[00:00:05] Ray Latif: They say it takes doing something 10,000 times to be good at it. With over 60,000 beverage formulations, Flavor Man is better than good at making dreams into drinks. We're Flavor Man, and we partner with dreamers and entrepreneurs to not just get your flavors perfect, but help you develop your beverage product from start through finish. When you work with us, we're with you from start up to bottoms up. So let's get started at flavorman.com. Flavor Man, change what the world is drinking. And now, Taste Radio. Hello, and thanks for tuning into the Top Podcast for the food and beverage industry, Taste Radio. I'm editor and producer Ray Latif, and you're listening to episode 187, which features an interview with David Nussbaum, the chairman and CEO of America's Test Kitchen, the venerable brand synonymous with cooking education. Tune in on Friday, November 8th for episode 59 of our Taste Radio Insider podcast when we're joined by James McMaster, the CEO of Huel, an innovative and fast-growing brand of meal replacement beverages. Just a reminder, if you like what you hear on Taste Radio, please share the podcast with friends and colleagues. Of course, we'd love it if you could review us on the Apple Podcasts app or your listening platform of choice. When you're already exceptional at what you do, how do you get better? That's the question facing David Nussbaum and his team at America's Test Kitchen. A cooking media empire that includes television shows, magazines, streaming video, and books, America's Test Kitchen is trusted by millions of home chefs who rely on the company for its thoroughly researched tips, recipes, and recommendations. The foundation is strong and has been for two decades, but David is well aware that in an evolving landscape for food and media, consumers are constantly on the hunt for new and interesting content and where to find it. In the following interview, I spoke with David about how America's Test Kitchen evaluates its role as a thought leader and trusted resource, how it learns about and interacts with its consumers, and how trends, competition, and new media factor into the company's future. Hey folks, it's Ray with Taste Radio. I'm in the Seaport District of Boston at the headquarters of America's Test Kitchen, and sitting with me now is the chairman and CEO of the company. That's David Nussbaum. David, thanks so much for being with me. Thank you for asking me to appear. Well, not appear, but be on Taste Radio. Of course, of course. I noticed you went to Boston University, as did I. Yep, I saw that. Yeah. Do you ever go back?
[00:02:50] David Nussbaum: Yeah, well, I'm actually on the advisory board of the communication school. Okay. And I'm still in touch with a couple of deans over there. We have an internship program here at ATK for BU students. So yeah, I'm still fairly closely connected. How about you?
[00:03:05] Ray Latif: Not so much. I live pretty close. I live in Brookline. So right next door, basically. But Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I feel like BU in a lot of ways was a great place to go to college. I didn't graduate with a degree in journalism, which is, I guess, kind of what I'm doing now. I graduated from the business school. You did, yes. And the communication school is a vaunted program at BU. But the business school, I think undergrad in general, getting a business degree is not necessarily the It's not really going to do much for you, in my opinion.
[00:03:37] David Nussbaum: You know, I mean, I counsel a lot of kids, and I do a fair amount of mentoring. And, you know, my advice always is when you go to college, study stuff you love, you know, follow your passion, because whatever you major in, unless you're going to be a doctor, or maybe a lawyer, you know, business is pretty general. So whether you're in marketing, management, you know, it doesn't matter so much as long as you are doing something you really care about. And that's what I did. So I went to Boston University, at the time it was called SPC, School of Public Communication, now it's the College of Communication. I was actually a print journalism major. because I wanted to be, this will age me a little bit, but the next Woodward and Bernstein. I was inspired by all the president's men. I wanted to be a crusading journalist. And I covered the Dukakis election. I was actually in his house on election day with his family. 1988. Yep. And so my love was and still is journalism. I ultimately moved over to the business side of media years and years ago, but I really did get a great base from Boston University's communication school.
[00:04:42] Ray Latif: That's great to hear. And, you know, for folks listening, if you're thinking about sending your kids there, it is a great school, for sure.
[00:04:48] David Nussbaum: It is, yeah.
[00:04:48] Ray Latif: Going from journalism to, I guess, media baron. Can I call you a media baron? Is that fair?
[00:04:53] David Nussbaum: That's a huge compliment. You could just call me David.
[00:04:57] Ray Latif: Fair enough, David. Well, America's Test Kitchen, sprawling media empire, two TV shows, two magazines, websites, books. It's pretty incredible. Online cooking school.
[00:05:08] David Nussbaum: Online cooking school. Podcasts, YouTube channels. I mean, I can go on and on, but we're a growing franchise.
[00:05:14] Ray Latif: Yeah. Millions of Americans follow America's Test Kitchen. You have a ton of influence on what people eat, cook, and how they just think about food. And they come to you because they trust you. They trust America's Test Kitchen. Is that your most important asset, trust?
[00:05:29] David Nussbaum: It is. I think that one of the most unique aspects of our organization, and we are a media organization, obviously, but what's really unique is we don't accept advertising. So the entire business is basically run on either subscription revenue, you know, with people buying subscriptions to our digital site, to our online cooking school, to our magazine, or they're buying our books, or of course they're watching our television shows. But we don't accept advertising because we want to be trusted, we want to be known, and we are known as the Consumer Reports. you know, the food and cooking worlds. And we've been doing this for many years. You know, our reviews of products and services are the best in the business. And I know that because we have a partnership with Amazon. And so we have our reviews on the Amazon site, and we get tremendous amount of traffic through our reviews right over to Amazon. Because we review the products, we say which is best, which is not. And so people really do rely on our word as being good.
[00:06:27] Ray Latif: Your reviews are pretty intense. They are. I saw a video of one of your employees smashing a frying pan on a concrete block. Yes. And then, you know, dunking it in ice cold water and then, you know, setting it on fire and all these different things. But does the public know how, you know, how intense those reviews are? Do they have to know how intense those reviews are?
[00:06:51] David Nussbaum: I think that we don't broadcast it. When you read the reviews, you can tell how intense and deep they are. But just to give you some background, you're going to get a tour of our space. And we have a product testing lab here. And we have about 12 people who do nothing but test products. And that's everything from equipment to grocery products and so forth. Everything is tested 50, 60, 70 times. And they do go through stress tests, they go through cooking tests, you know, they're cooked in the home, out of the home. So when you read one of our reviews, you can be guaranteed that we have done an incredibly thorough job. And we'll be very honest about the review too, because again, since we don't carry advertising, you know, a company can't really pull their advertising from us because they don't like a review. So there are some tough reviews. But again, the Consumer Reports that because you can't say everything's terrific. But we spend a lot of time on these reviews and it's a big investment because 12 people, we have a lab here, it's a fully equipped lab. And so it's an important part of our business because it builds that trust and authenticity that comes with the ATK brand. How do you strategize around thought leadership? Yeah, I think it's really important to take a step back and understand why we have this leadership, why we are trusted, and why we are believed. I'm sure you know this, but most recipes are free. You put into Google a recipe for fried chicken, you will get thousands of variations. You will not get ours, because people have to pay to get our recipes. And the reason people do pay to get our recipes is that we test every recipe 40 to 50 times. We spend $10,000 per recipe in development. We have a group of about 40,000 home cooks who have signed up to test their recipes along the path. So we will work on a recipe. We'll send it out to our home cooks. They will critique it. They will send it back to us. We'll listen to them. We'll repackage the recipe. We'll send it back out again. So a recipe development could take months. But when it's done, because it's tested so many times, and we have the home cooks seal of approval, not just ours, you can be guaranteed that every one of our recipes will taste great, will look great, and it really will be perfect. And so our recipes stand way above anybody else's. And that is the beginnings of how the brands are so well respected. The other thing is, is that if you read Cook's Illustrated Magazine, which is one of our magazines, it's a legendary magazine. We have over a million subscribers to that. When you read our recipes, you see that we don't just tell you how many scoops of sugar go into a recipe. We talk about why, the science behind it, how did we choose butter and not oil, some of the tests we did with different ingredients and why we chose one over the other. So there's a depth to the recipe. And there are a lot of people who read our magazine who tell us they don't really cook. They just really enjoy reading the recipes. And it's really the same thing with the television shows. In America's Test Kitchen, you might not know this, but it's the longest running cooking show on television, 20 years. There was no other show, whether it's on Food Network, NBC, PBS, that has been on the air as long as America's Test Kitchen. And you cannot be on the air that long unless people are getting a lot out of the content. And they are, because if you watch our show, you'll see that the recipes are great. They're entertaining. We tell you kind of why we put together this recipe. We sometimes go out, you know, into the world and bring back interesting recipes and test those. So, you know, our shows are really, really highly regarded. America's Test Kitchen has won Emmys. Cook's Country TV, which is another one of our TV shows, has also been Emmy nominated. The two shows between them get about 4.2 million viewers a week. So pretty big numbers. And if you kind of looked at the list of cooking TV shows, America's Test Kitchen is the eighth highest rated in the country. That includes MasterChef and Chopped and all the kind of competition ones. And Cook's Country is number 10. So we have two of the top 10 cooking shows in America on TV.
[00:10:57] Ray Latif: How much do you pay attention to the quote-unquote competition when it comes to cooking shows that are on other networks, and then competition that is as broad as you mentioned, Google, where you can find a million recipes for chicken?
[00:11:10] David Nussbaum: We really don't pay attention because we're a very, very unique animal. If you sat down and watched all the cooking shows on television, a whole bunch of them would kind of start to meld together, competitions and throwing food around and things like that. Ours would stand out as a pure cooking show for people who love to cook, to be passionate about cooking and to cook at home. You know, our magazines and our recipes, as I said, are developed in a much more in-depth way. So we really don't pay attention to the competition. We believe we're our own unique business. We operate really, really differently. Like I said, you know, most of these other brands, whether it's television or magazines or websites, they're supported by ads. That's how they make a living. We don't. So competition is something. Look, we respect competition. We read everything. We watch everything. And like I said, we certainly respect the competition, but we do our own thing.
[00:12:06] Ray Latif: Your audience loves to cook. What else does your audience love to do? How well do you know your audience?
[00:12:11] David Nussbaum: We know our audience very well. I mean, depending on how you wanted to slice the data, you know, we know kind of the general data points, you know, ages, where they live, household income, do they have kids or not kids, you know, the basic stuff. But we can also do some targeting of, Did you buy our gluten-free cookbook? Are you into gluten-free? Because you follow some of our gluten-free stories, so we kind of know that you have an interest in gluten-free. And so we can, not totally, but we have some view of people's likes and dislikes. And we continue to develop that more finely as we go along. We touch about 60 million consumers a month. you know, between the TV shows, the podcasts and the magazines, the websites. So it's a lot of people to get to know. But we, we really learn more and more about our people in part because they, they contact us also. We have a, you know, a Facebook page that is basically an insider's Facebook page. It's only for people who subscribe. And these are the 15,000 or 20,000 of the most passionate ATK people in the world. And they give us a lot of very positive and negative feedback, so we learn how to do things better. We really rely on that consumer. I talked before about that 40,000 home cook audience that has volunteered their time to test our recipes. And we love that, because they're telling us, this is not so good. You've got to fix it. Well, this is great. Or now it's ready to be published. So we don't do anything without knowing our consumers' needs, desires, likes, and so forth.
[00:13:44] Ray Latif: Are the questions that you're asking those folks, are they shaped by current trends? You mentioned gluten-free. Are diets and trends and things like that things that you pay attention to or is cooking cooking no matter what it is?
[00:13:57] David Nussbaum: No, no, we certainly pay attention to trends because, you know, it's important that we're preparing recipes that meet the needs of the consumer. But I don't think that we follow trends in terms of reading different articles or that way. We follow trends by going out to our consumer. We have a research department here, so we do surveys all the time about Is your favorite diet Mediterranean or gluten-free or keto? We quiz people as, you know, do you like cooking fish? Do you not like cooking fish? You know, but four or five years ago, the home cook wasn't all that thrilled about fish as a dish. It was mostly, you know, chicken and beef and so forth, the pork. Fish has become more popular amongst our home cooks. And so we really do that kind of consumer research by going to our consumer. So we do follow trends, but we do it in concert with the consumer. And that's either through direct conversations or through our research or through the testing that goes to their homes. So it's a lot of work, but it's really important to us.
[00:15:05] Ray Latif: I think the assumption is that your consumer is an older consumer, someone who likes to cook, someone who has the means to pay for premium ingredients and utensils and things like that. Is that the case? Does your consumer base need to evolve for ATK to grow?
[00:15:19] David Nussbaum: Look, you know, it depends on the segment you're looking at. So the TV shows, probably skew 50 plus, so about 60% female, 40% male, high income, 100,000 plus, and so that fits the description you just made. Our YouTube audience, on the other hand, and I have the numbers here, and on YouTube, And we really just launched our YouTube channel in 2018. We have over 31 million views, 142 million minutes watched. That audience is 18 to 30, 60% male, 40% female. So that's a younger audience. Our website, you know, we have a subscription only website that you can't get into unless you're a paying customer. We have over 418,000 subscribers to that. We're one of the largest paid subscriber websites in the country. Again, that skews younger. And so it really depends on the immediate delivery mechanism in terms of the audience. We try and serve all demographics. We launched ATK Kids last year, and that includes kids' cookbooks, a kids' activity kit that you can subscribe to, kids' website. So that skews very young, because it's all young parents and or children who are learning to cook. So really, when you look at our company, you have to look kind of by segment. When you reach 60 million people, a month, you know, you're reaching a pretty broad range.
[00:16:47] Ray Latif: We'll be right back with more from David Nussbaum after this quick word from our sponsor. They say it takes doing something 10,000 times to be good at it. With over 60,000 beverage formulations, Flavor Man is better than good at beverage development. Let us guide you through the process of getting your drink brand created. Flavor Man, change what the world is drinking. You produce a ton of content, prolific producer of content, but content only matters if people can see it, right? And you mentioned some of the media platforms that you use, but how do you optimize for those media platforms like a YouTube? You mentioned ATK Kids. I mean, are you having to look at sort of new media apps like a TikTok or a Snapchat for people to really engage with your company?
[00:17:32] David Nussbaum: Oh yeah. I mean, look, besides being, you know, focused on food and cooking, we have a very sophisticated marketing team. And we're constantly testing all different kinds of platforms when it comes to marketing our products. And each product has to be marketed in a little bit of a different way. TikTok is an interesting medium for 18 and below. We've produced a few videos there, not a lot yet. You know, when you look at social platforms, Instagram is by far, you know, our number one and fastest growing with Facebook being number two. And it really, again, depends on the demographic, but we really do experiment with all platforms. And we have to do that because, you know, it's a company that wants to continue to grow and wants to continue to serve all kinds of different demographic groups with different types of products.
[00:18:18] Ray Latif: Is video the medium that can really take ATK? Well, I mean, you've been producing video for about 20 years and you're really good at it. I guess, how do you get better at it? And how do you get better at it in a way that's not just TV, in a way that represents the YouTube audience and grows that YouTube audience from those 18 to 30 to include and incorporate some of the people that you have watching your TV show?
[00:18:40] David Nussbaum: Yeah, that's a great question because video is at the core of what we do. And we are fortunate in that as a media company, we did start shooting video 20 years ago, before it became in vogue, before there was a YouTube, you know, before people were watching video on their phones.
[00:18:56] Ray Latif: Which is nuts, right? I mean, like, how has video become the fastest growing medium when it has been probably the most dynamic medium for, you know, 100 years?
[00:19:06] David Nussbaum: Yeah. Well, because the delivery mechanisms, again, have become so flexible. First of all, you can shoot video with your phone, that's pretty good quality, and you can watch it, you know, at the same time. So we moved into this facility about a year ago because we recognized that our business is becoming basically like a studio, like a movie studio, in that we have to be producing video content five days a week all day long and producing that content for Instagram TV, for YouTube TV, for PBS TV, for the OTTs. And so we have different kinds of video content for different systems. So we have YouTube only TV shows that the only place you find it is on YouTube. Obviously we have our full television show, but what's really interesting about video is that our website, and I pulled out some stats here, And if you subscribe to our website, you get a chance to see over 7,500 cooking videos. There is nobody who has that kind of size. And we add to our video every day. We are one of the, I think, one of the few companies that have a full video staff in-house, meaning we have everything from in-house editing to in-house videography. We have full studios we built here. And so we have a real commitment to video, both in terms of staff, equipment, platforms, and production. And I think that has given us a leg up and continues to give us a leg up on the competition.
[00:20:34] Ray Latif: It seems like everything you do is extremely high quality. You put a lot of effort into everything, whether it be testing a recipe, producing a video. Yes. And I want to go back to your audience and consumers and, you know, consumer retention, because in the business of food and beverage, it's all about getting the person to buy it a second time. And subscription is becoming even more important for some of these companies. You know, how do you get people to stay on? I mean, what are some of the reasons they don't?
[00:20:58] David Nussbaum: Well, first of all, they do stay on. You know, our renewal rates on our website are about 80%. Wow. Our renewal rates for our magazines are a little over 60%. So why do they stay on? Well, it's just what you said. We invest very, very heavily in our content. We are fortunate in that we're a privately held independent media company. We don't really focus on the next quarter's profits. We're thinking 3, 5, 7, 10 years down the line. We invest heavily in this business. And again, so many media companies today have been purchased by private equity, they're public companies, you know, and so they're facing debt. They're facing a public audience that needs to see the numbers every day. We have the luxury of not having any of that. We have the luxury of being a private company. And so when we wanted to spend millions of dollars to build out this space, we did it. You know, we didn't have to go to a big financial institution to take out a lot of debt. We didn't have to float a bond. We just did it out of cashflow. And we invest back into our business through cashflow. So like the kids business, which we launched a year ago, you know, we'll lose money for a couple of years, seven figures, but because we know there's a big future down the line. So that is one of our great advantages over so many of our competition in that we're a private company. We don't think short-term, we think long-term. And that helps us think about, you know, building high quality content, because it doesn't need to return on the investment tomorrow or next week, you know, has to be a long term return on equity.
[00:22:29] Ray Latif: So kids, your kids platform is long term. And it's interesting about kids, because for food and beverage brands, you can market to, you know, every kid in the world, but at the end of the day, it's usually the parent who's going to, you know, shell the money out to pay for that product. So it seems like you're kind of addressing two fronts, or at least you have to address two fronts, the parents and the kids. That's right. So I guess I'm asking a lot of questions here. But what is the, you know, what is the end goal with kids? Is it to bring more parents on board? Is it to bring, you know, a future generation of viewers and readers?
[00:23:00] David Nussbaum: Well, the end goal is like the goal with the rest of the company, and that is to help children have a love of cooking, do it well, enjoy it, have success, be willing to experiment, have fun, get educated. So it's the same exact goals we have with our adult stuff, only we adjust it to children. We know that you have to get the attention of the children who will then go to their parents and say, oh, would you buy me? But we also have to obviously market to the parents. And the parents know that when the America's Test Kitchen brand is on a kid's book or a kid's website, it's going to be authentic. It's going to be real. It's not going to be tainted by advertising. So there's that trust level. that we built for 25 years really shines on the new kid stuff because we built that reputation and parents and grandparents can trust that reputation. So it's a fairly easy leap to kids because we are reaching the parents and have for many years and the grandparents. Again, built in big advantage. We have that reputation for authenticity, for being real, for being trusted. And so if you're going to buy your child a cookbook or a cooking kit or want to go to the website, you're going to want to believe that the content producers can be trusted with your children. And people know that they can trust America's Test Kitchen. And so it's given us a real leg up. When we launched our first children's cookbook and we had the idea to do it, obviously you do a lot of market research. Part of the market research was going out to book retailers, Barnes & Noble, The Independence, Costco, and asking them, so we're thinking about doing a kid's cookbook. What do you think? Kids' cookbooks don't sell. Don't even bother. They do not sell. There's a lot of them out there. No one buys them. No one likes them. And we thought, OK, well, this might be the one case where we go against the market research, because in looking at everything that's out there, nobody does it like America's Test Kitchen. So I love this story. Our first cookbook was Young Chefs' Guide to Cooking. And the actual official name is the Cookbook for Young Chefs. We launched it in October of last year. Within a couple of weeks, it was on the New York Times bestseller list. It is still on the New York Times bestseller list. So we became a bestseller. Almost immediately. So, you know, we kind of wrecked all of these assumptions We launched the young chefs baking book about a week or two ago Again, it opened on the New York Times bestseller list. So last week we had on the middle school bestseller list We had two of the top ten So I think what it proved to us, and the market is, doesn't matter what other people have done. America's Test Kitchen does things dramatically different than anybody else. So we're going to have success with kids where other people have not.
[00:25:50] Ray Latif: Is the success part of testing and learning? When you're bucking research, how do you establish metrics for success? Right.
[00:25:58] David Nussbaum: Well, I was kind of kidding about bucking research because we did a lot of consumer research, which pointed to what we needed. The research amongst retailers is a little bit different. And before we launched, we brought children into the Test Kitchen, obviously with their parents, and we worked with them. We watched how they worked in Test Kitchen. We learned, number one, that in a cookbook for kids, you have to say, turn off the stove. You know, you're an adult, you look at a cookbook, it doesn't have to say turn off the stove. You know to do that. A child needs to be told turn off the stove. So we learned a lot of things about how kids operate in Test Kitchen that really helped us produce the content. The other thing though is that America's Test Kitchen has always been about the science behind cooking. the why's, the where's, the how-to's, and so that fits really well into kids. A lot of our programs, we are in elementary schools, we work with Reebok on a program where we go into elementary schools and they talk about exercise and we talk about nutrition. So we think a lot about... you know, how our cooking can be used as a tool to learn math, science, engineering, you know, and so forth.
[00:27:05] Ray Latif: It seems like the Kids Platform is an opportunity to expand awareness and household penetration for ATK. Yes. Does household penetration matter for you guys? Does it matter how many people know
[00:27:15] David Nussbaum: Oh, sure. We want to keep growing. And one of the side benefits of the kids arm is that if the parents buy the kids a cookbook from America's Test Kitchen, and they like it, and the kids like it, there's a pretty good chance they're going to do other business with us. They're going to buy a subscription to our website. They're going to buy a cookbook, because they've become comfortable with America's Test Kitchen through their kids. So that's a whole new group of people who maybe weren't reaching before that we're reaching now. And so our goal always is to reach more people. Because again, since we don't sell advertising, we make money on selling subscriptions and books and some other things. So that's our lifeblood.
[00:27:55] Ray Latif: Do you know what percentage of Americans know about ATK?
[00:27:58] David Nussbaum: No, I don't. Tough number to come up with. As I said, we know that we reach 60 million people every month through various means, but it's really hard to quantify as a percentage of the overall American population. It's hard to do.
[00:28:12] Ray Latif: You're reaching people also through your Eats festivals, which are happening in Boston and Seattle. When did you launch those, and what are they?
[00:28:20] David Nussbaum: The Boston Eats festival is this weekend here in Boston, and it's the third annual. You know, we launched it And then we did Seattle. Last year was the first year in Seattle. This will be the second year. We decided that we reach people online. We reach people on television. We reach people through video. We reach people through books. We don't really reach people live and in person, other than Cook's Country, the TV show, has a live studio audience. But it's 30 people. So we thought that a food festival would just be a great way to meet our fans and to sample great food, because that's what we do. and to have our stars, our cast from the shows, be able to do demonstrations and also meet people. And so we felt it was just a great way to add live to our media mix. And from day one, it was wildly successful. The first event had over 3,000 people attending. And for our staff, it was a revelation because my editors and chefs and so forth, they work back in the Test Kitchen. They're doing heavy duty work, but they never get a chance to watch somebody taste their food, really. Again, we go out to consumers and they test it and send it back to us, but they're not sitting in Test Kitchen. So here's a chance for Bridget or Julia to actually watch people tasting one of our recipes. That's fun. Our people are such stars that we do a book signing at these events, and you would think it's Michelle Obama signing her book. The lines are that long. Bridget and Julia, really amongst our fans, are huge superstars, as is Dan. Elle, you know, and others. And we see that at the festivals when people, you know, they look at them like, oh my God, the stars are here. So our fans love our people, love our products, and we get to see it, you know, at the Food Festival. The Food Festival is also a great morale builder for our company because all our people go. And they get the feel of love from our audiences. And they see and people come up to say, you work for America's Test Kitchen. Oh my God, I love the book. I love the magazine. I love the TV show. So our people walk away saying, oh my God, people really do love what we do. So there are lots of reasons we do the food festivals. Financial is not high on that list because it's not really a big moneymaker because it takes a lot to produce these events.
[00:30:37] Ray Latif: What have you learned so far? I mean, besides the fact that it is fun, it's a great morale builder, what have you learned from the folks that are attending?
[00:30:44] David Nussbaum: Lots of things. One of the things we learned last year, we did our first children's food festival as kind of a little segment. And we were shocked at the number of children, call it ages 8 to 12, who were wildly passionate about food, who would come up to us and say, can I work in your Test Kitchen? I love your books. We found that these children, this is really before we put out children's products, but they were in Test Kitchen with their parents and their parents had either a website to cook from or books or whatever. So that was one of the revelations is look at all these children who know us. So that was one of the revelations we found out. The other is we know 4 million people watch our TV shows every week. But it becomes live when you see people's eyes light up when Bridget or Julia is up on a demo stage and people are looking at them like, oh, this is my dream come true. So we get a chance to see people experiencing what we do and we feel the love and we give the love back. One of the most popular things we do at the food festival is we do tours up here. of the Test Kitchen and the studios. So we have 15,000 square feet of Test Kitchen space up here. And you'll get a tour, but you'll see, if you like cooking, this is like Disney World. We have 100 Sub-Zero refrigerators. We have 75 Wolf ovens. We have these huge walk-in freezers and refrigerators. We have chefs cooking all day long and the smells are outstanding. So our fans get a chance during the food festivals to come up here and see where it happens. They get to see, you know, the sets, you know, where the shows are shot. It's a love fest between us and our fans and our fans and us. It's really, it's really wonderful.
[00:32:28] Ray Latif: More from David Nussbaum after this short word from our sponsor. They say it takes doing something 10,000 times to be good at it. With over 60,000 beverage formulations, Flavor Man is better than good at beverage development. Let us guide you through the process of getting your drink brand created. Flavor Man, change what the world is drinking. You mentioned Bridget and Julia, well known to your audience. It's interesting, though, when I told folks that I was coming to meet with the CEO of America's Test Kitchen, a lot of folks, a good number of folks asked me if I was meeting Christopher Kimball, who Christopher Kimball, who is the founder of America's Test Kitchen and the magazines as well. I mean, has that been an issue for you, given that Chris is no longer with the company, his association with the brand?
[00:33:22] David Nussbaum: First of all, let me clarify. The founder of the business was a man named Elliot Wadsworth, who's still on the board and is still one of the owners. He hired Chris to help him launch Cook's Illustrated. So Chris was the founding editor of Cook's Illustrated. and you can call him a founder, but the magazine and the money came from Elliott, just to be clear. And Chris was never the CEO of the company. The company actually didn't have a CEO. He was the editor-in-chief of all the products, and he was kind of responsible for the growth of the business to a certain degree up until 2015. And, you know, he's a very successful, smart, talented individual. But back in 2015, he decided he wanted to do something else. And we understood that. Of course, the problem was, is that he launched against us directly and there were lots, we sued him, as you probably know. The suit's now been settled. But we are such a different company today than we were when Chris was here. You know, when Chris was here, we did have the two TV shows. We did have the two magazines. We did have the website, although it wasn't as big. Now we have the YouTube channel, which has millions of people who watch it. We have podcasts. Proof is the first. We have three launching in 2020. We have the food festivals. We have a growing online cooking school. There are so many things we do today that we didn't do when Chris was here. So it's a very different company. And by the way, the world has changed too. Chris's style was very much New Englandy, Vermont. You know, we're much more national and international now. So the world has changed. And so we don't miss Chris. We wish him the best, but we don't miss him.
[00:35:11] Ray Latif: Yeah, it feels like the style really fit the channel that you broadcast on PBS. 20 years ago. Yeah, I mean, and does PBS still fit the bill for you guys? I mean, do you see a time in the future when ATK could move to another network or cable station?
[00:35:28] David Nussbaum: I don't know that we would move, but we certainly would want to be on more platforms. But let me say first that our ratings and our viewers are continuing to grow on PBS. Although PBS's audience is relatively flat, actually PBS is held up better than a lot of the major networks. It's relatively flat. We continue to grow on PBS. But we recognize that 20 years ago, you had NBC, ABC, CBS, maybe Fox, PBS. That was about it. Now there's thousands of platforms. So we recognize we have to be more than on PBS. So our TV shows can be found on YouTube. where they are, a whole new audience is discovering them. So that's another place to see the TV shows. We have our own OTT channel, America's Test Kitchen TV. which you can find on Roku or Amazon's Fire. So we are already on lots of other platforms, but PBS is still a great platform for us. It's still a place where people go for content that they trust. And also, by the way, how-to content remains kind of the belly wick of PBS. Children, history, great drama, how-to. So PBS is still a great platform. We will not rely on it solely, you know, and 20 years ago, that was it. So, you know, I think that's the answer. And we continue to look at other new platforms, too. And there's a very good chance we'll launch a third TV show. And where that goes is still unknown.
[00:36:55] Ray Latif: You know, where do you stand on streaming services? You mentioned Amazon Prime, so many new streaming services popping up. You know, is there an opportunity for you to create very specific content for one of those platforms?
[00:37:06] David Nussbaum: Yeah, we're in discussions with a number of the platforms on a new concept that we have. And it's still kind of in R&D. But there's a decent chance that over the next couple of years, we will have launched a new type of TV show, but cooking still and food, for one of those platforms or multiple platforms.
[00:37:26] Ray Latif: Do you feel like you might be spreading yourself too thin, you know, going into all these different directions? I mean, I know you have to to grow. And I know you have 200 employees and you're growing in that department too. But at what point do you feel like you're sort of getting away from the focus, the mission of what you're doing?
[00:37:40] David Nussbaum: Well, never, because first of all, we have never gotten away from the mission, which is at its core to serve the home cook and to help the home cook be successful cooking at home. We've never moved away from that. I mean, what we've done is just grow ways in which we serve that home cook, platforms, products. But that's only because America keeps changing. So if we just stayed the same, we would be out of business. You don't stay on TV for 20 years unless you're adapting to new markets, new people, new developments. And so I don't worry about that at all. And we keep hiring people. You know, we have now 210 people. Back in 2015, we had about 130 people. We now have close to 50 test cooks. And so the thing that holds you back from growth, obviously, is having people to execute. And we just, you know, we just hire great people. I mean, one of the great, and this is the third media company that I run, but this is the one company that I've been at where people knock on our door to work here. where we will post an ad for a job and we will have a line out the door of people who know America's Test Kitchen, love America's Test Kitchen, love cooking, love food, and one of their dreams is to work in America's Test Kitchen.
[00:39:02] Ray Latif: You might even have people drive two and a half hours each way to come work here, right?
[00:39:06] David Nussbaum: We do, as a matter of fact, have more than one, actually. You know, the editor-in-chief of the kids' business comes from Providence, too. Oh, wow, okay. I'm just referring to... You're referring to Brian, I know.
[00:39:17] Ray Latif: Yes, your director of communications.
[00:39:19] David Nussbaum: Yes, but we have more people. We do have people who drive from long distances, yeah.
[00:39:22] Ray Latif: Yeah. The TV show America's Test Kitchen in its 20th year, as you mentioned, you are now a steward and have been for, since 2015, you've been here?
[00:39:31] David Nussbaum: Yeah. I've been here over four years now. Yes.
[00:39:33] Ray Latif: You are the steward, the chief steward of the brand. You know, how do you pave that path for the next 20 years? You know, what are the things that are on your table right now that are going to affect the future of the company in 2030, 2040?
[00:39:46] David Nussbaum: Well, we talked about some of them, you know, it's in different areas. Number one, not number one, but one of them is expanding more aggressively in podcasts, because podcasts are clearly a very strong and growing medium. We're building a podcast network. So we launched one show in, I guess it was 19. And we're going to launch three new shows in 20. There could be another three. So we're going to build America's Test Kitchen podcast network. So that's one way we do it. Kids is another way. It's a whole new group of people with a whole new group of content. That's another way. We're going to launch a new TV show. That's going to be a whole different content also. So that's another way. Ultimately, you know, we've had some thoughts and discussions about launching China's Test Kitchen, Italy's Test Kitchen and Canada's Test Kitchen. So that's another possibility. So we have an incredibly smart executive team and incredibly smart people here. smartest people I've ever worked with. And so the new ideas just keep coming out. It's just a question of prioritizing them, funding them. So I have all the confidence in the world that the company's going to continue to grow, as it has.
[00:40:54] Ray Latif: When some of these new ideas come up, you know, are they all on the table? Are they all up for debate and potential? Or are some of them just too crazy for America's Test Kitchen, given that you do have a very specific focus?
[00:41:06] David Nussbaum: Oh, sure. You know, there are some ideas that are really fun and great, but they're not profitable. So we can't do those. There's some ideas that are maybe just too out there. China's Test Kitchen sounds pretty interesting. A little out there for me, maybe. Well, it's not out there for people who live in China. For there, it kind of makes sense. But I don't want to lie. We've had our failures, too. We launched something called Cook Science as a brand three years ago. We have two Cook Science books. One of them was a New York Times bestseller. The other didn't do as well. And we decided, you know, the science behind cooking is an interesting topic, which we cover in Cooks Illustrated and other places. Let's launch a whole new brand. And we launched a website. We launched live shows. We launched the books, obviously. And we failed miserably. Not on the content side. We had great content, but we couldn't figure out how to make money. And we lost some real money on it. And we ended up having to shut it down. So I think that one of the great things about our business is that We also understand how you try things and how they don't go well and how you have to walk away because no one is going to bat a thousand. So as a company that likes to innovate, we're going to have some hits and some that are not hits. And that's OK. That's what I tell my people all the time. It's OK to fail. In fact, sometimes it's really good because you learn a lot from failing. And I wouldn't want to be part of an organization that was so risk averse that they didn't try anything because they're afraid of failing. So we have some big successes, we have some failures, but that's how you have a growing, vibrant organization that's going to make it into the 2030s and 40s and so forth.
[00:42:44] Ray Latif: Maybe if you'd called it CBD science.
[00:42:47] David Nussbaum: Well, yeah, yeah. You know, we've been kind of looking at CBD as a cooking ingredient. We're not yet ready to, you know, to add that the science behind CBD is still fairly questionable. So, but I can tell you, we have a lot of input from consumers say, Hey, you know, you have any CBD recipes? Those usually the millennials, but we're not yet ready to, you know, to produce foods with CBD in it.
[00:43:13] Ray Latif: It's not just that the science isn't out there. I mean, the education about CBD isn't out there. I think a lot of people are still thinking, oh, it's weed, right? It's marijuana, which is not, it's not. But you know, you got to fight that stigma as well. One of the ways that people release stress is to cook and you guys are helping people cook. So that's great.
[00:43:31] David Nussbaum: Yeah, totally. Yeah, definitely. Do you like to cook? I like to cook. I'm not good at it. Even now. Even now.
[00:43:38] Ray Latif: I'm a great eater. That's an incredible admission. I love that.
[00:43:41] David Nussbaum: Some people have a real talent for cooking and some don't. Some people have the time to do it, some don't. My biggest thing is really time. You know, I don't have a lot of time to do it, but I do cook some recipes. I do more of the simple ones, but I just don't have a lot of time to cook. I have a, you know, I run a big company. I'm on a couple of boards. As I told you, I'm on the advisory committee of BU. I work on a couple of charitable boards. I'm the president of my condo board. So I have a very, very full life. Three children, wife, two dogs. And so I don't have the luxury of time. Plus, I live in Manhattan and Boston in small apartments. So I also don't have the luxury of big kitchens and wonderful appliances and things like that. So I cook when I can. But it'll be slow cooker type cooking, things that are pretty easy, pretty quick, pretty clean. Our American chop suey recipe is my favorite by far. It's delicious, but it's relatively easy. And the slow cooker books are some of my favorites, you know, because you can throw the stuff in the slow cooker when you leave for work, come home and have a wonderful dish. That's the kind of cooking I like to do. I'm a terrible baker. I've tried that and I've been terrible at that. You know, we have an olive oil cake. that is a very popular recipe. And I love it. And I've tried to make it two or three times. I cannot keep it from flattening out. And I don't know why. I probably should ask Bridget and Julie or Jack to work with me on it. But baking is something that I just cannot master.
[00:45:13] Ray Latif: Are you using the right ingredients? I believe so. Well, there's a difference between good ingredients and, you know. No, I follow our recipe. Okay.
[00:45:21] David Nussbaum: I think, I mean, not to go off topic, but I think one of the issues might be my oven maybe not heating to the right temperature, even though it's reading that temperature. Because as I said, I live in apartments and I don't have the big, beautiful, you know, Wolf oven. So that could be the variable. I don't know.
[00:45:37] Ray Latif: I think it could be. Wolf, that's a good oven. That's a good appliance for sure.
[00:45:40] David Nussbaum: Yeah. I like one of those.
[00:45:41] Ray Latif: David, this has been so much fun and so informative. I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you're extremely busy. You got the big festival this weekend. So once again, I sincerely appreciate you sitting down with me and good luck going forward with ATK.
[00:45:53] David Nussbaum: My pleasure. This was fun and I wish you also the best of luck. Thank you. Thank you.
[00:46:01] Ray Latif: That brings us to the end of episode 187. Thank you so much for listening, and thanks to our guest, David Nussbaum. You can catch both Taste Radio and Taste Radio Insider on Taste Radio, the Apple Podcasts app, Stitcher, Google Play, SoundCloud, or Spotify. As always, for questions, comments, ideas for future podcasts, please send us an email to askatasteradio.com. On behalf of the entire Taste Radio team, thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.
