Let’s Turn Up the Volume on the Food Podcast

This sound bite is from a 27-minute episode of Climate Cuisine , the weekly podcast Wei hosts on Whetstone Media’s new podcast network, Whetstone Radio Collective. Like other episodes of the show, which explores how sustainable crops are grown around the world, it goes on to give insight from various experts—in this case, the food writers Von Diaz and Vanessa Mota, biologist Rob Dunn, and journalists Meenakshi J. and Vidya Balachander—alongside immersive sounds and captivating music. Others—such as Evan Kleiman’s Good Food (on KCRW) and Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Radio (on Public Radio Exchange)—are made in partnership with public radio stations and built from several short segments that range from greenmarket sets out to spotlights on new cookbooks.

Yet despite all the diversity and pent-up appetite for food content, from home cooking hacks to deep dives into global food cultures, very few existing food podcasts have broken into the mainstream on the level of major hits like The Daily and How I Built This . Podcasts are still relatively new—while nascent exploration began nearly 20 years ago with the advent of the iPod, they only began to seriously catch on after Serial launched in 2014—but their position within the broader media landscape is growing every day.

It’s time for food points to to step up to the plate. “Podcasting continues to be very much like the Wild West,” states the cookbook author and podcast host Julia Turshen. “There are a lot of darts being thrown at the board, and some are sticking more than others. Turshen is able to make $1,000 per episode via sponsorships, and she estimates that each episode takes her eight to ten hours to create. She leans on the relationships with brands she’s before that worked with—such as King Arthur Baking Company. OXO—for financial support, who see the value in her modest but “very, very loyal and very positive audience.” As a freelancer with multiple income sources, podcasting is just one pillar of Turshen’s work.

This is also true for Korsha Wilson, the food writer and host of A Hungry Society . The purpose of A Hungry Society is to shine a light on the many talented people in the food world that don’t get enough attention. (Past episodes have featured Wisconsin-based chef and 40 Acres & a Mule founder Adrian Lipscombe and food writer and SalviSoul founder Karla T.

Pashman has been turning a profit on The Sporkful since he moved the show from WNYC to the podcast network Stitcher in 2017, where he’s guaranteed an annual income in addition to ad takings share. Whetsone Media, which is most well-known for its print publication, secured a little over $115,000 through Indiegogo to produce ten points to hosted by experts around the globe, including journalists, anthropologists, and chefs.

She loves that the network handles sound engineering and marketing, which allows her to focus her efforts on result and interviewing up-and-coming, pioneering women in the food space for Speaking Broadly . But she recognizes that neither she nor most of her peers with food podcasts have been able to break through in the way that Pashman has. “Podcasting started out as a way to avoid the gatekeepers and the big firms, and now podcasting exists across this gigantic continuum, but a lot of the movers and shakers are asking a lot of the old questions, which are: ‘How big can it be?

Chang rolled out The Dave Chang Show with the sports and entertainment-centric The Ringer podcast network in 2018. Two years later, The Ringer was acquired by Spotify in one of its first big moves toward becoming a podcast powerhouse. Many of their listeners are service trade workers as well. “The major draw for the audience is a sense of catharsis and broader understanding,” Sullivan says.

Turshen points out that there is very little public information around how to make money in podcasts. “Where there is very little transparency and very little equity is when it comes to money and who is getting sponsorships and what amounts they’re able to bring in,” she states. As Satterfield explains, “There is a real intimacy living between someone’s ears as the narrator.” He. His team are betting on the notion that there is thrilling terrain yet to be explored in telling “transportive” audio stories about food. “Ambient sounds that place listeners [in specific environments] are really just the tip of the iceberg of what’s possible,” he explains.

Even Kreps at WME, who believes that the specificity of food means its role in the audio trade is small, states there’s potential in this type of “immersive experience” that leverages audio outlets in addition to host talent. Cowin, a trend forecaster in her own right, agrees that there is a bright future for food podcasts that are made like TV points to. “What is the music? The Line ’s one-on-one interviews between restaurateur and chef Eli Sussman and his peers are essential listening for anyone looking to make moves in the sector.