the operators become younger. It’s a third restaurant tech industry — DoorDash, OpenTable, Resy, AmEx. (I count credit cards in this restaurant/tech space.) And then I would say a third are restaurant enthusiasts, like Bon Appétit or Food and Wine super-readers, people who dine out a lot, people who care how they work, friends of chefs. When I have run surveys, the numbers have come back in about that split. But I used to describe it as kind of a 201-level newsletter. I don’t talk about the basics. I assume that people already understand some fundamental things about how the business operates, and that you know who the big players are.

Dan

What makes a good Expedite story these days?

Kristen

That’s what I was hoping you would tell me. [laughs] I think for me, what I always look for is some level of human interest. I am deeply disinterested in back-end partnerships between a loyalty provider and a point-of-sale system. I think that it needs to have some element of broad appeal. I’m thinking about writing about credit cards, and how they’ve become this pervasive restaurant industry gatekeeper. Something that makes people say, “Oh, yeah, I noticed that.” I give things the mother-in-law test — would they understand? Is this something that they would see, or could I point it out to them? I think the strongest differentiator between me and the rest of the B2B space, specifically, is the consumer focus. There has to be a consumer angle in the stuff that I cover.

Dan

I’m curious, because you also freelance for other outlets, how you think about the balance of writing for Expedite versus writing for other places. The newsletter is a core thing for you, and it’s a real revenue driver, but it’s one of a handful of things that drive revenue for you. You’re always trying to find the right mix and making sure that you don’t cut off any of those revenue streams before you feel absolutely confident that you can make Expedite a full-time job.

Kristen

It’s also not just about the money. The attention that comes with a feature in Fast Company is always going to be higher, at least for the foreseeable future for me, than 4,000 words in a newsletter. It’s just the business, right? And, do I have a book proposal? Yeah, I do. It’s all of these things that, because journalists have to be brands, and it’s part of your personal brand, I want my name out there attached to this topic and in as many places as possible. And sometimes that means giving up a good Expedite story because Food & Wine is going to give me $1,000 to write it. So, I’m saying, I’m being underpaid for it like any freelancer, but there’s the prestige that comes with having that story up there.

So it’s almost less of a money thing, because I make more money from the newsletter than I did in the first jobs I made as an editor, But it’s sort of a self-sustaining thing — I don’t make enough to have an editor. I had a research assistant, very part-time for a while, and especially coming out of COVID, it was very helpful, because there was so much news. But when that started slowing down, I just couldn’t justify it anymore.

Dan

Is part of the thing, too, with freelancing that it’s just nice to work with editors sometimes?

Kristen

Yes, I was just having this conversation. Because when you’re solo, there’s no one to gut check against. Even just the line edits that my editor makes make me a better writer. Not even the deep questions or positioning — most of the stuff I write doesn’t come back heavily edited, but it comes back with tweaks and improvements. The editor at Bon Appétit is wonderful, and her comments — I still hear them in my head when I’m doing a newsletter. So yes, 100%, it’s way less lonely. And I have my newsletter crew that I can talk to, and we read each other’s stuff. But it’s an extremely informal arrangement, and not like we have tons of time to devote to things outside our own purview. 

Dan

Who’s in your newsletter crew?

Kristen

Dave Infante from Fingers, he writes about the drinks business. Hanna Raskin, who writes The Food Section. They’re the two that are industry. And then I’m in a Slack with some former writers on Substack who got money from them. We were all in a Substack Slack together, and then they cut it off. So we just went rogue, and now we have our own.

Dan

Tell me a little bit about all your different revenue streams. You have the newsletter right now — you said about 10% of your audience is paying for a subscription that costs about $100 a year. You have your freelance writing. What percentage of the total revenue pie is newsletter revenue versus the other pieces?

Kristen

It depends on the year. It’s hard to say. I do some ghostwriting and stuff that isn’t really a part of this. That is like 50% of the money I make. I have some newsletter sponsorships, too. I would bet that I’m going to be pretty close to a 50/50 split, if you count the sponsored content I’ve run, and will potentially keep running, on Expedite.

Dan

How does your podcast fit into all of this?

Kristen

The Simmer is because my friend and co-host, Brandon Barton — he’s the CEO of a restaurant software company called Bite — really wanted to do a podcast. It’s sponsored by his company. I am paid flat monthly, for my time, as I would another freelance project. So that is a fun thing that’s gotten really good reception. 

It’s all of the things, Dan, that I don’t want to be making money on that are making me money. [laughs]

Dan

So which are the parts of your job, right now, that you most enjoy?

Kristen

I love researching and writing. And it doesn’t really matter if that’s for Food & Wine or for Expedite. I love telling stories and finding cool angles. I love bringing the receipts, explaining how things work. So those moments are always really great, and the recognition that comes with those moments are great. But my favorite days are the researching days. I love my newsletter, but there are weeks that are just, like, you’ve got to feed the beast, right? And that’s both the best and the worst. Because it’s, like, am I just doing this to do it? And that’s why I feel I need the focus. I can’t continue on this sort of nebulous path forward without better direction and a better why. 

Dan

You mentioned something over email to me. You said, “I’m a rare independent voice in a sea of B2B media.” I’m curious, because a lot of the newer B2B outlets are very good, but some places in the legacy B2B space can sometimes feel a little stale. 

Kristen

I am going to say sterile. 

Dan

Yeah, like I can’t tell the difference between this and the press release that the business themselves sent out.

Kristen

Right, yes. But they still get the prestige and the popularity and the eyeballs.

Dan

So for you, as you think about your coverage, what differentiates your work? Is it the personality? Is it the voice? Is it the perspective? Is there a levity to it? 

Kristen

All of the things that you said are things that I take a lot of pride in. I always say, I’m realistic and actionable and properly skeptical. My coverage for Expedite is opinionated. It’s not like an op-ed, but I throw it in there. I get a lot of very positive feedback about that, and I can do that because it’s my own thing. But I make sure that I’m taking in the larger context. And sometimes, the larger context is the macro restaurant environment. I’m a mother of young children. That’s very much a part of how I approach the world. I highlight women in this space as much as they can, and I’m very vocal about that being intentional. Because there’s not enough representation. And so that’s a very big part of the brand, too. But it’s fun and relatable. And restaurants, they’re not corporate and sterile — they’re exciting and dynamic and different. And so that’s the kind of energy that I try to bring.

Dan

Have you ever tried to map out the different categories of stories, for Expedite, that have worked? For Inbox Collective, I started looking through all the different types of stories that I had done and grouped them into a few different categories. A few types of things work for my audience — like first-person stories, tactics to try, or what I’d call Email 201 stories, where I go into more advanced strategies around deliverability or monetization. What I’ve realized is most of the stuff that I do falls into one of those sort of five or six categories. That helps me figure out how to take a topic and frame it properly for my audience.

I’m curious if you’ve ever tried to take your existing work and figure out if there are similar categories of stories that tend to work for your readers.

Kristen

I mean, in my head, yeah. And, it’s so funny. I know exactly, having worked in media for so long, I know what I need to do. There’s always the thing that’s at the end of the list that I have never gotten to, right? So, no, that this would be helpful. 

When you did this exercise, was this purely from a subject matter or did you look at open rates, conversion, any metrics associated with those topics? 

Dan

It’s a good question. No, I didn’t. I looked at, one, the stuff that I enjoyed writing, and two, the stuff that got a positive reception. My newsletter is also unusual in that when people sign up, I ask them, “What are you struggling with?” I get a couple dozen emails a week, every week, from readers. They’ll ask a question and ask if I’ve written a story on the topic — sometimes I haven’t, but then I’ll add it to my to-do list. I’m always on the lookout for things that might fall into one of those categories. 

Something that I would recommend for you is to take some time and go back through the list of stories that you’ve done. Ask yourself: Which ones stand out as unique, and why were they unique to Expedite? Why was this a story that was good for Expedite and that couldn’t have existed in another publication? Was it the perspective? Was it the topic? Was it the spin we put on it? And try to figure out if you can connect the dots between some of those stories. 

Kristen

Right, yeah. That’s what I need to do. 

Dan

If you can come up with a couple of categories, then for you, anytime you feel stuck, you can always go back to that list and say, “Okay, this piece that I’ve been working on is or isn’t an Expedite piece, because of X, Y and Z.” 

The other thing that I would do would be to go back to your audience and survey them again. You’ve done some surveys in the past, right? 

Kristen

Yeah.

Dan

Go back and ask them directly. “Hey, are any of these things that you’re interested in hearing more of from Expedite, and is there anything I’m missing from the list?” Obviously, your perspective is super important. Seeing some of the data — here’s what your readers read, here’s they open, here’s what they’ve written back to you about. And then that survey feedback completes the picture to help you understand what people want. 

If you have those categories, then the next time you’re working on a piece, you can say “The story that I’m working on about this new thing that DoorDash is doing, that’s this type of story.” But you also may notice that there are spin-offs of that story that could fall into a different category. This interview that you did is this type of story, that works really well for Expedite. But this deep dive into the how and why they made the decision, that’s a different type of Expedite story. Or maybe here’s a bigger trend piece — here’s what DoorDash is doing, here’s what Toast is doing, here’s what Uber East is doing, here’s what Google is doing. You may find that one specific story has actually three or four different angles that you could take within the Expedite lens. 

I also wanted to ask: Are there monetization pieces that you think are missing from your strategy? You mentioned advertisements? Will you tell me a little bit about that?

Kristen

So the way Skift handles ads and sponsored content is, I think, the way to go. They use an in-house creative studio to produce sponsored content for a sponsor. So, I did this, as a kind of an experiment, with OpenTable, late last year. It was an interview series, we titled “The Future of Hospitality,” and it was six interviews. The last one was with the CEO of OpenTable. In the series, we talked about the future of “X” — the future of hotel tech and customer relations and loyalty, whatever. The stories were sponsored and very clearly marked as such. Some of them outperformed my regular content. Because the sponsored stuff was so valuable and interesting. Even though OpenTable chose the people, and they signed off on the content. I wrote it, and we had some back and forth. But ultimately, they were paying for it. 

Mine is not a click-through newsletter, because I’ve never trained my readers to click. It’s not a lead gen newsletter, because I’ve never trained my readers to click. Webinars and stuff, that’s not my thing. I’m happy to host them on behalf of other people and promote them on my newsletter. But with the OpenTable partnership, I learned that I could accept sponsorship dollars for really cool content that I produce that’s still interesting to my readers. Maybe it’s because of the way I was trained, but advertorial content was always just, “No one’s gonna want to read this drudge.” But as long as you make it high quality and interesting, people certainly do want to read it. 

And then the other thing I learned from that experiment is the benefit, besides rad content, is you are partnering with and supporting an independent female journalist in the restaurant industry, and everyone’s like, yes, 100% we want that brand association. So that’s kind of the path forward for me with advertising, because it’s more meaningful than an ugly ad, and it’s interesting and it’s different, and then I’m able to sort of parlay my experience and reputation into support from restaurant technology companies that do well by a restaurant.

Dan

This is super interesting. Do you anticipate, in the next year, doing more advertising-aligned content?

Kristen

I mean, I would like to, but again, it’s always at the bottom of the list. Actually, a woman I used to work with told me she would work on commission. So, yes, I think that it would not be a bad idea, because getting that check was like, “Oh, right, I have built something very valuable, that people are willing to pay a premium to support,” and I should absolutely follow up on that. But none of this works if I’m not putting out one to two high-quality newsletter editions a week. So in the priority hierarchy, I just haven’t been able to pursue those leads as aggressively as someone with a sales team and marketing support.

Dan

An interesting thing, though, for you is that you don’t necessarily have to have different sponsors every week. I don’t think for a writer like you, it makes sense to be chasing 40 or 50 different sponsors a year. But it may make sense for you to have two or three big sponsors. You’re going to work together on this big report, a huge white paper about the state of the industry. Or you’re interviewing people and producing the final piece. You’d be well suited to doing that or, if you wanted to, small events.

To me, this sounds like you had a really positive experience with the OpenTable partnership. It could be part of your job going forward, and it could certainly put you in a place where it frees you up to do more of the thing that you want to do — writing — and maybe less of the stuff that you don’t want to do. If this sort of thing becomes a bigger part of Expedite, you still get to do good work, but maybe you can say “no” to some of the outside projects that you don’t want to do.

Kristen

Yeah, I think these are all things that I’ve explored, and I’ve wanted to do a sponsorship model similar to how a conference does it, where there’s top-tier sponsorship and different levels below that. But I just haven’t put together any kind of program and had time to consistently go forth on that. Because I felt like I didn’t put up one to two newsletters a week, this all falls apart. So my hope was to streamline the actual writing process, to make it easier and faster, because you can’t force creativity. I can’t just sit down for two hours and be, like, these are my two work hours. It just doesn’t work like that. So, yeah, by optimizing, probably with story categories and making sure that I’m really honing in on the angles, and then building out an editorial calendar that’s longer than a week ahead, yeah, I would have time to do all of those things, I think.

Dan

Some of this is just going to be, one, a little bit of organization. What are the different categories? Two, there’s prioritization. If you think about Kristen as a business, if you take a step back and put together a list of all your revenue sources, you can figure out which are the ones you’re most excited about and that you want to lean into. The advertising piece is interesting. The audience clearly responded to it. Advertising content that connects — that is gold. 

You know, not everyone starts a newsletter with the idea that it’s going to be a business, but this is a business for you now. So you need to make choices around where you want to go. Do you want advertising to be a bigger piece? Do you want subscriptions to be a bigger piece? Subscriptions could certainly continue to be a bigger piece of the pie, and you do have choices there, long term, around rates. This is an industry publication, and a lot of readers are expensing the cost of the subscription to their business. You could probably raise your rates from $100 per year if you wanted to. 

Your conversion rate from the free newsletter to the subscription is really strong. Are there more people who might pay for this? Maybe. But you’re already doing a really good job there. 

A lot of this sounds like you have to do the thing that I think writers and reporters often hate to do. When you work as part of a big publication and you’re a piece of the machine, someone else is running the show, and you get to just focus on your job. When you’re running the show, you have only yourself to answer to. You have to force yourself to be organized and to prioritize.

I’ll confess: I’m lousy at this, too. I hate having to make choices between the five things that I’m interested in. But you have some interesting options here. You have a successful subscription business, the newsletter is growing, you have an interesting kind of place within the media landscape. The next questions are: Where do you want to continue to invest your time editorially? And if you’re going to add one or two things to the mix for 2025 in terms of revenue, like ads, how are you going to carve out time to make sure that’s part of the overall strategy, and what could those advertising opportunities look like? There are some choices you have to make there. But these all seem like interesting choices that align pretty nicely with your editorial content and vision.

Kristen

Yeah, it’s good. I think it all truly does map to the organization. And I feel the same way that you’re noticing. Everything is there in this orbit — I just can’t get it all at once. It’s been challenging, and it’s exhausting, and I get personally frustrated. I’m very competitive. All of these outside things are sucking my attention away. So I need to just go back to what’s working for me, specifically, and turn off all of the other stuff. Because truly, I have nothing left to prove. I’ve already proven it. 

Dan

Agreed. All the pieces are there for you to continue to grow Expedite. You’ve clearly proven it with the fact that you have done this already — you already built a newsletter, sold it, ran it for Skift. It’s just a matter of owning the content and monetization strategy, and saying, “Alright, I have to force some structure and organization on myself. I have to be my own boss and make sure that I’m doing new things to make Expedite successful in the long run.” But I know that the pieces are there.

January 31, 2025

After Dan and I spoke, I got that haunting feeling that many writers will understand: “I know what I need to do, business-wise, to move forward, but I don’t want to do it.” 

Candidly, I implemented about half of Dan’s suggestions. I still struggle with the balance of newsletter-to-freelance work, and I’m still not aggressively pursuing sponsors. Expedite’s editorial quality comes above all else, and it always will. But I was able to finally, finally find the direction I’ve been looking for to move forward. 

To start, I looked at Expedite’s best and worst content. Most, but not all, of the “best” stories — the ones I felt most excited to write — mapped to higher views. And the worst, well… same, but in reverse. I realized: 

• I’d rather skip a newsletter than send a so-so edition of Expedite. Most weeks I still deliver two solid editions. In the best weeks, three. Others, just one. If I’m working on a freelance deadline, I try to give myself some grace. I can’t create when I’m burnt out. 
• My coverage has peaks and valleys, largely tied to the corporate earnings schedule. Tech companies like DoorDash and publicly traded restaurant chains like Chipotle report financial results publicly four times per year. That’s when most of the good stuff comes out, including this example of one of my favorite Expedite headlines of all time: “DoorDash’s grocery business is going so well, even its CEO is surprised.”

I’ve changed some things about the way I work: 

• I’ve given up the ghostwriting work in favor of spending more time on Expedite and freelance projects. This was a financial risk, but so far, so good. 
• I paywall more content and have been experimenting with paywall locations inside the newsletter. I’ll always put valuable information above a paywall — it’s inhospitable and unhelpful to do any less — but I’ve gotten more confident walling off content that’s taken time, effort, or expertise to produce. 
• My youngest child started Kindergarten, launching our family into a new life stage. I have more time, but most importantly, more space, to think through complicated ideas and challenges. 

The biggest change since Dan and I spoke is, obviously, the presidential election and subsequent inauguration of Donald Trump. I was deeply affected by the results of this election, initially questioning my work even more: Who wants to read about hospitality when our friends, neighbors, peers, and colleagues fear for their physical safety and security? 

Luckily, as I was quickly reminded, there’s always a restaurant angle. Wildly, Trump’s election helped me find my focus. I’m currently working to reorient Expedite’s coverage of the future of hospitality around three topics: Power, policy, and access. Who’s making decisions that affect the way we experience restaurants and what are their intentions? What new or revamped policies will affect how restaurants work? (A major change in federal immigration policy will dramatically reshape the business, for example. No taxes on tips will have far-reaching implications for the future of tipping in America.) Who’s getting in the front door at the most exclusive restaurants — by popularity or by price — and how do they get there? Who’s inside the kitchens? 

(For a taste of this, I suggest this edition of Expedite: Now What? Considering the future of hospitality under another Trump presidency.)

The newsletter’s best editions, including my focus on women in the business and critical technology coverage, fit into this new paradigm, so Expedite readers won’t notice huge changes. But I’m excited to stretch a bit and examine how power in America, both political and technological, shapes the future of restaurants and hospitality. 

Sponsorship-wise, I’m continuing to work with a very select group of companies to produce compelling content. This work will always take a back seat to my editorial work, which is why I’ve not engaged the former co-worker I’ve mentioned who’s willing to work with me on commission — yet. Soon! 

Subscriptions: Slow and steady growth with no notable peaks or valleys to report. Since we spoke, I added about 1,000 free subscribers and 50 or so paid. I want to shout from the rooftops that hospitality professionals will find great value in reading Expedite. I happily offer group discounts to organizations that want to subscribe on behalf of multiple employees. 

And, finally, the podcast: The podcast! In terms of podcasting sophistication, we are amateurs. But this little pod consistently punches above its weight. I’m proud of the caliber of guest we host every other week — generally CEOs and other execs — and excited to keep that project moving. 

Most importantly, I feel optimistic and inspired about my work in 2025. I have a new editorial partnership in place that’s not yet announced (soon!) that should win me more subscribers.Thinking through Expedite’s evolution has made me think through my own growth, values, and mission as I show up in the world (and in your inbox). It was a great exercise. 

I still think about my well-funded and well-resourced peers… a lot. I think some of them do an excellent job covering the restaurant technology business and I hope they keep going. But my competitive feelings have cooled somewhat. This is cheesy, but true: In the hospitality business, there’s always another seat at the table.

—Kristen Hawley

Kristen Hawley is a freelance journalist and founder of Expedite, a newsletter about the future of hospitality. Her work has appeared in Fast Company, Food & Wine, Eater, Bon Appetit, and others. More clips here (including a fascinating feature about a $450 million failed pizza robot with many relevant lessons); find Kristen on LinkedIn here. She lives with her family in San Francisco. 

Correction: We misspelled Hanna Raskin’s first name incorrectly in the original post — an unusually embarrassing mistake seeing as we’ve previously interviewed her for Inbox Collective. (Sorry about that, Hanna!)

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