NYT Cooking's recipe for a post-cookbook world

NYT's food vertical found the right ingredients for a post-cookbook world, Bloomberg reports.

One ingredient: the right talent. NYT Cooking’s YouTube channel features contributions from chef and cookbook author Claire Saffitz. The chef’s croissant video hit 5.1M views—proof that the appetite for quality culinary content remains strong when done right. NYT also brought over two staffers from Buzzfeed’s Tasty.

Another ingredient: authenticity.

... the videos the Times produces are “more intimate” than the polished cooking shows on the Food Network. The team wants to make the chefs seem human and doesn’t necessarily edit out mistakes, such as a burnt dish.

Add a thoughtfully designed app that serves personalized recommendations into the mix.

By Q4 last year, NYT added 350K digital subscribers, reaching 10.82 million total. Nearly half (5.44 million) were bundle subscribers with access to News, Games, and Cooking.

“Bundle and multiproduct subscribers now make up approximately 48% of our total subscribers, well along the path to exceeding 50% by the end of next year,” New York Times Chief Executive Officer Meredith Kopit Levien said on the company’s latest earnings call in February.