This story was originally published in On Background with Mark Stenberg, a free, weekly newsletter that explores the key themes shaping the media industry. You can sign up for it here.
In the past year, interest in food media has grown from a simmer to a boil.
The uptick began last March, when the food technology company Wonder, most recently valued at $7 billion, paid $90 million for the food media brand Tastemade.
In October, People Inc. paid an undisclosed amount for the food publisher Feedfeed, the first acquisition from People Inc. since the $2.7 billion merger that created the company in 2021. And of course, as readers of this newsletter well know, in February America’s Test Kitchen bought Food52 in a bankruptcy auction for $10 million, a far lower bid than ATK had originally submitted before Food52 found itself in dire financial straits.
These tie-ups come against a broader backdrop of food and dining related enthusiasm.
In recent months, two new food media startups have launched. Caper, which aims to apply the Puck model to the world of dining, sent its first newsletter in February, and Gourmet, which nabbed its pedigreed namesake from Condé Nast, has made masterful use of the earned media to bolster awareness of what is effectively a scrappy food outlet.
More consequentially, two behemoth deals were struck earlier this week that promise to reshape the food industry itself. On Monday, Sysco acquired Restaurant Depot in a $29 billion tie-up, and on Tuesday, Unilever agreed to merge its food business with McCormick, creating a combined firm worth more than $65 billion.
And now, as if the market were not frothy enough, two iconic food media assets have recently come to market.
