Media: For food site Delish, Success comes from "Non-Foodies" too

-Digiday

In a news feed crowded with food videos, Delish has grown by going where foodies aren’t.

The Hearst-owned recipe site has taken targeting food content at non-foodies to an extreme by regularly publishing recipes that reference pop culture phenomena like Shark Week, “Game of Thrones” or “Stranger Things” to expose its content to new audiences on Facebook. As a result, shares account for a much larger percentage of Delish’s Facebook video views than close competitors.

Delish drew 25 million unique visitors in October, per comScore, its best month ever. It averages close to 500 million video views per month across all digital platforms, the vast majority of which come from Facebook. That distributed success has had additional benefits. Delish claims top Google search results against over 100 keywords, even competitive ones like “leftover turkey ideas” and “dinner ideas.”

“You’ve seen food become entertainment,” said Troy Young, president of Hearst Magazines Digital Media. “But because it’s such a service category, you still get a lot of traffic back to your sites.”

Delish launched in 2008 as a collaboration with Microsoft, which wanted recipe content for MSN. Under Jo Saltz, the former executive editor of Food Network Magazine, the site began making recipe content for third parties, starting with other Hearst titles, such as 20-minute dinner recipes for Good Housekeeping and more unorthodox videos for Town & Country on the favorite dishes of famous dead Americans, like John F. Kennedy’s favorite clam chowder.