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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Tastemade

Exclusive: Tastemade Acquiring Dining and Drinking Guides Platform ChefsFeed

Food media company Tastemade announced today that it is acquiring dining and drinking guide platform ChefsFeed. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Tastemade is the company behind a number of food, travel and home design-related video shows including Broken Bread with Roy Choi, Make This Tonight and Thirsty For.

ChefsFeed uses culinary experts to create a variety of different types of food- and drink-related content, including restaurant and bar guides for cities around the world, video recipes, mini-documentaries and live-streamed cooking classes.

In a press statement emailed to The Spoon, Tastemade said this acquisition will give the 6,000-plus culinary experts (chefs, mixologists, sommeliers, etc.) a larger platform on which to share their work.

Food-related video content took on a new purpose this past year as the pandemic limited travel abroad and shut down much of the restaurant industry. Rather than being just aspirational (Maybe I’ll try to make a soufflé some day), food and cooking content became something more necessary. Cooped up in our houses, video was our only way to experience far off places or learn how to cook new types of food.

Online video was also one of ways restaurants themselves tried to pivot. With dining rooms shut down, some restaurants turned to live online cooking classes to generate revenue.

How our relationship with food video content will change as the pandemic recedes remains to be seen. But one thing is for sure: there is a lot pent up desire to travel in people right now. When they’re able to do so more freely again, having expert bar and restaurant guides like those from ChefsFeed for destination cities could prove to be a savvy play by Tastemade.

Tastemade Shows Heading to YouTube TV

When Jay Holzer, the then-head of global production and development for Tastemade spoke at our Smart Kitchen Summit last year, he commented on how food-based content had moved from utility (learning how to make something) to entertainment (enjoying watching something get made).

Now Tastemade, a digital-first creator of lifestyle and food related content, will be entertaining people around the clock as a new, 24 hour linear internet TV channel on YouTube TV. This means that Tastemade programming will run all day, just like traditional networks, as part of the live YouTube TV package.

According to Variety, Tastemade will run some of their re-purposed library content on the YouTube TV and also launch ten new series, including:

  • Origins, which follows chef Erwan Heussaff as he travels around remote Philippine islands to “discover the people, places and ingredients that define his home country.”
  • Weird Food Jobs, which highlights nutty food jobs like “bubble-gum tester.”
  • Just Jen, a studio cooking show starring Tastemade personality Jen Phnomrat.
Tastemade | Now On YouTube TV!

YouTube TV costs $40 a month and includes live TV from major networks such as CBS, FOX and CNN. According to one Wall Street analyst last October, YouTube TV had 200,000 subscribers, and “could hit” as many as 2 million by the end of this year. For comparison, Tastemade’s free YouTube channel currently has more than one million subscribers.

The addition of Tastemade fills a hole in the burgeoning YouTube TV lineup, which does not include food-related channels like Food Network or Travel Channel. So Tastemade will be the only place YouTube TV audiences (however big) can get their cooking fix.

The deal is non-exclusive, so Tastemade can distribute it’s new, linear channel to other OTT or traditional platforms as well. It will also augment Tastemade’s revenue streams, which include its ad-supported YouTube channel as well as content subscriptions that offer a range content access starting at $4.99 a month and up to $49.99 a month.

If Tastemade’s new channel takes off, perhaps we’ll have to invite Holzer back to our 2018 Smart Kitchen Summit to see how entertaining launching a linear TV channel is.

Scripps Networks Buys Online Food Content Startup Spoon University

The world of food content can easily be divided into two camps: the traditional media houses who have access to warehouses of recipe-based content and the digital media startups using social and video to help a new generation of home chefs. Today, Scripps Network, parent company of Food Network, HGTV and the Cooking Channel has acquired digital food media startup Spoon University.

Spoon University was started by Techstars alums Mackenzie Barth and Sarah Adler who founded the company as a magazine while undergrads at Northwestern. The two created a selective content platform that allowed college students to create, upload and share their food videos – after they applied and were accepted. Barth and Adler raised $2m in 2015, positioning themselves as the Food Network for millennials and were accepted to the popular Techstars accelerator program. Spoon University started with 3,000 volunteers contributing to the platform and has grown to support 4 million daily website visitors and “tens of millions” of viewers across social platforms. Every college chapter contributes original content to the site, including recipes, reviews of restaurants, news and events and tips to make cooking simple and fun.

The terms of the deal between Spoon University and Scripps Network were not disclosed, but the announcement indicates the Spoon team will continue daily operations and exist as a separate division, reporting to the company’s head of Scripps Lifestyle Studios. Reuters talked to a source who speculated the deal was worth around $10 million. “Food Network has always been a brand that we have looked up to, and over time we have seen that our teams share similar energy, curiosity and passion,” commented CEO and co-founder Mackenzie Barth.

The move by Scripps is a smart way for the powerhouse network to move faster into the digital food content space, an area where Spoon University competitors like Tastemade and Buzzfeed’s Tasty are battling be the go-to resource for home chefs. Stations like the Food Network and Cooking Channel have historically relied on TV programming to monetize content with advertising sales. With cable subscriptions declining and a huge uptick in the use of online recipes and crowdsourcing via social media to figure out “what’s for dinner?” companies like Scripps have to innovate in order to keep up with a new generation of cooks.

According to the announcement, Scripps Network’s efforts to move reach younger audiences and create revenue streams on digital platforms have been paying off. With the launch of their digital division, “Scripps Lifestyle Studios,” in late 2015, the network claims to have delivered 5 billion video views across all shows and content areas.

Kathleen Finch, Scripps Networks Interactive’s Chief Programming, Content & Brand Officer added, “Food Network has become a significant force in digital and social food storytelling over the course of the last year, and this acquisition will provide us with the opportunity to build content, community and brand as we seek to accelerate our strategy in the sector.”

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