‘How Do You Incorporate an LLC? I Have No Idea!’

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Since the launch of the pioneering, worker-owned sports publication Defector, five years ago, heartening tales of journalism co-ops have proliferated. The latest such collaboration adds a refreshing bit of gimmickry: after discovering by happenstance that Condé Nast had neglected to renew the trademark for Gourmet, the ambitious and beloved food magazine shuttered in 2009, a crew of media pals launched… Gourmet. The bold gambit has landed them coverage in the New York Times and Grub Street, as well as the support of Ruth Reichl, the original Gourmet’s longtime editor, who told them Gourmet “deserves to rise from the ashes.”

Since starting to publish, in January, the new Gourmet has been irreverent and unexpected. It has covered everything from what freezing Minneapolis residents protesting ICE are eating for sustenance to what the Epstein files reveal about the dining habits of disgraced elites. It’s taken burrata down a peg or two (“one of the creepiest foods”) and celebrated Malört, the famously disgusting liquor. (“Is this idiosyncratic beverage the solution to our nation’s problems, or is it just an industrial solvent? Why not both.”) 

Last month I spoke with Nozlee Samadzadeh, one of Gourmet’s five worker-owners and a software engineer. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

AB: Can you take me back to the beginning of the project? How did you initially get involved?

NS: I’ve known one of the cofounders, Alex Tatusian, for a long time. About a year ago, he texted me and was like, “I’m on this cool project. I can tell you more on the phone.” The second I heard about the vision, and the trademark application, I was in. We started with a weekly call where we talked about what we wanted to be; slowly, everyone brought in the type of stories and recipes that they wanted to commission and lists of the people we wanted to collaborate with. In the summer, we had a daylong retreat where we all met at cofounder Cale Weissman’s house in Ridgewood, Queens. Then we went to Wu’s Wonton King in Chinatown and drank wine and ate a bunch of seafood. It was a good day. 

How would you explain your big-picture vision? What do you feel is missing in food journalism that you’d like to offer people?

We were all big fans of Gourmet before it folded. For me, that means being unafraid to do something weird. And our tagline has become “recipes for people who love to cook.” Food magazines have contracted so much. You go to the grocery store and you don’t see them anymore. You see these one-off things that happen to be in a magazine format. They’re, like, Low-Information-Recipe Magazine. We’re not afraid of making our recipes not palatable or not easy to substitute. 

So far we’ve had Alison Roman with a manifesto for a recipe where a big piece of pork gets cooked in milk. Alison said this recipe was too ugly to publish anywhere else. It gets a little watery, a little curdly. It—air quotes—looks gross. But it’s delicious. We’ve had a recipe for malfouf, the Palestinian cabbage rolls, with a really lovely essay from Sue Li on learning it from her friend whose family was forcibly ejected from Palestine. The storytelling and the good recipe writing are both meant to make people excited to make this stuff. 

We’re all late-thirties, mid-career journalists, and I think we have a lot of ideas of what it means to create an editorial vision. But we’re still figuring it out. To do it together has been really cool. 

Have you heard from people who used to read the old Gourmet?

We’ve had a lot of dialogue with people writing in. We’ve had amazing support from fans of the original Gourmet and requests for their old favorite recipes. We’ve had emails with memories from people who contributed to the original Gourmet. And we’ve got some people who don’t like our coverage. We’re telling them, “We hope you keep reading!”

Between the press coverage and old readers coming to you, it seems like the trademark-application gambit has worked out pretty well so far. Have there been any issues? Any legal stuff still lingering?

No comment!

You don’t just pay freelancers a fee for pieces they write, you also share a cut of profits with them for three months after their pieces are published. I haven’t seen that before.

It’s something we were talking about pretty early on. We’re a few weeks from disbursing those funds for the first time. We’ve all freelanced in various capacities; we know how hard it is. Being able to share our success, literally, was something that was pretty important to us. We’re not inviting contributors into the co-op, but we are sharing the profits in a cooperative way. It’s a dream for us to be able to pay good wages for new voices. 

As you planned your own launch, did you consult with other journalism co-ops?

Definitely. Hell Gate in particular did us a solid. They shared language from when they formed their company that was really helpful to us. We’re excited to pass that on. If you’re forming a co-op, call us! It’s been a cool way to work because it informs the way we do everything, including interfacing with the world. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Hell Gate is a co-op and also down to help the homeys outside of their co-op.

What have been the biggest challenges of working in this way?

The timing. We’re five people, we live in four different places, we all travel a lot, and there’s a couple of little kids in the mix. A funny thing we talked about is whether decisions should be made unanimously or with a majority. Trying to get consensus can be tough! But our biggest problem is probably “Do we make decisions in the Discord or in the WhatsApp?”

What’s the response been like from food writers?

We’ve gotten a lot of excited texts and emails from friends in journalism with pitches, and particularly from recipe writers. In one case, we literally got a Google Doc of complex recipe pitches the writer couldn’t place anywhere else. Which is so awesome. We’re not Gourmet. We’re a new thing under the same name. But Gourmet had so many chapters of its life, and we’re excited to have chapters. Our big dream for the near future is to do an annual print magazine. We’re looking forward to our first event. We’re gonna have a launch party in the near future. We’re throwing around ideas about merch. It’s a never-ending to-do list.

Is there anything else that people don’t understand from the outside about what it’s like working in this way?

The one thing I always want people to ask about is, why is our website so brown?

Good question. Why is the website so brown?

It’s a good food color! So many of the good foods are brown!

I imagine a lot of people reading this might be thinking about forming their own things, too. Any wisdom?

Do it! Starting a cool project with your friends—it’s the coolest thing you can do. What’s the worst that can happen? How do you incorporate an LLC? I have no idea! We knew so little about the business side, and yet we could do it, so you probably can too.