If there’s anyone who’s painfully aware of the state of food media, it’s us at Ravenous. All five founder-owners used to be employed by a major food outlet and were jettisoned in 2025 as part of a general contraction in the industry. It’s not just our former employer; it’s everywhere. From layoffs to the pivot to social media video to the proliferation of AI, there’s no denying that corporate food media is simply doing less than it was five years ago.
In the year since our own layoff, we have seen workers at countless food publications lose their jobs. Basically every food writer we know is working for themselves these days as jobs in traditional media continue to dwindle. In between the time I write this and the time it is published on our worker-owned website, there will probably have been more food media layoffs.
Here’s a quick, by no means comprehensive look at what we’ve lost in just the last couple of years:
- In 2022, Vice shuttered its Munchies vertical, which was dedicated to food coverage.
- After it was acquired in 2023, America’s Test Kitchen started quietly laying off staffers.
- In 2024, it’s estimated that 15,000 workers in entertainment and media lost their jobs.
- In March 2025, Food52 laid off about 40% of its staff.
- In August 2025, all of us Ravenous worker-owners — and more of our former Eater colleagues — lost our jobs.
- In February 2026, the Washington Post slashed its staff, including food writers and editors.
- In January 2026, three more Eater staffers were quietly laid off.
What was once a robust and thriving ecosystem — you might call it the “peak food media” era, when everyone was an Anthony Bourdain fan and knew what was on the Eater 38 — is now a system in obvious decline.
But all hope isn’t lost. We need your support to help stem the tide so we can publish investigations, use our expert taste buds to tell you about the country’s best meals, and to showcase the restaurants that can’t afford to retain well-heeled public relations firms. Your paid subscription helps us tell the food stories you want to read, not just the leftovers that the algorithm serves up.
We’re seeing the inevitable results of these layoffs in the coverage that’s out there. Websites that used to publish several stories a day are publishing one or two, and one of those is probably an advertorial or e-commerce round-up of crap to buy on Amazon. The independent restaurants that were once celebrated are now buried under layers of artificial cheese sauce in favor of content from whatever flavor-of-the-month chain greases the wheels with ad dollars. We don’t want to denigrate the work that the few writers who are still employed by these outlets are doing — there’s still some great food journalism happening! — it’s just harder than ever to find, and it’s obvious that these writers are not given the resources or the space to do their best work.
And then there’s the influencer of it all! Restaurant recommendations have fundamentally changed for good, with the uninformed opinions of people who are happy to accept a paycheck from any old mediocre spot earning more views on TikTok and Instagram than well-researched, multi-visit reviews from legitimate critics (which many newspapers have laid off anyway). It feels harder than ever to find something good to read, to score a trustworthy restaurant recommendation, or to think that you’re actually learning something interesting about food. (That isn’t yet another terrifying recall from some parasite, that is.)
This all adds up to one big bummer that sucks as much for restaurants as it does for readers and journalists. We’re also consumers of food media, and we’re as frustrated as everyone else is. We’re desperate to read great work, especially those in-depth stories about the people, establishments, and systems that corporate food media is ignoring. We want to publish those stories right here at Ravenous. In a time when every well-heeled, billionaire-owned food media outlet is pulling back and doing less, we’re dying to do more. We want to pay ourselves enough to commit more time to running Ravenous, to working with the writers and artists and photographers we respect, and to publish some damn good journalism.
We need your help to do that. Corporate food media wants you to watch this ad, to pay attention to this influencer, to ignore the fact that their work is sponsored by the very companies who stand to profit from it. Until the end of September, we’re offering you a special discount. For just $5.25 a month, we promise to bring you the hardest-hitting (and sometimes silliest) work we’re capable of, to keep all those stalkery and browser-crashing ads off your screen, and to never ever sell your information to some bank or AI company just to make a quick buck. We’re trying to trade journalism for cash, here, which is apparently a revolutionary business model!
It is sort of shocking the way that the value proposition in media has shifted in recent years. There’s a deep cynicism in how corporate media executives view their readership, and it is clear how little they respect the people who click on their articles. Instead of serving up journalism readers can trust, they’re turning into spon-con factories serving you crappy-looking ads for GLP-1 medications. We believe that readers deserve so much better than they’re getting, and the best place to find that “better” is at indie outlets like Ravenous.
If you’ve been on the fence about subscribing, I urge you to take a look around our site, at the more than 80 stories we’ve published since launching in May. There are just five of us founder-owners, and we’re all working part-time while freelancing and picking up whatever work we can to pay the bills. We need your help to grow Ravenous and to do as much of the journalism that we’re all dying to read as we can.
Food media might be dying, but Ravenous is hungry to grow. Subscribe now and we'll give you 25% off your first year.
