America’s Test Kitchen carved out space as a high-end media brand long before the era of superstar TV chefs, gaining a large and loyal following behind co-founder Christopher Kimball. After Kimball left in a contract dispute three years ago, CEO David Nussbaum—at the company for less than two months—had to innovate at ATK on his own.
He did so, in interesting new ways.
The company was known for its rigorous testing of recipes and equipment, and for its folksy PBS cooking shows. It was trusted for its integrity and a no-ads policy in its print magazines and admired for brand innovation. Presiding over it all was Kimball, a bow-tied, glasses-wearing, transplanted New Englander in a red apron, who hosted the brand’s shows and came to symbolize its attributes. To the outside world, Kimball was ATK. When he left, the company was at a turning point.
It had lost Kimball, but it still had assets—a deep roster of talent both on air and off, two strong magazines, two television shows, and in Nussbaum, an executive with the experience to successfully manage a media company at scale.
Since then, ATK has expanded while still retaining the characteristics and audience that it had under Kimball. (Kimball has since launched a competing multi-faceted food-media brand, Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street. ATK in 2016 sued Milk Street for allegedly stealing confidential ATK information.)
"Despite a change in show hosts, ATK and Cook's Country TV remain the top two practical cooking shows on television," Nussbaum says. "We've improved our technology, increased our social-media budget by four times, built best-in-class studios and kitchens—all this has enabled us to improve our digital subscription offerings, and growth in that area is quite strong."
Two outside observers agree with Nussbaum's assessment. “America's Test Kitchen is thriving under the leadership of David Nussbaum,” says Reed Phillips, managing partner at Oaklins DeSilva + Phillips. “They seem to have a lot of strong growth initiatives in the works and are building a powerhouse business in the food-media space."
And longtime B2B media executive Doug Manoni, most recently CEO of Source Media, says, “David is unlocking the extraordinary potential of a uniquely positioned culinary and cooking company. He’s building on its fundamental strengths and setting new directions. It's all quite impressive, and it's making ownership and employees alike very happy."
ATK, formerly known as Boston Common Press, was founded in 1993 with the launch of Cook’s Illustrated, a print magazine. The television show America’s Test Kitchen came in 2001, and Cook’s Country came in 2004, with an accompanying TV show of the same name the following year.
Now the company’s product lineup includes:
- The two PBS television shows that reach four million viewers.
- The two paid-circulation magazines that carry no advertising and have a combined reach of one million subscribers (print subscriptions dipped in the years since Kimball left, but Nussbaum says it's rebounding.)
- A book business that’s sold more than 12 million titles since inception and launches 15 new ones each year.
- Paid-access websites with 400,000-plus subscribers, 3.5 million monthly unique views, and an increase in the average sub price of 30% in three years.
The company also has an online cooking school where membership has increased nearly 100 percent in three years, an ATK Experiences division that partners with the Holland America cruise line, and just last week, it launched an America’s Test Kitchen food truck at ATK’s headquarters on the Boston waterfront.
The headquarters itself is something to see. It’s located in the massive 100-year-old, eight-story Innovation and Design Building on Boston’s Drydock Avenue, a building that served as a military warehouse for decades. (There’s an actual drydock across from ATK’s offices, and as of July 2018, it had a massive freighter in it.) ATK moved to the facility in October 2017 and occupies 53,000 square feet on the second floor. The space consists of two television studios, a massive food-publications library, a photo studio, a working kitchen, a product-testing facility and more. It has 62 ovens, 18 ranges, and 35 refrigerators.
All of this was specially built out for the ATK move and features the latest technology (sound-proof studios with real working kitchens on the other side of glass windows) and top-of-the-line kitchen equipment.
The investment in the new space was significant, Nussbaum says. But it was necessary to fuel ATK’s strategic plan. On the way are ATK Kids, which launches this fall with books and hands-on activities designed for the next generation of cooks; an OTT television channel; and video of all types. During Nussbaum’s tenure, ATK has established food festivals in Boston and Seattle, an ATK app; and a CRM platform that has allowed the company to reduce massive customer churn and build a database of three million people—up from 1.2 million three years ago. Now the company can better understand the customer and target segments. It has started content-based emails and dialed back product-marketing emails.
Nussbaum cites a variety of KPIs illustrating the company’s recent trajectory, including the three-million-name database, the 400,000-plus digital subscribers, and social media reach of 8.5 million, a 113% increase in three years. The company’s ecommerce relationship with Amazon produces a gross $20 million in revenue, of which ATK gets a share. The book business had its best year ever in 2017, with revenue up 34% from the previous year.
Even headcount is up. The company has added 35 people since Nussbaum took over, up from 165 in 2016. “I don’t think there is any media company in America that grew by that much,” he says. The company is privately held, and Nussbaum declined to state its precise revenue, but he says that it’s grown in the low single digits each year he’s been there.
Going forward, the strategic priorities are to expand video production and distribution and reach an expanded audience. "Video has become the dominant media on the internet and content platforms have exploded," Nussbaum says. "These platforms have a great need for new content (check), interesting and unique content (check), and high-frequency production of content (check.)
"Unlike most media companies, ATK has been producing video for 19 years, so we're good at it," Nussbaum added. "We combine great recipes with science and compelling stories, and have experienced talented and well-known chefs. Thus, video is our number-one strategic focus and our fastest-growing sector."
ATK’s new facility has enabled it to produce significantly more video content. The company is producing three short clips per week on its YouTube channel, from which it gets a piece of the ad dollars sold against its videos. The YouTube channel now has 470,000 subscribers, and an average of 80-85% completion rates. The company plans to produce 186 YouTube videos this year.
The company is also active with its videos on Instagram, Facebook Watch and the Amazon Echo, and in coming months will be partnering with a Comcast NBC Universal video-on-demand YouTube competitor and is launching the OTT channel as well.
Part of this ramp up in video content is to generate ad revenue—ATK gets a piece all sales made against its content. But it’s also to access a broader audience. ATK is strong with Baby Boomers; YouTube’s audience is significantly younger.
The same objective applies to ATK Kids, where the first product (a cookbook for fourth to eighth graders) already has 65,000 advanced orders. A website is due in September, ATK events with include Kids’ Days going forward, and a partnership with Reebok is in in the works.
Nussbaum worked at private-equity backed companies in his past executive roles, companies with intense focus on returns on a short time horizon. In an interview, noted the difference between those companies and ATK. "ATK has powerful, respected brands," he says. "Our company has a clear and important purpose, I get to work with people who love what they do, and I work with a board that loves the company and is willing to invest for the long haul."
