Six years ago I showed up for dinner at my favorite restaurant. The chef who I’d gotten to know met me at the door and shared that they ran out of funds and the restaurant was closed permanently. The restaurant served amazing food but struggled to get folks in the door. I realized that this was a common problem and one I was uniquely equipped to solve. So, I set out on a journey to create a platform to save and grow great locally owned restaurants. Over the years, we’ve had some pretty amazing success stories of restaurants we’ve saved and many we’ve put on the map. This passion project has grown into an immense amount of work, which we have loved and learned from every step of the way. As my career has evolved, I’ve had less time to devote to Jax Restaurant Reviews.
A few months ago I realized it was time to find the right person to run the day to day of JRR and continue to grow it to the shining light for local restaurants we want it to be. We took our time to find the right person and realized she was right under our noses. My wife, Lisa, and I will still be very much involved in all things JRR and you’ll still see me doing crazy videos, writing articles, and hosting events.
We’re both excited to announce that Grace Stoyshich, formerly part of our writing team has joined us as managing partner of Jax Restaurant Reviews. I can think of no one better suited to champion locally owned restaurants! Grace has been a writer at Jax Restaurant Reviews for some time and spent the last couple of years working in public relations for Wingard, one of the city’s premier PR firms. Grace brings a unique skill set and a deep passion for locally owned restaurants. She’ll be handling the day to day operations of Jax Restaurant Reviews. She’ll be making sure we find great, under-the-radar spots to showcase, help plan events, work to help promote awesome locally owned restaurants and so much more. With Grace coming on board, you can expect more articles, more lists of the best pizza, burgers, tacos, sandwiches etc. in Jax, more videos and more events. She’ll also add an attention to detail that’s a great compliment to our current skill set. I hope you’ll join me in congratulating Grace on her new role on the JRR team!
-Jerry and Lisa Watterson
