"food website" news and stories

There's nothing like a good dose of hubris to spice things up.

Earlier this week, former Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller announced that his company, Spanfeller Media Group, has secured funding to launch its first website, which will be all about food.

But, according to SMG's press release, the site won't just be about food. It will be the end all, be all website about food.

And we quote: "SMG's first foray into online publishing will satisfy a very apparent gap in the ever-expanding food media segment...Our initial launch will realize the medium's full potential."

Uh-oh.

Yesterday, nearing the approach of its fifth birthday, internet news giant The Huffington Post introduced its new Food vertical. Hot off the digital press, HuffPost Food is ready for web consumption, stocked with original articles, columns, polls and slideshows, and, as always with newspaper/blog hybrid, partner content and aggregates of the best of the rest of food news. Though currently national in scope, HuffPost Food will eventually be integrated into the New York, Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago channels, allowing the site to more narrowly and thoroughly tap into local food scenes, restaurants news and the like.

Taking their media empire online, Reader's Digest has just announced the purchase of Allrecipes.com for $66 million. The publisher had only 7 magazines in its organization eight years ago, but today they have 20 in publication, as well as 40 websites. Their magazines include Taste of Home and Everyday with Rachael Ray, in addition to their flagship magazine, Reader's Digest. A company spokesman said "it instantly gives us Seattle cool and online credibility." The sale also gives them a large advertising revenue, as the major source of income for Allrecipes.com was through advertisements placed on their site.

Reader's Digest plans to make Allrecipes.com the center point of its online operations, the main portal to its other magazines and websites, potentially taking content from it to put into some of its printed media. Though spokespeople from the company denied it, the move is a fairly obvious attempt to attract younger readers to the pages of Reader's Digest.

Allrecipes.com is a user-supported community comprised of 1.8 million members, the majority of whom are home cooks. Membership, which is free, allows users to create online profiles, share recipes and leave feedback on the recipes that other users have posted. In February, it was the third most popular food site on the web in terms of page views, behind the Food Network and Kraft Foods.

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