After Gourmet magazine was shut down back in 2009, publisher Conde Nast relaunched the brand as "Gourmet Live" in 2010 as an iPad-only publication, and today comes news from Keith J. Kelly over at the New York Post that Gourmet Live is officially done. Reached for comment, a Conde Nast spokesperson tells Eater that the Gourmet Live app "will remain intact" in the App Store but it won't be updated with new content. The Gourmet.com website will continue to be updated and be the forefront of the brand. Here's the statement:
Gourmet Live, while the absolute right move for its time, no longer helps fuel the brand's evolution as the growth around the brand's web presence on Gourmet.com has greatly exceeded that of the Gourmet Live app. Subsequently, we have made a decision to continue to publish content to the Gourmet.com website, which has become a popular destination for both long-time and new brand loyalists. Gourmet.com will be updated with historic brand content – including past recipes dating back to 1940s – as well as new food and entertaining content. The Gourmet Live app will remain intact, not with new content, but with the full archive of content developed for the platform since it was created in 2010 after the print edition folded.
The venerable Gourmet brand has been in flux ever since the magazine was shut down. There was the Gourmet Live app that launched exclusively on the iPad during the Great Old Media iPad Magazine Mania of 2010-2011 (RIP The Daily). Gourmet Live would later also be released for the iPhone, but no one seemed to know about that. The initial launch included nonsensical gaming elements, presumably built out because some pricey social media consultants suggested them. There were also bizarre attempts to monetize the thing by charging $9.99 for something called "SuperFavorites." The app's content was updated weekly, and sometimes it landed online, sometimes not.
As far as "the brand's evolution," don't forget those Gourmet "special edition" "bookazine" things that recycled old recipes from Gourmet alongside new photography, commanding a pricey $10.99 at the newsstand. Seven have been released since the first one came out in 2010.
There's still residual strength to the brand, but the Gourmet.com homepage is a weird zombie blog featuring a bunch of outdated articles from early 2012. But look out for more of the ghost of Gourmet past, because the plan is to recycle "historic brand content" alongside "new food and entertaining content."
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· All Gourmet Live Coverage on Eater [-E-]
· All Gourmet Coverage on Eater [-E-]
· All Food Media Coverage on Eater [-E-]
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