Step Out Buffalo
Step Out Buffalo is an online media company covering food, events, entertainment and local life in Buffalo and Western New York, published at stepoutbuffalo.com. Founded in 2013 by Chuck Kluckhohn and his daughter Emily Kluckhohn, it began as a website guiding locals and visitors to things to do, restaurants, shops, bars and nightlife, and grew into a media brand with a large social following, a newsletter, a radio segment and its own hosted festivals. It brands itself as a go-to guide for dining and entertainment in Buffalo and Western New York.
Founding and early years
Step Out Buffalo was founded in 2013 by Chuck Kluckhohn and Emily Kluckhohn, a father-and-daughter team. According to a community profile of the company, it began simply as a website, with the goal, which it retains, of inspiring people to explore and enjoy Buffalo and Western New York. The company was based in Hamburg, New York, a suburb south of Buffalo, with a small team of four in its early years.
That founding moment coincided with a period of renewed civic optimism in Buffalo, often described locally as a resurgence or a new Buffalo movement, after decades of population loss and economic decline. New restaurants, breweries, renovated landmarks and waterfront development created both more things to cover and a larger audience hungry for a guide to a changing city. Step Out Buffalo positioned itself as a leading destination within that movement, continuously looking for ways to reach new audiences as the ultimate guide to the region.
What it covers
The site organizes its coverage into categories that have remained consistent since its early years: things to do, food and drink, music and nightlife, culture and arts, shop local and drink local. Within those categories it publishes event listings and roundups, restaurant and bar guides, features on new openings, seasonal activity guides, neighborhood explorations and lists designed to help readers plan weekends and nights out.
Food and drink are the brand's center of gravity. Buffalo's food identity, extending well beyond its famous chicken wings to include beef on weck, a growing craft-beer and cocktail scene, immigrant cuisines, bakeries, coffee shops and farmers' markets across Erie and Niagara counties, gives the publication a deep well of material. Guides to restaurants, brunches, patios, happy hours and food events are written for both lifelong residents and visitors encountering the region for the first time.
Audience and reach
Early profiles reported the small team reaching more than one hundred thousand Buffalo enthusiasts each month across its website, social media platforms, newsletter and radio presence. The company distributed content through just about every social platform, published a newsletter devoted to the best events, things to do, restaurants, local shops, bars and nightlife in Western New York, and contributed a Friday-morning segment on a local Top 40 radio station highlighting what to do that weekend.
Company profiles describe Step Out Media Co. as a private, independent company with a small team, specializing in supporting local businesses through digital media, food and drink guides, things-to-do content, visual storytelling and local advertising. Its headquarters are listed in the Buffalo area, and its service area is the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan region. The audience is explicitly both local and visiting: residents deciding how to spend a weekend, suburban readers coming into the city, tourists visiting Niagara Falls or Canalside, and former residents keeping up with home.
Events and festivals
Step Out Buffalo expanded beyond publishing into producing events. It began hosting gatherings including the Buffalo Whiskey Fest and the Bloody Mary Fest, which became successful recurring events. Producing festivals changed the company's role from covering the city's social calendar to helping create it, and gave local distilleries, bars, restaurants and vendors a showcase aligned with the brand's food-and-drink focus.
Event production also diversifies revenue beyond advertising and gives the brand a physical presence in the community it covers. Attendees encounter Step Out Buffalo not only on a phone screen but at a tasting event, which reinforces the local identity that is the company's principal asset. The events fit a broader pattern among digital local-media brands of the 2010s, which added experiences, memberships and commerce to traditional display advertising.
Business model and advertising
Step Out Buffalo's commercial model rests on local advertising and business promotion. As print advertising's effectiveness and visibility declined, the company grew its market by offering affordable advertising through its site and social platforms to local businesses large and small. Its business-facing operation promotes services including content creation, native advertising, advertising strategy and promotion for local businesses, positioning its audience of people actively looking for places to go as especially valuable to restaurants, bars, shops and attractions.
The editorial and commercial sides are closely intertwined by design: guides and features celebrate local businesses, and businesses can pay to amplify their presence to the same audience. The company states that it takes as much pride in its work as in the city it calls home, and its self-description emphasizes supporting local businesses as a specialty, not merely a revenue source. For many small Western New York businesses with limited marketing budgets, a feature or campaign with a locally focused outlet of this scale offers reach that national platforms cannot replicate with the same local credibility.
Voice and editorial approach
The publication's tone is enthusiastic and discovery-oriented. Its founding purpose is phrased as inspiration: to get people out of the house and into the region's restaurants, venues, parks and shops. Articles typically take the form of curated lists, guides and short features with strong photography — visual storytelling is listed among its specialties — rather than long-form investigative reporting. It functions as a dining, news and entertainment guide rather than a newspaper of record.
That positioning is deliberate. Buffalo has a metropolitan daily newspaper, television stations, public media and alternative publications covering government, sports and hard news. Step Out Buffalo does not attempt to duplicate that coverage; it owns the question of what to do, where to eat and what is newly open. In a region working to retain young residents and attract visitors, that service journalism about enjoyment and local pride is itself a civic contribution, countering outdated external perceptions of Buffalo as only snow and decline.
Western New York scope
Despite its name, the coverage area is Buffalo and all of Western New York: the city and its suburbs in Erie County, Niagara Falls and Niagara County, and the towns, villages, ski areas, lakeside communities and wine country within a day-trip radius. Hamburg, where the company has been based, is itself part of the Southtowns suburban ring, and the audience spans city and suburb alike.
Seasonality shapes the editorial calendar. Summer brings festivals, patios, waterfront activities and outdoor concerts; autumn brings harvest, wine and football-season gatherings; winter, in a region famous for lake-effect snow, brings guides to indoor dining, cozy bars, winter festivals and skiing; spring brings openings and event season relaunches. A publication organized around going out must constantly answer a changing seasonal question, which gives its guides a durable, repeatable structure.
Digital-native local media
Step Out Buffalo is an example of the digital-native city-guide model that spread across American midsize cities in the 2010s: no print edition, no legacy newsroom, a small team, social-first distribution, service content organized around eating, drinking and events, and revenue from local advertising, sponsored content and ticketed events. Founded in 2013, it predates or parallels similar brands in many other cities and has outlasted numerous print competitors' local entertainment sections.
Its survival as an independent company for more than a decade, per company profiles listing its founding in 2013 and independent operating status, reflects both the model's fit with how readers plan leisure time on phones and the particular strength of Buffalo's food and festival culture as subject matter.
Place in Buffalo culture
Within Buffalo, Step Out Buffalo is part of the infrastructure of the city's revival narrative: a publication whose existence assumes there is more happening than anyone can keep track of unaided. By cataloguing openings, events and local businesses week after week, it lowers the cost of participating in the region's social life and channels spending toward local establishments, from city restaurants to suburban shops.
For visitors, it serves as an introduction to a Buffalo beyond the standard stops. For residents, it serves as a shared calendar and a source of civic pride. Either way, its contribution is measured less in individual stories than in the cumulative habit it built: checking what is on, stepping out and experiencing Western New York as a place with a full and varied cultural life.
