25 YEARS:
A LOOK BACK AT OUR
HISTORY
Sometimes a secret is too good—too tantalizing, too delicious—to keep to yourself.
A LOOK BACK AT OUR
Sometimes a secret is too good—too tantalizing, too delicious—to keep to yourself.
Sometimes a dish is just too tasty not to share. It was this idea that became the premise behind Taste of Home back in 1992, when editors and staff of what was then Reiman Publications met to brainstorm potential new offerings. The company already had successfully mined rural markets with titles like Country Woman. Devoted to farm life and all things that would appeal to rural female readers, Country Woman also featured a heaping helping of features on cooking. And people couldn’t get enough.
“At that time, people wanted more (recipes) than we could allot in our magazines,” says Mary Beth Jung, the founding food editor of Taste of Home. “I went to my boss and said we should do a food magazine…because it was a natural (extension).”
And that’s where the secret-sharing began. Seems that the readers of the various publications loved to exchange their family recipes and submitted them in droves. And this sparked an idea.
In his business memoir, I Could Write a Book…, company founder Roy Reiman envisioned something special for his newest magazine.
“We decided this new one would be more than just a food magazine; it would be a people magazine as well,” he wrote. “Instead of simply running a series of recipes, like most other food magazines do, we would give the story behind each recipe; we would tell how ‘This recipe came from my Aunt Helen, who made it every time I visited her house, and Helen in turn got it from her mother, who lived on a ranch in Montana.’ …This would add meaning and appeal to each recipe; we’d make these recipes come alive by explaining their roots.”
The staff decided to use only recipes and stories from readers—practically inventing the publishing world’s concept of user-generated content.
And so the notion of sharing secrets—those closely kept family recipes that were handed down from generation to generation—became a driving force for the new publication, Taste of Home, while shining a spotlight on the cooks themselves and the stories they had to tell.
Editors sat down to plot out the editorial calendar, aiming for a 1993 launch and tapping the unpublished recipes already submitted by readers for the first issue. To differentiate it from other magazines, the staff decided to use only recipes and stories from readers—practically inventing the publishing world’s concept of user-generated content. Likewise, the magazine would also use Field Editors from across the country for submissions.
The staff batted around a number of ideas for titles, all focused on the “country” theme. Eventually they opened up a contest to a coterie of cooks who would become the magazine’s Field Editors.
Ironically, it wasn’t actually a country cook who named the magazine, but an East Coast resident, Janet Siciak of Bernardston, Massachusetts. She thought the country-oriented names were a bit too limiting—discounting all of those passionate cooks who lived outside rural areas—and instead created a title that evoked the feeling of the comforting home cooking that everyone enjoys. The focus shifted from country cooks to home cooks, and Taste of Home was born.
Grace Sheldon, a current Taste of Home photographer and stylist, was a freelance photographer at the time. Grace was contacted to shoot the first cover. The concept? A lineup of staffers in a “cookie kitchen,” proudly showcasing sweet treats.
“It was funny because I had just met [the publisher]…I didn’t know him at all,” she says. “He was standing next to me and every time he wanted me to shoot, he’d lightly punch me in the arm. ‘OK…now!’ he’d say and punch me. ‘OK… now!’ when he wanted another shot. Punch. So I kind of moved away from him to compose the shots.” And not get punched in the arm.
The first issue made its debut in January 1993—a time when the only food magazines catered to gourmet cooks and featured elaborate recipes. Taste of Home’s user-generated approach to sharing content, and its practical, almost-heirloom recipes, stood out as revolutionary and were welcomed by readers from coast to coast.
“It was a tremendous success from the get-go,” Jung says. “I remember checking our early circulation numbers against a magazine like Bon Appetit that had been around forever. Almost out of the gate, we were larger.” By the third issue, circulation surpassed 500,000, and by the fifth issue, Taste of Home had even more subscribers than Bon Appetit.
Over the years, and through a timely acquisition by Trusted Media Brands, Taste of Home continued to grow and shape the culinary landscape. In the early days, it featured a cooking school to teach home cooks various recipes and techniques; in recent years, that concept was adapted for Taste of Home Live!, a cross-country tour with interactive events that showcased recipes and kitchen tips.
The staff also leveraged the success of the user-generated content to produce a wide variety of cookbooks, as well as newsstand specials that focus on specific food topics and trends to augment the company’s other newsstand publications. Now, under the Trusted Media Brands banner, Taste of Home has an audience of more than 12 million, making it the leading multiplatform producer of food content.
As the world has become increasingly digitally focused, Taste of Home has adapted, building a robust web presence and social media arm to attract the next generation of cooks.
“I think millennials will be the next wave of great cooks,” says Sarah Farmer, Taste of Home culinary director. “We definitely want to become multigenerational and to include millennials more. We are going to find additional recipe submissions from them, and the recipe development we do here is beginning to reflect what younger folks are preparing and eating.”
One thing that won’t change: the impetus for sharing those secret family recipes. “To share a recipe is like sharing a piece of you…and sharing your story,” Farmer says. “It comes from a place of kindness and love—and wanting to make people happy.” And that’s a very fitting sentiment for the next 25 years of Taste of Home.
Taste of Home has an audience of more than 12 million, making it the leading multiplatform producer of food content.
It takes a lot of resources to produce the world’s #1 food and entertaining brand. Over the years, those numbers add up. Here are just a few:
The number of recipes collected over the years in the Taste of Home database. If we wrote each recipe on a 3x5-inch index card and laid them end to end, they’d cover 318 FOOTBALL FIELDS.
The number of RECIPES PUBLISHED PER YEAR on various Taste of Home platforms.
Taste of Home shoots more than 5,000 IMAGES for its various platforms each year.
Taste of Home uses 294 LEMONS per year.
The team cooks 98 POUNDS of bacon per year for various recipes.
That’s the amount of flour Taste of Home Test Kitchen staff members use in a year—about 600 POUNDS per month.
We use, on average, 441 ONIONS per year; since the average 3-inch onion weighs 7 ounces, that’s 192 POUNDS of onions. And that’s a lot of tears, what with all that chopping, dicing, slicing and cutting!
Here’s a fun fact: On the opening day of the Minnesota State Fair, an artist sculpts the likeness of a State Fair princess out of 90 pounds of butter. But that fair has nothing on us: We use more than 382 POUNDS OF BUTTER per year.
The Taste of Home team tests more than 1,500 recipes submitted by readers per year.