Erika Badan understands the skepticism.
As CEO of Barstool Sports for nearly one decade, Badan oversaw an editorial empire that transformed armchair quarterbacking, raucous podcasting, and “smokeshow” franchises into a $550 million sale in 2023.
So, when she was named CEO of Food52 in April, the appointment felt odd.
While Barstool serves an audience of young men seeking sports takes and blue humor, the chic food media firm, started by New York Times journalists Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, caters to an affluent, primarily female readership with a penchant for boutique flatware and seasonal cooking.
The two media publishers—on the surface, at least—could hardly be more different. But Badan sees it as a “natural fit.”
“I think to evolve your career, you need to do things that scare you, and I knew I wanted to work with a different kind of customer,” Badan said. “There is never going to be another Barstool, but I liked the idea of an organic content experience that can be monetized in multiple ways and serve a commerce business.”
In Food52, though, Badan is inheriting not just a significantly different kind of customer, but a vastly different set of circumstances, according to documents shared with ADWEEK and interviews with 10 current and former employees.
Like many companies in the home and dining space, Food52 flourished during the early days of the pandemic. Between 2019 and 2021, its revenue nearly tripled, ballooning from $32 million to $80 million. It also secured more than $160 million in investment from private equity firm The Chernin Group, which the publisher used to finance its rapid expansion.
But when the economy turned in 2022, Food52 found itself overexposed, according to eight current and former staffers.
It spent the next two years conducting a steady drumbeat of layoffs, cycling through executive leadership, and grasping for a strategic vision that would satisfy its fans, staff, and investors. This year, the brand aims to generate around $28 million in revenue—a fraction of what it took in just two years ago, according to two people familiar with its finances.
The challenges facing Food52 reflect the pitfalls of the content-to-commerce business model more broadly, which TCG has championed across its portfolio of editorial brands—a cohort that includes Barstool and Food52, as well as other titles like Hello Sunshine, Crunchyroll, and Hodinkee.
At Barstool, under Badan, the concept worked brilliantly, with the former CEO noting that the company’s commerce business grew from $2 million to over $100 million during her tenure. It has also flourished in smaller TCG properties, such as MeatEater and Epic Gardening.
At Food52, though, the strategy floundered, much like it did at sister site Hodinkee. For TCG, Badan represents something of a missing link: Whatever she did at Barstool, the firm now wants her to replicate at Food52.
If she succeeds, Badan will have proved not just her capability as an executive, but also her ability to thrive under wildly different circumstances with vastly different products, audiences, and cultures. But if she fails, she risks jeopardizing the fate of Food52 and its portfolio brands, Schoolhouse and Dansk, as well as tarnishing her legacy of success.
After launching in 2009, Food52 grew methodically for a decade before two successive events transformed the company nearly overnight.
First, in 2019, the food publisher sold a majority stake in its business to TCG for $83 million, valuing Food52 at more than $100 million. Then, in 2020, the pandemic arrived and spurred housebound consumers to spend dramatically on cookware and home decor.
Taken together, the two moments would prove epochal for Food52: After generating $32 million in revenue in 2019, it doubled its revenue in a year, bringing in $65 million in 2020 and turning its first profit.
On the heels of this growth, TCG invested another $80 million into Food52 in 2021, valuing it at over $300 million. Flush with cash, the publisher began expanding that same year, acquiring cookware brand Dansk in May for an undisclosed price and home decor brand Schoolhouse in December for $48 million.
The newly combined company brought in around $120 million in revenue in 2021—roughly $80 million from Food52 and $30 million from Schoolhouse, according to two people familiar with its finances. Nearly 90% of total revenue came from commerce.
In 2022, the company’s luck began to turn. The end of the pandemic, coupled with a broader downturn in the economy, led revenues to fall to around $100 million, according to the two sources. As the company scrambled to respond, its troubles were exacerbated.
“It was like Peloton, where there were crazy goals after 2020 and 2021, but then people stopped replacing their pots,” said one person familiar with the shift. “We needed to level-set.”
In February 2022, the company announced the hiring of five key senior executives, none of whom would last longer than two years. The company also carried out two rounds of layoffs, in April and again in June, whittling its workforce down to around 100 and cutting the work week to four days to lower costs.
In September, the company hired the former CEO of West Elm, Alex Bellos, as it sought to build out its commerce business in response to the financial downturn.
Under Bellos, Food52 accelerated a strategy first put in place by Claire Chambers, who oversaw the publisher’s commerce efforts during the pandemic but left in May 2022. Bellos increased the number of products Food52 sold and began more frequently offering discounts on its merchandise. It deemphasized its editorial, and its website began to look more like a storefront than a publisher.
The shift in strategy marked a departure for the company, which had historically worked with a smaller number of artisanal vendors, functioning in more of a curatorial role. As it began to act more like a marketplace, Food52 was forced to compete on price against big-box retailers like Williams Sonoma, according to three people familiar with the shift.
“Food52 was not a brand that went on sale. Now we go on sale all the time,” said another person familiar with the change in strategy.
The new model soon ran into headwinds. Food52 operated a drop-ship operation, so if a customer ordered five items, those items could come from five different warehouses, which could mean five different packages. The price of shipping skyrocketed in 2022 due to constraints in the supply chain, and the fact that cookware is often heavy.
These and other factors, coupled with the discounts Food52 ran in order to compete against other cookware marketplaces, meant that the unit economics of the model were often unsustainable, according to three people familiar with the business. As a result, despite the growing volume of its commerce business, the division struggled to operate profitably.
The company also ran into cultural challenges. Bellos and cofounder Hesser got along poorly, creating a tense atmosphere for staff, according to four people familiar with the dynamic. Bellos also alienated employees at Schoolhouse, who felt that their business—which was profitable but based out of Portland, Ore.—was subjected to an ongoing series of strategic pivots.
As the company sought to reverse its declining business, it spent its new capital feverishly: After signing a lease for a retail store in Manhattan in 2021, it backtracked on the deal; Bellos tried and failed to partner with boutique butchery brand Five Marys Ranch; and, around the same time, Hesser hired an outside creative agency to come up with new brand ventures that never materialized.
“There were all these ideas—we’ll start a store in Flatiron, we’ll sell condiments,” a third person, familiar with the spending, said. “Millions of dollars were being spent on things that made no sense.”
Bellos left the company in December 2023, 15 months after joining, and revenue fell to around $85 million, according to the two sources familiar with its business. By this point, Schoolhouse was generating more revenue than Food52, outperforming the company that had acquired it.
In February, the company conducted another round of layoffs, cutting 45 staff. In its annual forecast for 2024, Food52 projected that it would do just under $30 million in revenue—around $22 million from commerce and $6 million in partnerships, according to two sources. Schoolhouse, meanwhile, is on pace to bring in around $40 million.
“[Schoolhouse] was a manufacturing business where we showed up every day, made things with our hands, and sold them for a profit,” said a fourth person who was familiar with the business. “These fancy New York people had a $100 million valuation on a food blog that didn’t make any money. We saw that we were a life raft to them at a time when venture capital was waking up to the fact that profitability, not growth, was king.”
Badan, who joined the company in April, proposed a two-pronged plan to revive the brand.
First, the company has begun rebuilding much of the content infrastructure that was stripped out in recent years. This time, though, the publisher will place a greater emphasis on telling the behind-the-scenes story of the products and recipes that Food52 highlights.
“These fancy New York people had a $100 million valuation on a food blog that didn’t make any money.”
Source familiar with Schoolhouse and Food52 financials
To do this, Badan plans to “turn the camera on,” capturing unpolished video content that better showcases the personalities of both its staff and the vendors the company works with. The company also plans to unveil a fresh slate of video programming in September, which will feature culinary influencers and new programming.
“What I learned from Barstool is that what’s interesting is not the ad or promotion,” Badan said. “It’s the story behind the story.”
Likewise, the company brought in a class of interns for the first time—a practice Badan imported from Barstool. Their content is helping the company experiment and reach new audiences, while also strengthening the internal content muscles that it had previously outsourced to consultants. Food52 also hired Josh Young, former head of production at TikTok, to build out its video capabilities.
Badan is also acutely aware of the need for publishers like Food52 to create distinct editorial, especially as technologies like generative artificial intelligence threaten to replace commodity content.
This focus is behind the push into personalities and video, and it is also why Food52 plans to host its first advertiser upfront in September. Through the event, the publisher hopes to develop stronger relationships with brand advertisers. Badan plans to emphasize the retail media qualities of Food52 inventory, as well as its differentiated programming.
The second major point of focus for Badan will be simplifying its commerce business, which means more emphasis on disciplined financials and unit economics.
In April, Badan approved a 50% reduction in the number of products Food52 sold on its site—a reversal of its prior strategy, according to documents reviewed by ADWEEK. The items the brand sells will be more curated offerings from artisanal vendors, as well as in-house concepts and bespoke collaborations. In September, for instance, Schoolhouse debuted a new lighting collaboration with designer Clare V.
These kinds of products cost more, but they free Food52 from having to compete against major marketplaces on factors where they were outmatched, like discounts and expedited shipping. The company plans to focus more on selling products where the unit economics are sustainable, part of a broader effort for Food52 to be more cost-conscious.
“The reality is that Food52 started to play in the mass retail space without the infrastructure of mass retail,” Badan said. “I think mass retail already does a great job of mass retail.”
The influx of investment from TCG enabled the company to spend lavishly in pursuit of growth, but going forward, Badan wants the company to behave a bit more like Barstool—at least in its economic discipline.
Indeed, for all the differences between the two companies, Barstool Sports and Food52 share more in common than either might like to admit. Both were backed by the same private equity group, both have embraced the content-to-commerce business model, and both were built by visionary founders intent on remaining involved.
Badan found immense, improbable success at one. Now, she hopes to do so again.
“My coming to Food52 doesn’t mean that it’s going to become the Barstool Sports of food,” Badan said. “What it does mean is that I’ve grown something exponentially, I’ve built the culture that fueled that growth, and I plan to do that again.”
Scott Gottlieb: How well can AI chatbots mimic doctors in a treatment setting?
This is an Op-ed by WWSG exclusive thought leader, Dr. Scott Gottlieb. Many consumers and medical providers are turning to chatbots, powered by large language…
Thought Leader: Scott Gottlieb
Sara Fischer: The AI-generated disinformation dystopia that wasn’t
This piece is by WWSG exclusive thought leader, Sara Fischer. Amid the craziest news cycle in recent memory, AI-generated deepfakes have yet to become the huge truth…
Thought Leader: Sara Fischer
Erika Ayers Badan: Nobody Cares About Your Career with Michele Romanow
Erika Ayers Badan, the powerhouse CEO who transformed Barstool Sports from a niche blog into a digital media giant valued at over half a billion…
Thought Leader: Erika Ayers Badan
