A media company covering the business of food, restaurants and hospitality in New York “and beyond” has launched with eight full-time salaried staff after a $2.5m (£1.8m) seed funding round.
Investment in the title began in the autumn so it could launch with “the right founding journalists”, Tcheyan, co-founder and CEO of Caper, told Press Gazette, adding the business model offers staff revenue-linked bonuses and equity participation in the company on top of a competitive salary.
This means Caper’s staff are compensated more like tech startup employees than journalists at traditional publications, which allows Caper to compete with those institutions for top talent.
Caper fills “a gap in the market” by combining high-level journalism with food “from a product and business and revenue perspective from day one”, said Tcheyan.
Before founding Puck, Tcheyan was vice president of growth atThe New York Times-ownedThe Athleticbetween 2017 and 2020.
He said: “I actually thought that food media looked a lot like sports media did in 2016/2017… it just felt like it had devolved into a lot of lists and rankings, and a lot of sites that were pretty much playing the search engine optimisation game more than anything.”
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He said this approach was generally supported by an advertising model based on clicks and scale, not quality content.
“And then I also thought about what we had done at Puck and how we covered some of these professional worlds, and in a way that really spoke to the industry class.”
Caper draws from both Puck and The Athletic’s models, leaning into specialist journalism and partnering with its journalists.
Source: Press Gazette
