Public relations and cooking. What do these two have in common? Nothing? It depends on how you look at it. If you really think about it, public relations can be a lot like the common activity of cooking that many people do on a daily basis. If we look at the PR acronym RACE, you will see that you can also apply this to cooking. First, the R, Research. The first step of cooking is finding a recipe. You don’t just throw things together and hope they taste good (most of the time). You research what will go together. This knowledge may come from a cookbook, the internet, another person, or past experience. But you get it from somewhere. Just as in PR where research is vital, it is the same in cooking. The second step, A, Action. This is the meat (haha!) of cooking. This is the actual action. This is the frying, baking, sautéing, or grilling that you do while cooking. It’s all of the steps that you do in order to prepare your meal. The same with public relations: action is all of the steps lined up to get the desired outcome. The next part is C, for Communication. Ever go to a fancy restaurant and notice how their plates always look so much prettier? It makes you feel more justified paying $75 for the tiny steak on your plate. That is because they executed the food very well. It looks much nicer and therefore persuades you that it is nicer and worth the extra cost. Public relations does this as well. How you portray your client is huge in PR. You have to work to put them on that pretty plate so people think that they, too, are worth it. The last part of this acronym is the E, evaluation. With cooking, this can be done in different ways. Whether it’s a survey printed on a receipt, a waiter asking how your meal was, or your family licking their fingers when dinner is over, you have some sort of evaluation. This step lets you know just how effective the first three parts were. Positive and negative feedback help you shape the way you do things in both public relations and cooking. While it may seem unusual to compare the two, when it boils (haha, again) down to it, public relations and cooking are very similar in the process it takes to achieve the desired goal of the chef.