Food52’s Secret Recipe for Building a $100 Million Media Empire
At a time when many media outlets are flailing, Food52 is a rare success story
By Elizabeth Segran
There are no shortage of recipe sites on the internet — from Martha Stewart’s pastel-hued empire to curated recipes on Bon Appétit to home-grown blogs. But no food site has managed to blend e-commerce with content as successfully as Food52.
New York Times food editors Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs founded Food52 in 2009 as a website that bridged the gap between gourmet cooking and crowdsourced recipes. Over the past 12 years, it has evolved to include an online marketplace of home goods and a line of kitchen products. This week, it announced that it had acquired Dansk, a 67-year-old Scandinavian-inspired home brand with a cult following.
At a time when many media outlets are flailing, Food52 is a rare success story. Right before the pandemic, VC firm The Chernin Group (TCG) bought a majority stake in the company for $83 million, bringing Food52’s total funding to $96.6 million and valuing it at $100 million. COVID-19 only fueled the platform’s…
