MARCH 200
Meet 225batonrouge.com
The plan was always that 225 would be more than a magazine. Within months of our print launch, our website was live, loaded with magazine content, blogs, galleries and recipes.
MARCH 2006
Our first newsletter
225 Select was about helping readers plan their weekends, with editors’ picks for the best happenings. It was renamed 225 Weekender in May 2012, before retiring December 2014.
FEBRUARY 2009
First taste of ‘225 Dine’
Yes, our food e-newsletter is more than a decade old—and going strong! Baton Rouge has always been a food town, so we launched this weekly dispatch on new restaurants, chefs, and Maggie Heyn Richardson’s recipe column, “Spatula Diaries.”
MAY 2010
Shopping with ‘Avenue Rouge’
In partnership with our sister publication inRegister, we launched a weekly newsletter about shopping. (Avenue Rouge became inRegister’s newsletter, before rebranding as inRegister@Home in 2017.)
SEPTEMBER 2010
Dishing ‘Best Eats’
Our 225 Best Eats email has brought exclusive specials from local restaurant partners for more than a decade.
FEBRUARY 2016
Best of 225 voting on our website
In 225’s early days, our annual Best of 225 Awards were determined by e-newsletter subscribers. Participants were randomly selected by an independent research firm to nominate and vote for their favorites in an emailed survey. In 2016, we opened nominations and voting on our site—giving a voice to all 225 area residents.
MAY 2017
Newsletters go visual
Coinciding with a redesign of 225batonrouge.com, we relaunched 225 Dine to better showcase our food photography and First Look tours inside new restaurants. We also introduced Best of 225 This Week, a weekly e-newsletter on the best things to do and see. (In January 2019, we folded that newsletter content into an event roundup in 225 Dine.)
JANUARY 2019
More ‘Dine’ servings
In response to reader feedback—which pretty much asks for more food, always—we doubled the frequency of 225 Dine. We now deliver the newsletter on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with first looks inside the newest restaurants, food news, interviews with culinary industry leaders, and recipes. Sign up at 225batonrouge.com.
JUNE 2020
First virtual event
Did you really think we’d miss a chance to get in on all of 2020’s virtual-event fun? We took our annual Hot off the Press – Best of 225 Awards party to Facebook Live and YouTube. Our staff got dressed up for an Oscar-style presentation, where we announced the winners of this year’s categories.
SEPTEMBER 2020
An app for ‘225’
Baton Rouge, get ready for fun push notifications! You can now download our 225 Magazine app for alerts on food and community news and special offers to local restaurants, bars and other businesses.
DIGITS
28,600: 225’s followers on Instagram
37,000: 225’s followers on Facebook
38,300: 225’s followers on Twitter
Figures are rounded up and as of press time.
This article was originally published in the November 2020 issue of 225 Magazine.
Click here to read through the full 15-year anniversary issue.
