BON APPÉTIT
Bon Appétit was started in 1956 as a liquor store giveaway and was first published as a bimonthly magazine in December of that year in Chicago. It was acquired by M. Frank Jones of Kansas City, Missouri, in 1965. Jones was owner, editor, and publisher until 1970, when he sold the magazine to the Pillsbury Company, who in turn sold it to Knapp Communications in 1975. Jones remained the editor of the magazine through both of these transfers. Knapp Communications also owned and published Architectural Digest, which was edited by Paige Rense. Jones recruited Rense to restructure Bon Appétit. She converted the magazine from a giveaway into a subscription-based, monthly magazine, as it remains today. Rense became the editor-in-chief in 1976. Condé Nast Publications, the current owners, purchased Knapp Communications in 1993. Bon Appétit's sister publication was Gourmet, before the latter was discontinued in October 2009.
BON APPÉTIT LIVE STREAMING The magazine's headquarters was moved from Los Angeles to New York City in early 2011. Concurrent with the move, Barbara Fairchild, the editor since 2000, was succeeded by editor Adam Rapoport, who was previously the Style Editor at Condé Nast's GQ magazine. Prior to joining GQ, Rapoport edited the restaurant section at Time Out New York and worked as an editor and writer for the James Beard Foundation's publications office.
In 2011, Bon Appétit launched the "Bite me" advertising campaign, which had an estimated $500,000 budget that included print and online ads, billboards, posters, and sweepstakes. The ad campaign came after a period of "sluggish performance" following its sibling magazine Gourmet's cancellation in 2009, during which a limited number of readers and advertisers shifted to Bon Appétit. During the same period, other food magazines, such as Every Day With Rachael Ray and Food Network Magazine thrived. Bon Appétit sold 632 ad pages in 2012, which was a one percent increase from 625 ad pages sold in 2009 but a decline of 27 percent from the 867 ad pages sold in 2008. Condé Nast reported 1,452,953 paid subscriptions and 88,516 single copies in 2012 for the period ending November 2012. The median age of its audience was 48.4, of which 74% were female.
