Q&A with Kat Craddock, Editor In Chief of SAVEUR

One of the notable media stories of the year is the resurgence of print. NME has thrown its hat in the ring and recently, NYLON announced that this April, its print magazine is coming back. With TikTok overload, X misinformation, and general screen dread, tactile media may just have a shot. 

As part of this wave, SAVEUR, a cherished magazine amongst chefs and foodies, is set to return on a biannual basis next year. Last April, Kat Craddock, SAVEUR’s editorial director, announced that she had purchased the publication, with help from a private investor, from its then-owner, the private equity-backed digital media company Recurrent Ventures (parent of outlets like Domino, Dwell, Business of Home, Popular Science and Futurism). 

“While our team has a rich and storied legacy to uphold, our business is now striking out on its own and moving into startup mode,” Craddock wrote in an open letter at the time.

Craddock’s purchase is one of several recent examples of media workers taking their work into their own hands, and back from corporate owners. (In a similar recent move, 2020 saw Stereogum founder Scott Lapatine buy his music blog back, returning it to indie status after four years under The Hollywood Reporter-Billboard Media Group). 

Next March, with Craddock as editor-in-chief and CEO, SAVEUR will publish its first print edition as an independent magazine and celebrate its 30th anniversary. As a testament to how publications are finding creative ways to monetize, it will offer a tiered supporter-subscriber system with various levels of tasteful extra swag, such as the “Fare Bundle,” which includes a box of pantry and kitchen goods like an apron, Galician cockles, Counter Culture coffee, and a spice set “inspired by archival SAVEUR recipes.”

Prior to media, Craddock spent 10 years in the restaurant world, working as a cheesemonger, pastry chef, and baker all over Chicago, Boston, and New York City. 

“After about a decade in the industry, I was working in New York City and it became clear to me that I didn’t want to own my own restaurant,” she tells Study Hall. In 2015, she began freelancing for SAVEUR’s test kitchen, and eventually, working in-house a few days a week. Over eight years, she ascended the ranks from freelancer, to food editor, to editorial director, and now, to EIC.

I caught up with Craddock to discuss the reboot and how print can be a path to sustainability for media outlets. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

How does your background as a chef inform your food writing?

I meet chefs all the time who tell me, “SAVEUR is the reason I ended up going to culinary school and the reason I work in this business.” I say the same thing. My mother started getting SAVEUR in the ‘90s. I had a subscription through college. I really think that this publication specifically shaped how cuisine looks in the United States. Food media has obviously changed a lot over the years. And the way people write about food has changed. But since its inception, SAVEUR has done a very good job of covering a global cuisine and being as inclusive as possible. It was groundbreaking back in the ‘90s. Nothing really stepped into its place, so I think that this particular brand is very important and maintaining it has become my passion. 

What was the reception amongst media workers to you purchasing SAVEUR and regaining control over it?

People were really surprised. But by and large, everybody I’ve heard from has been overwhelmingly supportive and positive. A lot of people that I worked with at SAVEUR over the years have reached out to be really kind and offer support wherever they can. There’s a lot of love for this brand and people want to see it survive. I hope people take comfort in the fact that the person who owns it and is leading the ship right now feels the same.

There’s been a resurgence of print media. What’s its enduring appeal? 

There’s a misconception that digital, video, or social, necessarily replaces print. That’s flawed thinking. People still want and buy paper books, people still want painted and printed artwork, and kids are still buying vinyl records. There is this hunger for something tangible and beautiful and well-made. Video is great. Social [media] is great. I love being able to find any information that I want, whenever I want it on the internet—and any recipe that I want on the internet. We’ll keep providing that type of content. We’ve got 8,000+ recipes on our website right now and we’re continuing to add to that. But a print magazine is not just another way of getting you information. There’s a lot that we can do with photography and design [for stories of] different lengths and types of content that don’t necessarily translate to digital media, that really only work in print.

What’s your model for sustainability in print media? 

Print is one piece of the puzzle. It’s not sustainable on its own. It’s part of a larger ecosystem. I came up in the restaurant industry and I did work for a couple large restaurant groups when I got to New York. But by and large, I worked for small independent food businesses. In a lot of those settings, it’s necessary for everyone to be wearing a lot of hats, multitasking and problem solving. It’s hard work to run any small business but it’s possible and really gratifying when everything clicks and a team falls into sync and makes something awesome. Now that we are operating leanly and paring back a lot of the traditional publishing infrastructure, we’re on a pretty clear path towards financial sustainability. There is no single pot of gold. Licensing comes along, programmatic comes along, direct deals along, and we’re working on bringing events back.

Affiliate revenue is still part of the puzzle too. But I’m not really interested in syncing everything into any one of those streams at the expense of our brand, because our brand is the most valuable thing that we have and that’s why people are excited to see us come back.

Can you speak a bit about the upcoming issue?

A lot of that is secret. But we’re going to be biannual to start. Maybe it will go up to quarterly or maybe we’ll stick to two a year. We are rethinking what print looks like. I’m working with an indie art book publisher that does a lot in the print space beyond magazines and it’s very fun to be in the picking-paper stage and deciding on what the cover is going to feel and look like. We are focusing on direct-to-consumer sales as much as possible. We’re setting up relationships with independent bookstores and specialty food markets and wine shops. [We are] not trying to crank out hundreds of thousands of issues that are going to get recycled in two months. 

Operating sustainably, from a financial and environmental perspective is very important to us. There are going to be limited editions by design. I have all 201 issues of SAVEUR behind me. Printing a product that is worth keeping, that’s going to last and stay beautiful is really a priority.

Can you speak to how you’re making print a more coveted item? 

I see a lot of disruptors in cookware and consumer packaged goods that are doing the same thing. We’re pals with the Burlap & Barrel guys, and they set up their relationships directly with the farmers growing their spices, and cut out a lot of the stuff in the middle and just focus on bringing the spices to the United States.Their pricing isn’t crazy—it’s reasonable and competitive, but they’re able to give the farmers a much better wage. They’d be able to provide the customer with a much better spice and remove all of the infrastructure that’s built up around an industry that isn’t really serving the people in it anymore. I find that sort of business model really inspiring. 

Buy Saveur’s upcoming print issue here: https://shop.saveur.com/

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