美食媒體網站Food52如何以小搏大

In 2009, Food52 had a level of sweet, indie appeal. The cooking site, which was founded by former New York Times food writer Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, featured well-shot food photos, friendly how-to videos, and fervent community debates on which fat to use in a pie crust or the best way to melt caramel. The recipes were curated and vetted. The members were more sophisticated than your average Rachael Ray fan.

在2009年的時候，美食網站Food52還有一些獨立小衆網站的格調。這個美食網站是由《紐約時報》(TheNew York Times)前美食作家阿曼達o海瑟和梅利爾o斯塔布斯創辦的。除了很多拍得非常漂亮的美食圖片、很容易上手的教學視頻之外，網友們圍繞各種美食話題的爭論也異常熱烈，比如做餡餅的時候應該用哪種油，或者應該怎樣熔化焦糖等等。網站上提供的食譜都經過了精心的編輯和審覈。普通會員的烹飪水平要比《瑞秋美食秀》(Rachael Ray）的觀衆強多了。

For all of this, the site was soon rewarded with a monthly audience of more than a million people, as measured by unique users. Yet compared to a site like —monthly audience: 30 million—Food52 was small potatoes. (Heirloom fingerling potatoes, no doubt, but small all the same.)

因此，這個網站很快擁有了每月100萬次訪問量的粉絲羣。但跟這種擁有3000萬次月訪問量的網站相比，Food52只不過是一盤小菜。

In 2013, Hesser and Stubbs decided to change that. The pair raised $2 million in a Series A funding round from Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments and others to become a digital foodie force. Content plus commerce plus community was the business model du jour, and Hesser and Stubbs saw an opportunity to go deeper with their small but engaged community.

2013年，海瑟和斯塔布斯決心改變這種局面。在A輪融資中，她們從貝塔斯曼數字媒體投資公司（Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments）等風投機構那裏融資200萬美元。“內容+電商+社區”成了Food52的特色業務模式，而且海瑟和斯塔布斯也認爲，這家小而有特色的美食社區完全有機會走得更深、更遠。

The company grew to 28 employees and moved into a new kitchen-office hybrid space, laden with plated dishes from test recipes and shoots. (On a recent visit, its staff snacked on a whole roasted fish and fizzy cocktails, while I coughed on the fumes from some pungent roasted chili peppers.)

如今這家公司已經擁有28名員工，並且搬到了一個半是廚房、半是辦公室的辦公場所。這裏到處都是一盤盤用來測試味道和拍照的美食。（在最近一次實地訪問中，該公司的員工正在拿一整條烤魚和冒着汽泡的雞尾酒當點心，而烤辣椒的辣味讓我忍不住咳嗽起來。）

Food52 also used the additional capital to expand into commerce. A year ago the company launched Provisions, a website that sells the accessories and lifestyle products that accompany its recipes, such as the cookware in which Food52 has used to display its recipes and pantry items like sauces, oils, and salts. There are plenty of esoteric accessories, too, like a very necessary $585 champagne saber and tiny knit hats for eggs.

Food52也非常注重利用額外的資本來擴展業務。比如一年前該公司推出了一個名叫Provisions的網站，主要銷售美食的附屬器具和保健產品，比如Food52用來展示美食的廚房用具，另外還有油鹽醬醋等等。另外還有一些非常小衆的獨家器械，比如一柄非常實用的價值585美元的“香檳劍”，以及用來存放雞蛋的“保鮮帽”等。

With Provisions, Food52 goes full circle. The content integrates the recipes, the recipes integrate the store, and the store’s inventory is integrated into Collections, a Pinterest-like part of the site that lets users save recipes, articles, and items for purchase in one place.

Provisions上線後，Food52的業務就隨之實現了充分循環。內容融合食譜，食譜融合商店，商店庫存又被融合到網站的“收藏”部分。這個部分的功能有些像圖片網站Pinterest，可以讓用戶在同一個地方保存食譜、文章或者打算購買的商品。

The move appears to be working. Food52 now has 3.6 million monthly unique visitors, up from 1.7 million a year ago. Email subscriptions have doubled from 650,000 to 1.5 million. The number of recipes has increased threefold since April of last year to 27,000.

這個動作似乎已經見到了成效。現在該網站每月已擁有360萬名獨立訪客，比去年的170萬增加了幾乎一倍。電子郵件訂閱數也從去年的65萬上漲到今年的150萬，提高了一倍多。另外從去年四月至今，該網站分享的菜譜數量已經達到27,000份，整整增長了三倍。

Better still: One year in, Provisions has grown to make-up two thirds of Food52’s gross revenue. (The rest comes from advertisements.) With 30,000 shoppers, half of which have become return customers, the company hit its second and third-highest revenue weeks this summer, a rare feat for a seasonal commerce business. Its customers are also younger—more than half are under the age of 34, Hesser says—despite the “disposable income” nature of the site’s products.

更樂觀的是，僅僅在一年時間裏，Provisions就貢獻了Food52的毛收入的三分之二（其餘部分來自廣告）。憑藉3萬多名購物者的貢獻（其中有一半人已經成了回頭客），該公司有史以來營收入第二、第三高的兩個星期都是在今年夏天實現的。對於這種受季節性影響比較明顯的電商業務來說，這實在是了不起的成績。海瑟表示，Food52的顧客也很年輕，其中半數以上不滿34歲——儘管該網站商品都屬於需要花費“居民可支配收入”的範疇。

The biggest surprise? Provisions’ top-selling category isn’t even cooking-related. Storage and organization items, such as laundry baskets and dryer balls, lead the way. Many top-performing items are sold exclusively by Food52, affirming the lesson every young e-commerce company learns: If it’s sold on Amazon , you’re going to get beat. Which is why Food52 sells custom hand-blown ice buckets, an exclusive spice blend of black sesame, ocean salt and seaweed, and Stumptown coffee travel kits. Oh, and wreaths. “People go nuts for wreaths,” Hesser says.

最令人驚訝的是，在Provisions上賣得最火的商品類別，居然是與烹飪沒有任何關係的“存儲與組織”類商品，比如洗衣簍和乾衣球等等。許多熱門商品只在Food52上獨家銷售，這再次說明了一個所有年輕的電子商務公司都應該明白的道理——如果你把東西拿到亞馬遜上賣，你就會輸得很慘。這就是爲什麼Food52要銷售專門手工定做的冰桶、用黑芝麻做成的獨家調料、海鹽、海帶、斯湯普敦咖啡旅行套裝等別具一格的商品，對了，還有花環，海瑟表示：“人們幾乎瘋狂地喜歡花環。”

The next opportunity for Food52 is to design its own products, which the company has already explored in partnership with its vendors. Food52 has created a custom farmer’s market tote bag with MZ Wallace, the New York handbag company, and a set of tea towels with 52 stripes with designer Christina Weber. The company is also returning to Hesser’s publishing roots in a deal with Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Random House subsidiary Crown Publishing, to create four to five cooking-related books each year.

Food52的下一個商機是設計自己的產品，目前該公司已經開始與一些廠商展開合作。比如它與紐約手提包公司MZ Wallace合作開發了一款定製的農產品購物袋；與設計師克里斯蒂娜o韋伯合作開發了一系列擦拭杯盤用的抹布。另外該公司還利用了海瑟的出版業背景，打算今年與十速出版社【Ten Speed Press，隸屬於蘭登書屋(Random House)子公司皇冠出版社(Crown Publishing)】合作，出版四五本烹飪書。

In the world of food-related online communities, Food52 is still tiny. But its boutique appeal, bolstered by unusual content and a genuinely engaged audience, seems to be valuable as the digital media landscape becomes increasingly fragmented. The company has invested very little in marketing thus far, but its audience is growing and staying highly engaged. “Its not that we are like, ‘Oh slow growth,’” Hesser says. “But we feel like the way we maintain our brand is by being thoughtful and careful about how we grow.” For niche websites, it’s better to go deep than wide. Or to use another popular startup maxim: It’s better to build something that 100 people love than something that 1 million people only kind of like.

在美食網絡社區領域，Food52仍然是一個小社區。但是隨着數字媒體市場變得愈發細化，Food52憑藉其獨特的內容和積極參與的用戶羣，已經成爲一家極具魅力，頗有價值的公司。到目前爲止，該公司在營銷方面的投資很少，但它的用戶羣仍然在穩步上漲，而且保持了很高的參與度。海瑟表示：“並不是說我們覺得：‘噢，增長太慢了。’我們認爲，要保持品牌的聲譽，就要對增長方式保持深思熟慮、小心謹慎。”對於小衆網站來說，做深比做大更重要。或者用另一句創業界流行的格言來概括：做一個讓100個人深愛的東西，要強於做一個100萬人僅僅是有點喜歡的東西。