Tasty takes over

josh sternberg
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read

How to control the narrative: BuzzFeed’s Tasty — the ubiquitous over-the-head food channel in your Facebook or Instagram feeds — is getting into the Internet of Things game.

It’s now selling a physical product it built with GE called the Tasty One Top, an app-connected induction cooktop — basically, a hotplate — for $149.

And the PR rollout for it is impressive. Especially when we look at how busy Tasty’s GM Ashley McCollum and BuzzFeed’s Product Labs’ head Ben Kaufman were in talking to various publications.

Below is how media companies covered this announcement, as well as who from BuzzFeed — McCollum or Kaufman — was quoted. Interesting, though, how there’s no one from GE quoted in these stories, even though they helped build the hotplate.

The NYT: has a columnist go visit Tasty and write about the power of the brand, and its new product. Quotes McCollum:

“After the cookbook, I realized that Tasty was neither an experiment nor just a really popular Facebook page with lots of ad revenue,” said Ashley McCollum, Tasty’s general manager. “Really what we’re seeing is how to make a business out of massive intellectual property that was built digital-first. It’s the same model as old-media networks — you make a movie that people love, and then you build a theme park and extend that to products and everything else.”

AdWeek: has a more simple rundown of what the product can do. Quotes McCollum and Kaufman from the BuzzFeed press release:

“In two years, Tasty has reimagined the recipe format as a visual, shareable and interactive medium, democratizing food and making cooking more accessible, social and fun in the process,” said Ashley McCollum, general manager of Tasty.

“Tasty’s strong brand and massive fan base give it almost limitless avenues for expansion, from cookbooks to licensing to consumer tech, and we’re excited to take a new big new step with the One Top, a product that has the potential to truly make precision cooking widely accessible,” said Ben Kaufman, head of BuzzFeed Product Labs.

Mashable: ties the product to what BuzzFeed is doing in ecommerce. Quotes Kaufman:

“This is, if nothing else… the most complex thing we’ve ever built,” said Ben Kaufman, head of BuzzFeed’s Product Labs.

“My favorite thing about it is this thing does make a perfect steak. It makes a mean steak,” Kaufman said.

“We don’t really have a five year strategic road map. We have the blessing of this amazing company to experiment and take our leanings to bring them to other parts of the business,” Kaufman said.

The Verge: takes the smart home angle. Quotes Kaufman:

“One of the things I don’t love about the smart home market is that not everything needs to be connected, not every meal do you wanna do the fun stuff,” Kaufman says. “So we wanted to make it really easy for people to turn the power on and cook freestyle.”

“Product Labs is following the BuzzFeed playbook of what makes great content,” Kaufman says, “and then figuring out what those attributes are and translating them into the physical world.”

Recode: offers commentary. No quoting.

NY Mag: looks at the question of ‘can BuzzFeed’s viral food videos get you to buy this thing?’ Quotes Kaufman:

“Cooking is still intimidating for a large part of the population,” says Kaufman. “What really drove us to create a be-all, end-all appliance for the kitchen was, ‘Can we really make it easier to actually cook our foods?’”

“The value prop to me is precision,” says Kaufman. “The brand of Tasty is all about meeting with your friends and learning how to cook, and experimenting with new types of technology. With our One Top, you have confidence that whatever you do is gonna come out well.”
Re: two markets for the hotplate: “One is the person who loves food but hates cooking. That’s a big portion of our audience. There is that market of people who love that real science of cooking.”

“Our ambition is for this to be a profitable business platform,” says Kaufman.

AdAge: did a 6-question Q&A with Kaufman

Written by

Media guy for hire. Previously NBC News; Washington Post; Digiday. Bylines: Atlantic, The Awl, Pacific Standard, Mashable, HuffPost, etc, etc, etc

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