There Is Such Thing as a Free Lunch ... of Shame

The vegetable platter, it never stops accusing.

Last week I interviewed a chef for F&BQ&A and then had lunch at his restaurant, a fabulous place in an amazing vacation destination that happens to be quite remote. This was a bus and a train away from where we were actually staying, so why not just eat there? My wife and I were the first and practically only customers at the restaurant because it was so early. We both ate light and, for this place, inexpensively—she a simple salad, me a plate of grilled and seasoned vegetables, since the chef had mentioned his attempts to entice carnivorous guests with more emphasis on veggies. It was a good lunch!

I thought I had avoided any vibe about getting the meal comped, and the waiter didn’t bat an eye when I asked for the check. But he was intercepted by a manager, and then returned to tell us the lunch was on the house.

I wasn’t happy about this. But having been put in this situation many times despite my protestations to the contrary, I could tell I was going to have to fight first the waiter, then his manager, then however many levels up from there to the extremely nice and well-meaning chef who ordered the comp. And while I would likely prevail, I’d be running through a gauntlet of reactions ranging from apologetic refusal to secondhand embarrassment to classification as some kind of high-minded ingrate. If I was actually reviewing the food, or working on staff somewhere with a firm anti-comps policy, I would have grit my teeth and handled it. But I’m just a solo guy doing a newsletter, entrepreneurially, and in that moment my resolve failed me.

It’s obviously more ethical to accept zero consideration from subjects when doing journalism or journalism-adjacent activities. But what really bothers me about hospitality comps as default assumption is they are the result of decades of super-gross entitlement from travel and food writers like myself. Especially in more traditional hospitality situations, or when a comp-happy publicist is managing interactions, the assumption very often is that media types expect to be showered with freebies regardless of whether or not they are central to the alleged coverage. In the interests of cultivating media goodwill, many people in hospitality have been trained to oblige.

I am definitely not top hand on the High Horse Ranch. When I was a full-time travel writer—and the media business had a lot more stupid money and inflated audience numbers—there was no end to the comps and press trips I solicited and accepted. Eventually I came to grips with the fact that I couldn’t cobble together a coverage plan just to go on a rad trip, though I still pine for a proposed month-long train expedition crisscrossing India on Ritz-Carlton’s tab.

Sometimes the comps were very qualified and reasonably circumscribed, like when I wrote travel guides, and a longtime friend of the guide company would comp us hotel rooms in Las Vegas on research trips. We still reviewed her hotels impartially, but who could view that arrangement and think the same?

Even if you’re an absolutely neutral god of objective journalism, going on press trips can’t obscure the fact that, except in very rare cases, the journalism produced would not exist without the comp. Only the richest, glossiest travel publications actually pay for research trips. Would I have written about the Belgian countryside or the hotels of Dubai or carnival in Rio if someone hadn’t paid my way there? Of course not.

Dubai is a particularly absurd example because of the expense required to bring planeloads of gold-digging American travel writers to see the local sights for ostensible review. I went on two press trips there for different publications, writing about all kinds of stuff that 99% of my audience would never experience directly. The publicists running these trips had many masters to serve, from the airline that brung us to the government handlers to the hotel and tourism companies. They insisted on chasing us mercilessly through every possible tourist experience, including a desert camel ride that I explained point blank I would never, ever write about (until now!). They didn’t care. I rode the camel.

The culture of entitlement among travel writers who demanded access, status, and service laughably disproportionate to any impact even the most glowing review might ever have created a pernicious dynamic that persists to this day. I still see a reflex among hospitality professionals to overserve these babies (like me)—to just assume that comps are the default interaction we expect.

Again, this is not to seem ungrateful or spit in the gentle face of generosity, which after all is a core principle of hospitality. I’m also not losing my mind over a free lunch. It was just lunch!!! And a meal is easier to write off versus a whole trip, which is why the former comp is much more common (and more often offered and accepted, slyly or overtly) than the latter. And while I think, maybe, that comps entitlement has somewhat receded since the days of the luxury media con, I’m equally sure it’s still very difficult to produce boots-on-the-ground travel journalism without the industry at least partially subsidizing the work.

I’ve no grand solution, ethical or economic or otherwise, besides a resolution to find better ways to respectfully decline little comps I didn’t ask for and don’t need. I’ll disclose the free lunch when I post that chef’s interview—not because I think anyone cares about my delicious complimentary vegetables, but more because it’s an interesting micro-artifact of how the media-hospitality relationship still operates. And no, I’m not soliciting any press trips, thanks very much for thinking of me though.