Vice President, Editorial
Produce Business
Currently the vice president of editorial for Boca Raton, FL-based Phoenix Media, publisher of Produce Business, Deli Business and Cheese Connoisseur, Ellen Koteff is an award-winning journalist and communications expert specializing in the foodservice industry.
Previously Koteff was president of EK Connects, a marketing and public relations consulting firm, and founding editor of Restaurant Management, a precursor to FSR magazine. She is a sought after speaker, participating as a moderator and panelist at numerous industry events, conferences and broadcast outlets.
As editor-in-chief of Nation’s Restaurant News (NRN) for more than a decade, Koteff directed the editorial operations — daily media and weekly print editions — for the country’s leading foodservice publication. During her tenure, Media Business magazine cited NRN on its annual Power 50 list of most influential business-to-business publications for ten consecutive years. Under Koteff’s leadership, NRN won four Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Awards and was a finalist for nine out of ten years.
As the result, Koteff was chosen from a group of 22 other editors whose publications had won Neal Awards to receive the McAllister Editorial Fellowship at Northwestern University, administered through the American Business Media’s Educational Foundation. In 2007 Koteff was honored again, this time as a Top Innovator in Business Publishing by Media Business.
Koteff has served as editor-in-chief of FoodchannelPRO, a foodservice video-centric website, metro editor for the Parsippany Daily Recordin Parsippany NJ, and as editor of the Palm Beach Daily News in Palm Beach, FL. She has contributed to Vanity Fair magazine, Palm Beach Life, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Women’s Wear Daily and Time Magazine.
Koteff is a former board member of the Women’s Foodservice Forum, an organization dedicated to furthering the careers of female executives in the foodservice industry. She is the former vice president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, and is a jury member of the International Foodservice and Manufacturers Association’s Silver Plate Committee. She also has been on the board of directors of the Elliot Leadership Institute as well as the Multi-Cultural Foodservice Hospitality Alliance (MFHA).
