A conversation with Saveur editor-in-chief and CEO, Kat Craddock

Saveur was always a little different from the other food magazines. It was not exactly highbrow, but it did expand the definition of what a food magazine could be. If anything, it was a magazine about culture—centered on food, sure—but also about places, and things, and people.

It was a magazine for foodies before the word “foodie” was invented—and then became annoying. It embraced the web and digital. It attracted very smart writers and a dedicated readership (I was one of them). It branched into cookbooks (and I have some).

It was a media company centered around a defined editorial brand and mission. It was also bought and sold quite often—or often enough that each new owner and each new editor that came aboard tried to fix it, somehow, to make the numbers look better, perhaps, and that meant a lot of tinkering.

Of course, this was also a time when our traditional notions of media were being challenged and upended almost daily, so it didn’t really come as a surprise when Saveur announced they would cease publishing their print edition in 2021.

But then, in a move that recalled the famous Remington Razor commercials of the early 80s—“I was so impressed, I bought the company”—a longtime editor of Saveur, Kat Craddock, found some like-minded folk, and bought the company. And the first change she implemented was a return to print.

It’s out right now, and it looks delicious.

Arjun Basu: So first, congratulations on issue 202. Was there no thought on, like, renumbering the issues and starting at one again? I guess you were emphasizing continuity.

Kat Craddock: Yeah, certainly no thought of changing the numbering. People who collect Saveur magazines collect them very passionately, and I didn’t want to throw off anybody’s systems. We considered changing the trim size a few times, and then when I looked up on my own shelf with all the old Saveur magazines, I realized they all lined up so perfectly, and I didn’t want to throw that off either.

Arjun Basu: Okay we’re going to get to that legacy. But first let’s talk about your journey to this point as an editor, as a writer, as a food person getting to Saveur and then getting to the point of buying it.

Kat Craddock: Yeah. Saveur has been in my life for almost as long as I can remember. My mother subscribed from really early on back in the mid-nineties. And I remember reading it, devouring it when I was a kid. I was always a big procrastinator, so whenever I didn’t want to do my schoolwork or chores around the house, I’d screw around in the kitchen and make things out of food magazines or cookbooks.

And my mom always had Martha, and Saveur, and Food & Wine, and Gourmet. And I loved all of them, really, and Saveur was the one that I subscribed to when I went away to college, though, so I think that was always pretty, pretty special to me.

And, I ended up getting a little job at a cheese shop in college and worked for this lovely family and probably ended up learning a lot more working for them than I did in school. I left with an English degree, but I think every single weekend they would teach me how to make some other weird dish in my dorm room, whether it was short ribs or soft shelled crabs or marmalade or whatever I could dream up.

And food magazines and cookbooks remained really important to me the whole time I was in school. So when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life afterwards, I went to culinary school out in Chicago. Baking and pastry really resonated with me when I was there.

So I ended up doing my internship with Mindy Segal and stayed in the pastry world for several years, eventually a pastry chef and a bread baker. I moved back to Boston for a little while and worked in restaurants there. And then, when I moved back to New York City, I switched over to working in bread exclusively.

I took an overnight bread baking shift at Per Se. It was my first job when I moved to New York City, and it was a strange lifestyle shift. And it was fun, but, after about a decade of working in restaurant kitchens, it was starting to become clear to me that restaurant life was not going to be the rest of my life, and I knew I loved media.

So I started dabbling a little bit on my time off, doing some freelance writing and recipe testing for cookbooks, worked on a children’s nutritional app for a little while, developing recipes for kids, and I was reading Amanda Hesser’s memoir and on a whim reached out to her to see if she needed any help with Food 52 and she kindly invited me to come in and talk about what I wanted to do and what I was interested in.

They didn’t need any help at Food 52 at the time. But she introduced me to Adam Sachs who was the editor-in-chief of Saveur at the time and I was completely starstruck because I was still a Saveur superfan and Adam and Farideh Sadeghin, who was running the test kitchen at the time, agreed to let me come in and help out in the test kitchen on my days off from working in a bakery.

And I tested recipes for them. Eventually, when Farideh left to run Munchies over at Vice, Stacey Adimando came on to run the test kitchen and she taught me how to edit recipes. And then our digital director, Max Falkowitz, started letting me write a little bit. And I helped out a little bit with ad sales and branded content and kind of whatever they would let me do until there was a full time job for me there.

“We have a unique opportunity right now to rethink what print even means.”

Arjun Basu: And there were a few ownership changes, and then the headline is that one of the editors of Saveur has bought the media. And so how did that come about?

Kat Craddock: Yeah, after being with the brand for probably eight years or so. There were a lot of annual downsizing, and changes, and leadership changes. And I loved the brand so much and I felt like it took me a while to get there with this sort of career change path that I took and I loved it so much.

And I was worried. Every year you hear about another publication folding, and I didn’t want that to happen, and from where I was standing, and having been through one whole acquisition before, it seemed like the best chance this publication would have of surviving is someone who loves it to own it.

And I thought about that a lot the last time that we were being sold, and I wondered then if it would be possible for a person, an individual, to break it out from “the Corporation.” And it started to seem like maybe it might be. We hear about it sometimes: journalists and local publishers buying back their local papers or Mike Rogge rebooting Mountain Gazette, or there’s all these indie publications starting up from scratch all the time, too.

So it seemed somebody might be able to figure out how to do it. And I ended up partnering with a good friend in the tech world who was not at all in the media who also loves the brand and wanted to see it survive. And we approached the folks over at Recurrent last January.

And when they didn’t laugh me out of the room, when I asked if it would be open to a sale, we started to lay the groundwork of figuring out what would go into it. I can’t get too deep into the transaction or anything about that, but once the initial conversation was started, it all moved fairly quickly.

Arjun Basu: Okay. So maybe we should go back a little, because it’s the brand’s 30th anniversary, and we’ve talked about people, the ownership changes, and everything, but it always felt to me—at the risk of sounding like a fan boy, which I am—I’ve been a big Saveur fan for a long time. I have a few cookbooks downstairs. When I was an editor, I stole the “Hundred Things” idea a few times and it just seemed that it sat in a distinct place from all the other food publications like Gourmet, or Food & Wine, or Bon Appétit, or even something small, like Cook’s Illustrated or something mass, like Good Housekeeping. It was really about culture. It was about food and culture and the people and the things and the places that made the foods. So it always had this sort of indie vibe to it. And I imagine that’ll continue.

Kat Craddock: I hope so. That’s what we’re going for. I think what we’re really going for at this point is tapping into the global storytelling, and that’s really what has resonated with me with the brand for so long—using food as a lens through which to experience the world, right? To convey a sense of place. And, yeah, the culture that it came from and the people that made it. Authenticity was a big part of the conversation back then.

I feel like that is a little bit of a dated term now. We’ve gotten away from referring to food as authentic and having a lot of debates about what authentic food even is nowadays. And that has been a big part of our kind of re-imagining of the brand. But I think that staying true to that part of our DNA is what’s going to help us survive and what’s going to appeal to the audience that loved us back then. And, I hope, help us find new readers now.

Arjun Basu: And the print coming back—I think it’s what, twice a year for at the beginning?

Kat Craddock: Yeah, we’re starting out as a biannual.

Arjun Basu: And are you going to change anything else within the ecosystem?

Kat Craddock: Within the ecosystem of print specifically?

“I’ve spoken to a lot of students and asked: Do you still read print? Do you want print? Do you only consume digital media? And these kids tell me staring at a screen all the time is work. It’s exhausting.”

Arjun Basu: No. Saveur overall.

Kat Craddock: Previously, over the past few years, we focused a lot more on home cooking and recipe content, and that’s still an important part of what we do. But we did get away from a lot of the longer form storytelling.

We were still doing original photography, but we were doing a lot less photography in the field, a lot less travel writing. Part of that was because of the pandemic—a lot of people weren’t traveling and that wasn’t really the content [we were serving]. But we are returning to that both digitally and in print.

We have expanded our travel content online and a lot of our online service content now is in the digital space. We are still doing plenty of recipe content. That’s a huge traffic driver for us. It does help us reach new people all the time and we use our recipes all the time too.

So that’s not going anywhere, but in print we’re trying to do a lot more of the longer form narrative content, as well as newer franchises like photo essays or shorter-form pieces like in the very early days Saveur that would be more front-of-book franchises. We have a unique opportunity right now to rethink what “print” even means.

We’re not using a mass magazine printer anymore. We’re using an art book printer that allows us to be a little bit more thoughtful about the type of paper that we’re using, sustainability, how we distribute, how we get our magazines to our readers. And we’re not necessarily boxing ourselves into traditional distribution models the way that we might have.

Arjun Basu: So what does that mean?

Functionally, we’re selling almost primarily direct-to-consumers. Our print run has gone down a lot, and we are only selling what we know we’re going to sell. And that’s intentional. We want to sell out, and we do not want to be recycling leftovers or shipping them multiple times around the country.

We want to print magazines that people are going to buy and enjoy. We are working directly with retail partners that are willing to work with us on a case by case basis. Stores that we know the Saveur reader is likely to be in, but we’re not trying to flood the market with issues that, again, may end up in the recycling bin at the end of the month.

Arjun Basu: So what are your hopes for the future of, not just the print magazine, but Saveur as a brand? Do you want to go more into print? Do you want to get into the things that the old magazine in its heyday were doing, including the cookbooks and all that? Or is there a different path you want to take?

Kat Craddock: I think that it’s important for us to be focusing on the variety of different things as well, and really stopping everything we’re doing to go headlong into affiliate writing or, like any one specific revenue model—we’re spinning a lot of plates. We still have a cookbook that’s available for sale.

And we republished the Saveur New Classics a couple of years ago. I would love to see that republished every few years or so and live up on the shelf with Good Housekeeping and The Silver Palate Cookbook. It’s got a thousand plus recipes in it and we can revisit it all the time.

I would love to get back to doing more regular single subject cookbooks, as well. The printer that we’re working with is set up to work with us on individually discrete printing projects if we want to self-publish, or, we’re able to work with our existing publishers on the books that we already have on the market.

Like I said, we’re biannual right now. I am open to ramping up to a quarterly eventually, but I don’t want to flood the market with issues that people aren’t going to buy. So we’re focusing on doing really great issues at a pace that is manageable to our team and growth is going to be gradual. Digital content is still part of the formula for sure. We are a print magazine first, as far as I’m concerned.

Arjun Basu: That’s interesting. So you are a print magazine first. Saveur didn’t have a print edition for how many years?

Kat Craddock: We didn’t have a regular print publication for four years. We were still doing some essays along the way.

Arjun Basu: As someone who has always been interested in food, and food media, and who edited some himself, the food media world is just so vast now. Half of my Instagram feed, if not more, is recipes or people cooking something delicious. And the irony is everyone at the end is validated by getting a cookbook deal, but there’s just so much out there. How does Saveur stand out in what is really—food has always been crowded. There were always great magazines—and Saveur was a part of that—but now it just seems like the media is just so much bigger. There’s more of it.

Kat Craddock: Isn’t it great? I love it. I love that some grandma on a mountain in the Himalayas with an iPhone can show us all how to make what she makes for her family. I think that’s amazing. And what Saveur offers—we can edit, and we can package, and we can reimagine some of the storytelling. But I don’t think that we are at odds with the fact that food media has been democratized the way that it has.

Arjun Basu: I wouldn’t say at odds. I just think that there’s more of it. So are you going to stick to your guns or are you going to have to figure something out to make noise?

Kat Craddock: I think that we’re in a great position to be received. And there’s been so much enthusiasm about our publication coming back that I don’t have to start from scratch in making this brand, which I’m very grateful about. People know and love it. I don’t expect it is going to be difficult for us to get our magazine out to people that want it and are going to enjoy it.

Yeah, it’s important that we’re out in the world where we’re certainly going to be promoting the issue. We’re going to be doing events all year and I need to find 16-year-old me, basically. I think a lot of our readers are my age or older, and have been reading Saveur for a really long time, and it is important for us to reach that next generation of folks that are interested in food.

Arjun Basu: My next question is about people like you and me who remember it, and have read it and collected it for a long time. That’s the fan base, let’s just say. And I’m sure their reaction is similar to mine, which has been ecstatic for the most part. That’s a needle you have to thread, between what the older people, the old fans, remember and love, and finding that new audience. So I guess that’s what my last question was about.

Kat Craddock: It’s funny. I’ve spoken to a lot of young journalism students and culinary students recently and asked: Do you still read print? Do you want print? Do you only consume digital media? And a lot of these kids tell me staring at a screen all the time is work. That it’s exhausting. We want a print magazine. They’re harder and harder to find. And I think there is this appetite for a quality printed (product). We see this with young people buying up vinyl records left and right.

The printer that we’re using right now, prints vinyl record sleeves for Sony, and most of their print runs sell out right away. And I think that there is this kind of fallacy out there that digital media has, by default, replaced all of these other types of media, and I don’t think that’s the case.

Again, I don’t think that there needs to be the volume and the scale of print media that there was in the past, but I think leaning into making a beautiful premium product—there is an appetite for that experience, and I don’t think that’s going anywhere.

“We definitely want to build on this brand. We want to grow—reasonably, and gradually, and responsibly.”

Arjun Basu: And what’s been the reaction of food media in general? How have they received this news? The magazine’s out now. What’s the reaction been?

Kat Craddock: Overwhelmingly warm, I think. And not just food media either—travel media, indie publishing in general. There has been so much love and support from veterans of the brand and folks in other food brands across the board.

People are energized to see this coming. And I think after, again, years of every quarter, another magazine bites the dust, it’s nice to hear that one is sticking around for a little bit longer or coming. And we’re not alone, right? And there’s Mountain Gazette or Nylon or NME. This is across the board, across themes and topics. I think we’re seeing that there is this appetite for print publishing to return.

Arjun Basu: I was just reading something about how people want Blu-rays to come back because they don’t want to depend on the streamers. They want to be able to go to Best Buy or even Walmart or something and just get a Blu-ray and build up a library like they’ve done with vinyl. I think we’re coming back to that because tech has screwed everything up so much and has made things so awful, probably because the wrong people own it. So do you have a five year plan or something, or a three year plan, just to make sure that this is sustainable and that it succeeds for the long haul?

Kat Craddock: Slow and steady. There is no intention of flipping this or anything. I’m doing this until I drop. This is the end, yeah. And we definitely want to build on this brand. We definitely want to grow—reasonably, and gradually, and responsibly. And I’m prioritizing; getting us to a good, solid ground and making sure that we are compensating our creatives and everybody, and supporting the brand properly.

And then we can start thinking about if we add a couple more issues every year, or if we start layering on other verticals to the website. Any new projects need to be responsibly vetted before we throw a bunch of investment and energy at them, not knowing if they’re going to work. We’re very much focused on the parts of our brand that we know there is a market for—and we know how to do it really well—and don’t want to get too distracted from that.

Arjun Basu: I see what you’re doing as a model, or one of the models, but the model that makes the most sense in that a small group of people who are within the magazine, the creatives, get together and buy it. And they’re the ones who can sustain it. It seems to be the only way to move forward. I think that’s the future.

Kat Craddock: Yeah. And it means we end up doing a whole lot of things that creatives probably didn’t do before. And I spend a lot more time—I cannot even tell you how long it took me to write our privacy policy, and finalize that with legal! And the IT support and those sorts of things take up a lot of focus and energy and I think that really having a bit of restaurant experience and small business experience put me in a good position to do that.

And we have a team that’s equipped to do that, too. It does require a little bit of an easily distractible brain, and we’re always working on a lot of different things at once. And I would love to be spending more time on editorial right now, to be honest, and I just don’t have as much time to. I’m grateful that I have a really fantastic team that’s able to support me in that.

But I think that this model would not work if we had layers and layers of shared services and departments. We need to fill the gaps for that, and tech helps us fill the gaps for that too. There’s a lot you can cobble together through resources for small businesses that would fill some of the gaps that would be there in traditional publishing models.

Arjun Basu: Are you using the same office as before?

Kat Craddock: Oh, we don’t have an office.

Arjun Basu: So you’re a distributed team.

Kat Craddock: Yeah, our team is as global as our content now. We’ve got folks inSpain, in Nashville, in Boston. About half of us are here in New York. We have a culinary producer who’s based in Brooklyn. And she has a home studio, so we’ve been shooting there together a couple of times a month, just for studio content. But since we’re trying to report so much more content in the field now anyway, we’re not doing a lot of studio photo shoots beyond kind of general maintenance and a few digital columns and things like that.

And then our contributor base is also global. We’ve got people all over the world reporting and shooting for us. I would love to have a test kitchen again. I really miss having the whole editorial team be able to debate, and taste, and talk about the food. But the first thing we’re spending money on is New York City real estate. So maybe someday.

Arjun Basu: Good idea. Okay, so this is something that I ask all my guests. What are three magazines or media that you’re consuming now that are just making you very happy?

Kat Craddock: I love Apartamento and Holiday. I love the big food publications out there, but I’ve been drawing a lot of inspiration from Apartamento and Holiday, from a design perspective and the way they use photography and the way they use paper. And then also, I just ordered a big stack of Full-Pour. It’s a new-ish drinks publication, also independent. And I’m bringing that on a flight this weekend. So I’m very excited about those.

Arjun Basu: I’m going to watch. I wish you a lot of success. I’m going to order a magazine and add it to my collection. I’ve spoken to friends and said, “I’m speaking to Kat Craddock, the new editor of Saveur and they’re coming out in print again.” And their eyes light up. So I’m hoping that the success is real.

Kat Craddock: That’s great to hear. Thank you so much. I hope so too!