We started it at the onset of this great recession in the winter of 2007, but of course no one knew then what would happen to the nation, and to Florida specifically. But we kept going. From the start, it got rave reviews; we garnered thousands of subscriptions in a record amount of time.
One woman -a perfect stranger- called me up to thank me for this magazine; she said she had been waiting for something like this for years. I remember my own mother who was still alive then and living in Colorado, went nutty over this magazine -even though it was a Florida publication. I had been sending her my Boca Raton magazine for 15-plus years, and I never heard much; after she read her first Florida Table, she called me up positively gushing about it, ordering subscriptions for all of her friends. Just the other day a prominent attorney I know told me he doesn’t cook but he loves reading Florida Table. A person from a Miami PR firm calls it the “Food & Wine” of Florida.
What is saddest to me is that although everyone “loved” this magazine, they did not support it financially – advertising was nearly impossible to secure. Of course, that is why, after more than three years, we have to stop publishing it. You can have the best magazine in the world but magazines are a business too – and if people do not support them, they cease to exist.
You never know, maybe when things get better, we can bring it back. Maybe we will fold more food content into Boca Raton magazine. Maybe it was a great idea a little ahead of its time. I will miss it, and I will miss the people who worked together to make it happen. I think we got it right.
But sometimes getting it right isn’t enough.
