"conde nast" news and stories

Moscow already has the Vogue Café, GQ Bar and Tatler Club.

Now, magazine company Condé Nast is looking to expand its magazine-themed restaurant business across Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move is part of the company's strategy to build its brands beyond print magazines, which have been suffering from drops in advertising.

"The idea involves only Condé Nast's international unit, so there are no plans for a Vanity Fair Café or a New Yorker Bar & Grill in the U.S.," says the Journal article. The licensing deal belongs to the company's international unit and U.S. magazines can reach their own licensing agreements for products, the Journal reported.

The company hopes to have one or two restaurants open in 2011 and as many as five per year after that, Jonathan Newhouse, Chairman of Condé Nast International, told the paper. At the top of the list are places like Hong Kong and Dubai. Istanbul and Kiev are also being considered.

We've all heard the conventional wisdom: print media is doomed. Last fall's demise of Gourmet, shocking as it was, was only one of dozens of magazines that have folded in the past five years. But now a phoenix appears to be rising from those journalistic ashes -- and that phoenix is wearing an apron.

Meet Dash, a new magazine slated to debut this September (online to start, at dashrecipes.com). A preview issue of the print version will follow in November, with regular monthly issues beginning in February. While Gourmet focused on cooking that was, well, gourmet, Dash promises food that is "simple," "fast," and last (but hopefully not least), "delicious."

Turns out that while many advertisers were fleeing magazines, food purveyors have been quietly buying up their ad space, according to The New York Times.

After nearly 69 years of good tastes, Gourmet Magazine will close after its November issue, the New York Times reports.

The magazine, owned by Conde Nast, has been published since December 1940. Cookie, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride are also slated for closure, the paper said.

"Thank you all SO much for this outpouring of support," Ruth Reichl, the magazine's editor in chief, said Monday afternoon on Twitter. "It means a lot. Sorry not to be posting now, but I'm packing. We're all stunned, sad."

The cuts come after a three-month study by McKinsey & Co., which looked at the publishing company's costs, the Times said.

In an e-mail obtained by Gawker, Conde Nast CEO Chuck Townsend said Gourmet will live on through television and books. "Gourmet magazine will cease monthly publication, but we will remain committed to the brand, retaining Gourmet's book publishing and television programming, and Gourmet recipes on Epicurious.com," he wrote. "We will concentrate our publishing activities in the epicurean category on Bon Appétit."

Drew Schutte, a senior vice president at Conde Nast Digital, said Gourmet.com would "remain up at least through the end of the year," Mediaite reports.

Sources tell Slashfood that staff has to be out of building by the end of day Tuesday.

Leave your thoughts about Gourmet's demise in the comments below.

[Via New York Times]

Oh my, Conde Nast Traveler has put together their annual Hot List, and because I am such a list-y girl, I was all over it. They have lists for the Hottest Hotels, Nightlife, and Spas, and of course the one that I care about the most, the Hottest Tables Around the World. If you're curious, take a peek, and for those if us in Los Angeles, the restaurants that made the list are: Katsu-ya, Social Hollywood, Hatfield's, Cut, West at the Hotel Angeleno, Mandrake, and Boulevard 3.

Clearly, the criteria for "hot" isn't necessarily the quality of the food (Katsu-ya? West at the Hotel Angeleno?), but the places are definitely hot scenes.

Mega magazine publisher Conde Nast has been galloping along at warp speed in its acquisitions of web entities in an effort to boost its own web presence. Last week, they purchased Wired.com for a cool $25 million, and this week, CondeNet announced that it has purchased NutritionData.com, which will be part of the CondeNet group of food and health properties, which already includes Epicurious.com.

NutritionData.com is a a health and nutrition information site with about 600,000 monthly unique visitors. Visitors can research calorie and nutrition information for foods, as well as use a number of tools to manage their nutrition.