Get Paid to Go
to the World's Best Bars
We are building a global network of field correspondents who earn from three streams at once: wholesale straw sales, advertising sales for Just Gerald magazine, and a paid editorial retainer for articles and photography.
"You walk into a bar in Edinburgh or a resort in Costa Rica as a journalist. You leave as their straw supplier and their advertising partner. The article is the introduction. The relationship is the business."
Most sales roles ask you to sell one thing. This one asks you to do something more interesting: go to the best hospitality venues in your territory, build genuine relationships, document what you find for Just Gerald magazine, and — while you're there — open wholesale accounts for Naturally Straws and sell advertising space to the venues and brands that want to reach the same audience you're building.
The retainer covers your time and travel. The wholesale commission scales with your account base. The advertising sales add a third income layer that grows as Just Gerald's readership grows in your territory. It is not a traditional sales role. It is closer to a media franchise with a product attached.
How You Earn
Revenue Stream One
Wholesale Territory Rep
You hold the exclusive wholesale licence for Naturally Straws in your territory. Every bar, hotel, café, and restaurant you open as an account generates ongoing commission on repeat orders. The FBA logistics infrastructure is already in place — you focus on the relationships.
Revenue Stream Two
Just Gerald Ad Sales
Just Gerald is a premium hospitality lifestyle magazine with a growing international readership. As a correspondent in your territory, you also hold the advertising sales mandate for Just Gerald in your region — selling space to the same venues, brands, and suppliers you're already visiting.
Revenue Stream Three
Editorial Retainer
We pay a monthly retainer for one article and one business introduction per territory visit. You document what you find — the best bars, the most interesting bartenders, the venues doing something genuinely worth writing about — and that content runs in Just Gerald and on the Naturally Straws site.
What This Actually Looks Like
You arrive at a bar in your territory — say, a craft cocktail bar in Edinburgh that's been on your list. You introduce yourself as a correspondent for Just Gerald magazine. You're there to write about them, photograph the space, and understand what they're doing. That introduction opens every door.
During the visit, you learn about their straw situation. Paper straws, almost certainly. You mention that you also represent a farm-grown rye straw from British Columbia — the only natural straw that doesn't go soggy, doesn't impart flavour, and has a story worth telling. You leave a sample pack. You follow up the next week with a wholesale price list.
Before you leave, you ask whether they'd be interested in advertising in Just Gerald — their venue, their story, reaching the same audience of hospitality professionals and discerning drinkers that reads the magazine. You quote them a rate. You send a media kit.
You write the article that evening. Eight hundred words on the bar, the bartender, the philosophy behind the drinks programme. You send it to the Just Gerald editorial team with your photos. It runs in the next issue and on the website. The bar shares it with their audience. Your name is on it.
Three weeks later, the bar places their first wholesale order for Naturally Straws. A month after that, they book a half-page ad in Just Gerald. Your retainer covered the visit. The wholesale commission covers the ongoing relationship. The ad sale is the third stream.
That is the model. One visit, three revenue streams, one relationship. Multiply it across the 50 best venues in your territory and you have a business.
Who We Are Looking For
We are not looking for traditional sales reps or traditional journalists. We are looking for people who sit somewhere between the two — people who have genuine relationships in the on-trade hospitality industry, who can write or photograph with enough skill to produce publishable content, and who understand that the best way to sell something is to make the person you're selling to feel like they've been discovered rather than pitched.
Apply to Become a Correspondent
Applications are reviewed personally by Gerald Shaffer. Priority launch territories — Pacific Northwest, Canada West, UK & Ireland, Australia, and Southern California — are open now. All other territories are open for applications.