Feeding the Beast
When I launched one of the first food Web sites in 1995 called recipe.com, it was a breakthrough effort that was covered by C/Net, Web Watch and other tech publications, as well as by the food and PR trade media. It was designed as a comprehensive site that would be updated weekly.
“How much time do you expect to spend writing the Web site?” I was asked by a reporter. “Oh, about a quarter of my workday,” I replied naively. Of course it was much more demanding than I had envisioned. Beleagured each week to keep the updates going, I began to call the process, “feeding the beast.”
So here we go again. Last year, I knew that starting a blog would be time-consuming. But having been a newspaper food editor, I felt I could easily knock out a short story a week. I could, until I embarked on a huge program for my client — producing a CD-ROM of recipes and photos for newspaper food editors, planning a satellite media tour, and arranging a luncheon for New York magazine food editors. Simultaneously, I was finishing a press kit for another client while fielding requests for new product samples from food editors for still another client, and working as part of a team on a Web site for a fourth client, while writing a newsletter for a fifth.
With work in a frenzy, I made a choice to neglect the beast so I could concentrate on my clients’ needs first. Now the work is under control. So I figured it was time to return to the beast.
What’s new in the food world? An interesting consumer survey conducted exclusively for HomeWorld Business by NPD Houseworld, reported in the January 30-February 12 issue.
It shows that in 2005, 51.4 percent of consumers prepared most of the meals in the home (versus 52.1 percent in 2001). Of all consumers, 17.8 percent said they prepare all their meals at home (18.8 percent in 2001) and 26.9 percent said they prepare some (26.3 percent in 2001). So, nearly 70 percent continue to prepare all or most of their meals at home.
We are so used to saying that nobody’s cooking, that we help to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. In an interview with Jacques Pepin for the Associated Press a few years ago, he pointed out to me that if nobody is cooking, why is the supermarket full of fresh produce and food ingredient products? Do they back up a dump truck each night at the supermarket to dump food that’s going bad because nobody is buying and nobody is cooking?
Well, I do believe people buy food ingredients, planning to cook, but end up tossing them when desire bumps up against time constraints. (I do it myself.) However, more consumers are cooking than we give them credit for. And by being dismissive of cooking, instead of promoting and encouraging more of it, we food marketers do ourselves a disservice.
The answer is recipes with sophisticated flavors that can be made simply, using the food products we market. Designing cookware and appliances that harness new technologies to speed up and enhance the quality of the way we cook. Finding more new short-cut processed food products that give real value. We can offer the solution, make a profit, and fulfill a deep consumer need: to nourish others with delicious, homemade meals that appeal to the whole family and fit the time constraints we face daily.
We can do it, as long as we recognize that consumers are cooking. And surveys confirm they are. We just need to believe.
