The Scoop
The parent company of the defunct food magazine Gourmet is not pleased that a group of journalists have revived it on their own.
In January, a group of five food writers announced that they were restarting the once-prestigious food magazine, which magazine giant Condé Nast had shuttered in 2009 amid the company’s post-financial crisis woes. The group snatched the trademark after writer Sam Dean noticed Condé had allowed it to lapse in 2021.
The magazine giant initially said nothing when Gourmet relaunched as worker-owned collective publishing on Ghost, the independent newsletter and content platform. But in February, Condé Nast filed a lawsuit against Goulash Unlimited, the LLC set up by the new Gourmet owners.
Condé said that while the print magazine had ceased publication, it had funneled some of the remaining Gourmet audience into its Epicurious brand, where it features Gourmet recipes. The company claimed it still received revenue from Gourmet-branded content on the Epicurious site and on YouTube.
“As a direct and proximate result of Goulash’s wrongful acts, Condé Nast has suffered and continues to suffer and/or is likely to suffer damage to the GOURMET mark and its
business reputation and goodwill,” a February complaint said.
The lawsuit didn’t come as a surprise to the new Gourmet group. According to The New York Times, when they reached out to former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl to gauge her support for the idea, co-founder Amiel Stanek said Reichl blessed the project but “she was also like: ‘You’re going to get sued.’”
In a response to Condé’s legal notice, Goulash said the company could not prove damages, and pointed to the fact that it had allowed all but one Gourmet federal trademark to lapse over the last 17 years. (The company still holds a trademark for Gourmet puzzles, which it updated in 2024.)
The newly formed Gourmet team declined to provide comment on the case itself, citing ongoing litigation. “We are an independent co-op of five part-time writers and editors with no investors and fewer than ten thousand subscribers,” the group said in a statement. “What we lack in resources, we hope to make up for with a great deal of affection for good food and good writing.” The group also included a photo of a strawberry cream cake, one of the new Gourmet’s first published recipes.
In a statement to Semafor, Condé said: “We have great respect for everyone contributing to food journalism today. Along with Bon Appétit, Epicurious and La Cucina Italiana, Gourmet remains an active Condé Nast brand, with decades of recipes, articles and videos available on our digital platforms.”
Know More
While operating on a vastly more modest budget and in a food media world dominated by viral chefs on Instagram and TikTok, the new Gourmet has produced a polished digital product aimed at the type of home chef and food enthusiast who likely would’ve read the old Gourmet magazine if it was still around.
In its first months, the new Gourmet has published biweekly newsletters featuring new recipes for dishes like bacon, egg, and cheese egg foo young, as well as more in-depth feature stories on subjects like Maine’s fermented fish sauce boom, local New York City food tidbits, and food photography.