A Year After Barstool Sports, CEO Erika Ayers Badan Is Now Stirring The Pot At Food52

SportsMoneyA Year After Barstool Sports, CEO Erika Ayers Badan Is Now Stirring The Pot At Food52ByMark J

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Burns is a freelance reporter covering sports

Caroline Tompkins Erika Ayers Badan has worked for some of the most recognizable brands in media and nology, including Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo

Now, Ayers Badan is, in some ways, deploying a modified playbook she wrote at Barstool Sports, a sports, media and comedy brand she led for nearly eight years before joining cooking, lifestyle and ware company Food52 last April as its chief executive officer. “I felt there was a really big gap, the same way I saw the gap when I went to Barstool Sports,” she told me during a interview in June. “At Barstool, it was creating something from nothing

They had a hugely loyal and rabid audience, but we exploded it

And the difference for Food52 and Schoolhouse was really reshaping it versus creating it. ” Ayers Badan sees a future at Food52 similar to the she built at Barstool Sports, one centered around storytelling, commerce, community, audience and talent

She referred to year one at Food52 as a “reshaping, reprioritizing and rejiggering” period, while she expects year two to be a foundational year where ducing creative content, new franchises and introducing more personality-driven gramming is central to the brand’s strategy. “I'm really trying to build, in the same way I built a flywheel at Barstool, is to build that here at Food52 with a different audience around a different set of ducts with different types of stories, but distributed the same way — on Tiktok, Instagram, YouTube and in events,” she said

From Ayers Badan’s tenure at Barstool Sports, sports and entertainment franchises, the top sports podcast “Pardon My Take” and entertainment and pop culture brand “Chicks in the Office,” among others, were core tenants to the overall success of the sports company

She’s trying to accomplish a similar feat at Food52

Through text and formats — and an upcoming podcast — Food52 vides answers and solutions, as well as highlights brand recipes and ducts

In the future, Ayers Badan is also considering further Hotline franchise extensions with possibly events and a Thanksgiving telethon where Food52 chefs answer last-minute food-related questions

Weeks ago, Food52 also launched a similar concept with Schoolhouse, a manufacturer of lighting and lifestyle goods company that was acquired in 2021. “We will answer these same questions in a way that’s entertaining, in a way that’s relatable and apachable, in a way that’s authentic and in a way that showcases the best of what we have to offer, not as an ad, but just as part of what we’re doing,” Ayers Badan said

Her focus for this year, in part, is also around finding the next crop of creators in the food, design and lifestyle sectors, and imagining how they appear across, social media and other distribution platforms, including the vider Substack. “If someone is an expert on color design or someone is an expert on restaurants in New York City, I’m interested in people who care and are rabid it,” she said. “There’s where we are at

What does this look on

How would it appear in a podcast

What does this look as a event

What does this look in the s section. ” In March, the company also debuted its ReWork gram, a new initiative designed to engage at- Moms who are looking for freelance and part-time opportunities to create content for both Food52 and Schoolhouse

Meanwhile, Ayers Badan highlighted that Food52 will soon launch 10 different content series later this summer and fall, all designed to entertain and inform an audience across food, and lifestyle

Though she didn’t vide many specifics, Ayers Badan teased a possible rundown-style show — i. , what’s happening today and what’s across lifestyle and — that may originate from the company’s test kitchen space at the Brooklyn Navy Yard

Food52 is also currently in the cess of launching a show around Tiara Bennett, who is a chef and owner of a New York City bakery called The Pastry Box

She vided another example

Months ago, the international design magazine Architectural Digest vided readers with an all-access look, via text, audio and, at the of actress Jennifer Garner

What if we tell those stories. ” she said. “I’m really interested in looking past perfection and looking through the establishment

What the Internet has done is eaten the middle man, and it has democratized expression

It has created so much opportunity

I’m excited this concept of where people, how people, to find voices in the crowd that can do that right and to then pair them with the right duction and the right duct. ” She said the company will host an UpFront event this fall to sell its new series as well as other content and media to potential advertisers and brand partners

Food52 expects to double its media year-over-year in terms of overall revenue and audience size, Ayers Badan noted

Currently, the brand’s commerce and trade — where the brand works with interior designers, architects and boutique hotel owners to decorate their respective spaces — are the two dominant s of revenue, according to Ayers Badan, but she said she expects the advertising to also grow “substantially” in the future

There’s also early-stage talks how Food52 may host ticketed events with food and lifestyle creators and fessionals. “I really believe part of the reason that Barstool Sports was so captivating is we had big, beautiful personalities [founder Dave Portnoy],” she said. “I can’t wait to find the Dave Portnoy of at Food52

They’re out there. ” Editorial StandardsRes & PermissionsLOADING PLAYER.