AT A GLANCE: Edible Communities

“By publishing the kind of information our magazines cover, people can make better decisions about their food, and as consumers vote three times a day with their forks, the collective impact of these efforts is enormous.”—Tracey Ryder, Co-Founder/CEO, Edible Communities

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Tracey Ryder

Company: Edible Communities

Co-Founders: Tracey Ryder, Carole Topalian

Business Start Date: May 2004

Briefly Describe Your Business: Publisher of nearly 100 regional food magazines across the US and Canada.

For What Are You Best Known:  Community-based, regional food magazines that specialize in local, seasonal, sustainable food.

Top 3 Business Statistics or Milestones:  

·      Publishing our first cookbook Edible: A Celebration of Local Foods in 2010

·      Winning the Publication of the Year Award from the James Beard Foundation in 2011

·      Printing more than 6 million magazines per year as of 2014

What’s Your “Secret Sauce”? (Why/How have you achieved success?) Our unique business model: We are a licensing organization so each magazine is locally owned. We are not a “top down” model where everything is dictated from the top. Our publishers own and operate their own businesses and make their own decisions about how to run those businesses. They get support and gain expertise from the collective wisdom of our entire community, but they are the experts when it comes to the communities they live and work in. Additionally, the quality of the content produced in each magazine, is what attracts both readers and brand partners. []