Connecting to a fractured audience

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BOB SAFIAN: Hi everybody. Today’s episode is with Erika Ayers Badan of Food52, as she heads into her second year leading the food media and lifestyle brand. Since we recorded the interview, Erika’s announced a major restructuring. As reported in AdWeek, that includes laying off much of Food52’s commerce department to focus on media and the brand Schoolhouse. It’s a volatile time for all kinds of businesses. Erika came to Food52 after several years as CEO at Barstool Sports, a company known for controversy. Our episode doesn’t cover the latest Food52 changes, and we’ve invited Erika to share more. We hope she will update us soon. In this episode, we do get into the ups and downs and the experiments she’s engaged in — including a new podcast called “Work” that delves into lightning rod issues around the workplace. And we start by digging into how she’s approaching the disruptions of the Trump White House, tariffs, and Elon Musk. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

[THEME MUSIC]

I’m Bob Safian. I’m here with Erika Ayers Badan, CEO of Food52, former CEO of Barstool Sports. Erika, welcome back to the show. Great to be with you.

ERIKA AYERS BADAN: Thank you for having me back.

Copy LinkNavigating political volatility as a CEO

SAFIAN: 2025 has started with so much volatility. A lot of business leaders are on their heels wondering how to respond to the array of changes issuing from the Trump White House. For you, do you have a philosophy about how to respond? How much do you react to the daily news? How much can you ignore it?

AYERS BADAN: It’s funny. When the first announcements around the tariffs came out, it was on a Saturday. I was really freaked out. I called an emergency meeting on a Sunday. And that’s become the new normal, where there’s a lot of whiplash, there’s a lot of pontification, there’s a lot of speculation. And really, what I’ve gotten to is that you can see what’s happening in the Trump administration is going to be chaotic, and I think CEOs being able to stay the course and set their own pace is probably the best course. Being in a reactionary mode is dangerous in general, and it feels especially dangerous right now.

SAFIAN: Are you following Elon Musk’s X account as some people are to try to parse what’s going to happen next, or is that just a layer of too much distraction?

AYERS BADAN: No, I think that’s akin to… it’s funny, I sat in a board meeting on Friday, and I watched the president of the company have his phone tilted sideways with just the stock, and he was just watching minute by minute what was happening with the stock. You could do the same thing with X or Truth or Elon, and your heart is going as they’re going, but I don’t think it’s a good use of time. I find it hard to run your own business in that context.

SAFIAN: I saw that Food52 posted an in memoriam video of foods that are going to maybe get too expensive due to Trump’s tariffs. I mean, food isn’t inherently political, although I did talk to a food CEO this week who is lamenting that he finds himself and his brand drawn into conversations that he would rather not be part of, labeled as being for coastal elites by MAGA or maybe being positioned that way by his competitors. He doesn’t really quite know. Do you worry about any of those things? Do you think differently about your audience at all?

AYERS BADAN: That’s a really great question, Bob, and it’s funny. I think people’s interpretations of brands often come from places the brands never intended, and brands very often trip into perceptions that they didn’t quite intend and then certainly fail to be able to deal with. Our business is about lighting and home and table and kitchen. To me, I don’t really care who anybody votes for, and all of those people have to eat, and I’m assuming all of those people have homes. Now, that said, I think sometimes brands fall into, oh, this is for this group or this is for that group. We’re in an era of identity politics, which is very tough for people to live in, as well as for brands. I’m really trying to put the blinders on and stay focused on, hey, what do we need to do to get our company solid? How do we think about the future of where we want to go?

Copy LinkThe role of business in government

SAFIAN: I sometimes think, what is the role of business and business leaders as part of the checks and balances in American culture? And I don’t know whether you think about that at all or whether, listen, your job is to run the business and that’s what you do and there’s not another mission beyond that.

AYERS BADAN: The role of business in government, government used to regulate business. Now what you’re seeing is entrepreneurs are reshaping the government. Everything is topsy-turvy. I think this is one of the fundamental questions we’re going to have right now. We’re clearly entering an era where there will be less regulation, so will brands police themselves? How’s that going to work? Are we just going to pendulum swing every four years? So I don’t have any good answers for you, Bob, but I also think about it.

SAFIAN: And you mentioned that the tariffs discussions that you had. Are there examples of how tariffs affect what you’re doing at Food52? Are you looking for different made in America products?

AYERS BADAN: So we’re really lucky. Schoolhouse is one of our definitive brands. Schoolhouse is a preeminent lighting and home furnishings brand and company built in Portland, Oregon, and it is designed in large part in the USA, which I think is hugely timely. The idea when you look at home furnishings in particular, very often you don’t know where anything comes from and in that regard, tariffs and imports become a very, very big part of the economic conversation. So one, I feel very grateful and fortunate and frankly excited about the idea of a made in America lighting and home brand. I think that gives us a great position.

Now, that said, we have a million ways where we can be better at our own business, and we’re starting to model the math of, hey, is it better to manufacture in Oregon? Should we be thinking about manufacturing in other parts of this country? Do we think about contract manufacturing? How do tariffs fit into that? The lighting business in particular is very, very dependent on China, so it’s very hard to do anything in lighting without some base of manufacturing in China. How do we start to balance the quality that our customers want, the type of flexibility we need, and also the economics of speed to market and really price point?

Copy LinkErika Ayers Badan on her podcast ‘Work’

SAFIAN: You’re approaching the one-year mark of being CEO at Food52, which is a lifestyle brand as we talked about. The last time, you were with a very different vibe than where you’d been at Barstool, a different target audience, a different community. You look for new ways to animate and engage that community. And I know you have a new podcast which I wanted to ask you about. When I first heard about the podcast, it felt like, oh, that fits. That’s perfect. It’s a new way to animate and engage the community, but the topic isn’t about food and it’s not necessarily about lifestyle. It’s called “Work,” which it was a little bit surprising. Is this something you’re doing for yourself or for the brand? Why this? Why now?

AYERS BADAN: I’ve been here almost a year. I’ve learned a lot. It’s exceptionally different from where I came from. I think we’ve made a ton of progress, and we also haven’t made nearly enough progress. And we’ve made a lot of mistakes. I think we have a lot more change coming. I think we have some hard pivots ahead, but I feel that I have obviously a way better handle on the brand and the business opportunity than I did a year ago when we spoke where everything was fresh and possible. But when it came to what I like to talk about, I like to talk about business and work, and it would be disingenuous for me to say that I would know what to do if you have too much salt in your mashed potatoes. I’m the last person you should ask about that.

SAFIAN: You are not a chef.

AYERS BADAN: I’m not a chef, but I do really believe that professional women is a really important audience for Food52. They’re doing more home entertaining than they ever have done before. They care about style. They care about quality. They care about home decor. And the audience I speak to in large part is professional women engaging an audience who I think has a lot to offer to Food52 in terms of steering us where we need to go, and we have a lot of products and inspiration and aspiration that we can offer in return.

SAFIAN: At Barstool, you hosted a show called “Token CEO.” It was known for unfiltered transparency. The new show echoes that. I know each episode opens with you and your assistant talking through your weekly calendar. Now, what’s the idea behind that? Why let us in on that?

AYERS BADAN: It’s funny you mentioned that. I’ve given a lot of thought to, do I want to be revealing my calendar every week? But I think it’s rare for a sitting executive to be vulnerable in their process of their work and in the day in and day out, not struggle, but in the journey. And the reason I wanted to start the show with the calendar is it gives a glimpse of what a day in the life is like. It also is a real genuine reaction for me in terms of looking at what I’ve signed myself up to do for the following week. And there’s humor in that. And then I also believe that it’s relatable because that’s what every single person who is going to work is doing. You wake up in the morning, I don’t know about you, but the first thing you look at is your calendar, and then you’re like, “I have this today or I have that today.” So that’s why I decided to do that.

SAFIAN: A lot of CEOs are uneasy about being so candid in public. What’s the value of that candor, and how does it flow back to Food52’s business, or is it just about connection?

AYERS BADAN: I think candor is important in general, and I think consumers are looking for the story behind the story. And this show is a way for me to do a couple things. One is I’m trying to mod experiment and model out how shows could and should be launched, produced, clipped, cut, managed, and I’m dogfooding it on myself. So if you want to know, my real intention is to be able to create other formats that look like this that are about home and lifestyle and food, and I’m using this as a template. I’m realtime creating a template that I can then give to other people here. I’ve not really talked about that, but that is my intention.

So for example, we have two really, really phenomenally talented test kitchen chefs. I believe that they both should have shows where they’re showing not only the art and their craft, but also talking about how they feel about it and what they learned about it and what inspires them and how they got there. So that’s one way it helps Food52. And then the second is a connection point. One thing I really learned at Barstool was unwittingly or unknowingly, I created a community of really professional women, like I talked about, who are looking to other professional women to relate to, to be informed by, to ask advice from. And this is a way for me to keep current with that community who ultimately I think will help inform what content this company creates, what products we develop, and how we think about our go-to-market positioning.

SAFIAN: When you talk about the dogfooding, I mean, it’s interesting. So it’s like you can take the risks and show them that when you go down this road, it’s okay to take this risk, or this worked and this didn’t work?

AYERS BADAN: It takes a lot to put yourself out there on the internet. And you also, you have to be willing to be battered and kind of kicked around a little bit. How do we film things? What should that cost? How many clips should we get from those things? Where should those clips go? Those are all things that I’m trying to showcase with this. And my hope is that by showing not only the technical process but also the emotional process, that it can spark other people to be more confident about telling their own story in multiple different formats.

[AD BREAK]

Before the break, Food52 CEO Erika Ayers Badan talked about how today’s political climate impacts the way she thinks about her products and her audience. Now she offers hot takes on the modern workplace, shares the biggest mistakes she’s made over the last year, and more. Let’s jump back in.

Copy LinkHow unstructured serendipity creates resilience

On the podcast, you drop a lot of hot takes about work, and you’ve said that you’re mostly in favor of in-person office work and also that people are becoming less resilient in the workplace. And I wondered whether those two things are related or are they separate?

AYERS BADAN: Great question. I am a fan of in-person work. I don’t know that all businesses will go back to five days a week in the office. I think great start-ups will, in the most part, require people to be together in a way that is hands-on and in person in some capacity. And as it relates to the resilience, I think there’s a whole bunch of things that are leading into the resilience question. One is how kids are being raised and how much risk we expose people to. When you look at time spent of elementary school kids through college kids, you’re never bored anymore. You’re not out. You’re not left to your own devices. You’re not messing up and getting in trouble the way at least I got in trouble when I was in high school and college. And it’s because there’s a safer, more interesting option on your phone. And as a result, when you are forced into the real world, a lot is required of you, and you have to make unstructured time into something, and you have to propel yourself into new places. It can be very, very, very difficult. And so I think that’s contributing to it.

And then I think working over Zoom and in the comfort of your home — and I don’t think working from home is comfortable. I think actually working from home is pretty hard. It’s easier to tune out or feel more distance and feel less connected.

SAFIAN: I often think when we go to school, a lot of the things we learn are not the school work, but how to engage with other people. And the same thing happens when you go into a workplace, you learn how to work with a group of people in a different way.

AYERS BADAN: Definitely. You learn what happens when people don’t like you at work. You don’t experience that when you work from home. What are the power dynamics? Who’s the hierarchy? I remember getting my first job at Microsoft, and I was very enamored and terrified of the execs there, and I just watched them all the time. I couldn’t get enough. I just wanted to watch what they wore, what they ate, what they did, how they talked to one another, how they led their people, how they dealt with failure. And I got a whole tuition just sitting in a room. If you’re on a Zoom call, you’re not getting the full picture. There’s no meeting after the meeting. There’s no hallway conversation. Then I think that’s the osmosis that can really feed you at work.

SAFIAN: That unstructured serendipity that is part of a workplace, which is not always efficient but can be effective.

AYERS BADAN: 100%. You can waste a lot of time at work. The days I really need to get a lot of work done, I don’t go to the office because the commute takes a long time, the chit-chat takes a long time, but it is really important because you learn the dynamics of a place, and that’s really where the fabric and culture can be developed.

Copy LinkUnderstanding generational differences in the workplace

SAFIAN: On the podcast, you’ve also explored generational differences in work-life and work-life balance, and I’m curious what you learned from that? What we should take away from that?

AYERS BADAN: There’s been a lot of virality in the generational knowledge department. So I created a section called “Generational Knowledge” because one of the things people complain to me about all the time is, “I’ve got to work with a bunch of boomers. They don’t get it,” or, “I have to work with a bunch of millennials. They’re the worst.” And I was thinking, well, why don’t we just talk about it? What’s foundational to these differences? And culturally between generations, the social norm for how much you’re willing to work and how much you want to work and how much you value work and how much crap you’re going to take at work is really different. And that doesn’t mean one is better than the other or one way is right and another way is wrong, but they are very, very different. And in order to unlock value from people, you really need to understand that.

We had a topic about our office manager’s family vacation, and she was saying, “This company can not possibly have an event next summer because it is during our family vacation.” And I was laughing because if I was an office manager at the beginning of my career and my CEO asked me to do an event, I would pretend I didn’t have a family, and let alone we went on vacation together. So it’s just very different, but it’s a good thing to talk about.

Copy LinkOwning the product or the relationship as a business

SAFIAN: I want to quote something you said in a recent episode. You said that “To have a successful business, you have to either own the product or own the relationship.” Can you explain that?

AYERS BADAN: Yeah. I think about this a lot, and I think that if you are building a business or you want to have tremendous value, you either need to own the relationship, so the people who are buying and selling or transacting who are in the marketplace for things — you know the most people. You have the deepest relationships. You’re a trusted advisor. That’s one end of the spectrum. So if your company is going to be successful, one way to do it is to have an incredible sales force. You have deep relationships. You know your customer. Your customer’s inputs are making their way into your business. You’re able to build product for them. That’s one angle.

The second is the product itself, which is you are making something that people want and you own it. You know it. You are an expert at it. You’re iterating on it. You have a vision for it. And a lot of times I think where companies get stuck is they’re not one or the other. They don’t own a relationship with an audience, and they don’t own or create the product.

And it’s been a very good filter for us here at Food52. With vendors and makers and artisans, we don’t own any of the product. We do have a very loyal customer base. So it suggests that the problem or the challenge at Food52 is that in order for Food52 to be successful, it would have to create and own the product. And so that’s how I think about our business and where we’re weak and where we’re strong. And in general, I think that putting your time to the in-between when you don’t own the relationship and you don’t own the product is dangerous.

Copy LinkLessons from the first year as Food52’s CEO

SAFIAN: I’m listening to you. It’s been almost a year, not quite a year, that you’ve been at Food52. You’ve tried a lot of things. You’ve moved things along. Are there things that have been easier than you expected, things that you’ve been harder than you expected? Where do you feel you are on the trajectory?

AYERS BADAN: I think I’m probably more haggard than I was a year ago. It has been super insightful, great tuition. I think we made an incredible amount of progress in bringing back a culture. I think we’ve made great strides and have enormous potential in growing a content and a media business. I also feel, to our last discussion, I spent too much of the year in the middle, not focused enough on product, not focused enough on customer

SAFIAN: Because you didn’t know where to focus or because you made a misjudgment?

AYERS BADAN: Because we tried to do too many things at once. I had really hoped that we could accelerate revenue and accelerate very quickly in spite of real legacy issues, especially in technology. And the reality is that’s a lot to take on with very little capital. And so I think that to me was a big learning this year, which is, hey, we tried to ignite a lot of fires. We started a lot, and we saw what could burn. And this second year will be, I would say, pretty big pivot into the places we really feel we can grow.

Copy LinkWhy Food52 is focusing on social commerce

SAFIAN: One of the things I wanted to ask you about was social media as a shopping platform. It’s been a lot of growth for other folks, projected to reach, I don’t know, $140 billion or something in the next couple of years. Food is the third-largest category on TikTok. I know Food52 has a TikTok shop. You don’t have any products there yet, I don’t think. Is that one of these areas where like, oh, this is a place where we’re going to go, but it’s not time yet?

AYERS BADAN: No, this is exactly where we need to go, and this is exactly why we need to focus. To have a TikTok shop, you need to have a very strong supply chain. TikTok doesn’t want to be in the customer service business. So TikTok is like, “Hey, to have a shop on my network or my platform, you got to have this and this.” And a good example of the last year was, “Hey, I’ve got to fix the website. I’ve got to build social shopping. I’ve got to fix our supply chain. Let’s try to fix them all,” but to this conversation, “Hey, let’s figure out our relationship with our customer. Let’s make it easy to transact. Let’s make it easy to buy, and let’s put our beautiful design in the places where they’re living today.” So that is something you will see from us in very short order.

I really believe social selling, social commerce is here to stay. And just like posting on the internet, YouTube may want a certain time limit and a certain aspect ratio and a certain condition for its shop, but it will have a shop and Instagram will have a shop and TikTok will have a shop. And for anyone thinking about reaching modern consumers, they need to think about those points of purchase.

Copy LinkThe differences in the media and product businesses

SAFIAN: And so the fact that there are these big platforms, there are also smaller, more targeted, maybe more authentic or direct platforms and you have to be on all of them, or is this another one of these areas where it’s like I can spread myself too thin?

AYERS BADAN: In my mind, from a content perspective in the world I came from, we wanted to be everywhere, right? Barstool Sports, we wanted to be everywhere, and we built a very good production system to clip and cut things so they could fit in all the places. Commerce is a little bit different because to your point in the beginning of our conversation, the physical goods business is a really, really different business than a media business. It’s time intensive. It requires an inordinate amount of planning. It’s global. There’s a lot of factors that go into that. So the effort put into wire everything and then deliver against it is far more considered. So I would say from a media perspective, we will go everywhere where our audience is. You look at Substack, perhaps you look at Reddit, you obviously look at TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, et cetera, but when you think about the shops, the shops need to be in the places where it makes the most sense and where we can have the highest ROI.

SAFIAN: The media business as a business is a hard business. Is the future better in the product side and the media side almost becomes like a marketing arm for that, or do you still feel just as confident about what the economics are of the media side?

AYERS BADAN: Oh, I’m super confident in the media business. On average, media businesses are, I don’t know, 70 to 85% margin. When you look at a commerce business, it’s anywhere from 25 to, let’s say, 50. So the margin of a media business and the turn and churn of a media business is much faster than a commerce business. Now, it’s way more volatile. It’s labor-intensive. It’s very fractured. The media business is a pain in the butt, but it is a really beautiful business. Our value proposition will really be a loyal audience, a big social footprint, a storied history in food, a preeminent lighting brand, a deep manufacturing capability, a brand made in the USA, designed in the USA, and a content engine. And I think that’s a super interesting place to play.

SAFIAN: Well, Erika, this has been great. Thanks as always for coming on to chat. It’s always great to talk to you.

AYERS BADAN: I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

SAFIAN: I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.