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Corner Office from Marketplace

David Nussbaum of America’s Test Kitchen on working with cooking superstars

Corner Office from Marketplace

Marketplace

Business, News

4.8545 Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2019

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

David Nussbaum knows whatever he’s doing with “America’s Test Kitchen” is working when he attends events with hosts Bridget Lancaster and Julia Collin Davison. “You’d think I was with Michelle Obama and the ex-president,” he said. America’s Test Kitchen continues to grow, expanding from TV and magazines into podcasting, and attracting more than 400,000 paying subscribers to its website. Nussbaum spoke to host Kai Ryssdal about why the $10,000 spent developing each recipe on average is totally worth it; how he’s attracting a new and younger audience; and why he took the job at America’s Test Kitchen in the first place.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, everybody, it's Kai here with a new episode of the Corner Office podcast.

0:10.1

Today we're diving into the business of America's Test Kitchen.

0:13.6

That business being the multi-decade's old food media enterprise that includes America's

0:18.7

Test Kitchen, the PBS show, Cook's Illustrated magazine, cooks country, the PBS show, and magazine, a podcast, it's called Proof, by the way, a ton of cookbooks, a subscription-based website, online cooking classes, a cooking club for kids. You get the idea. The guy running all of that is America's Test Kitchen CEO, David Nussbaum. David, welcome to the program. Thank you, Kai.

0:38.3

Chairman of the board and CEO of America's Test Kitchen, you may be. We should say at the outset,

0:42.2

you're not really a cook, though, right? I am very much of an amateur car, and I became that

0:48.5

when I joined the company, so I would not claim to be a cook. In the company of professionals.

0:53.2

So what do you do?

0:54.7

How do you, as the guy running the enterprise,

0:57.3

maintain the voice for which America's Test Kitchen is so well known?

1:02.0

Well, you know, my job really is to build the company

1:05.9

and to, you know, build a strategy that helps us move to more platforms, to reach more people,

1:14.5

to reach new geographies, to help our people identify trends.

1:21.5

And, you know, at the end of the day, you know, make the business bigger and more profitable.

1:25.7

What are your new platforms?

1:27.4

I mean, probably people know you best for the television show.

1:31.5

The magazine, of course, Cook's Illustrated, which full disclosure we were once upon a time

1:35.2

subscribers to in my house.

1:36.9

Thank you.

1:37.5

Where else are you going?

1:39.3

A lot of places, actually. First of all, we have a digital website that is subscription only, and it's

1:48.3

one of the largest, I think, in the country outside of kind of the big newspapers. We have over

...

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