Thanks for your interest in pitching stories for bonappetit.com. We’re glad you’re here! Below you’ll find some general guidelines, followed by instructions for how to pitch each section of the site. We look forward to hearing your ideas.
General Pitch Guidelines
First, check to see if we’ve covered something similar recently. If we have, consider what you hope to add with your story.
Start your email with a sentence about who you are. Think about why you are the best person to write the story and how your personal perspective will factor into the article.
Propose a few sample headlines. This will help cue us into the hook—the compelling angle of the story that’ll draw the reader in.
Include a brief (about a paragraph or so!) explanation of the story you want to tell. Please be as specific as possible. Consider the angle, perspective, point of tension, and sense of timeliness or general relevance for the moment. And while you’re at it, show off your own personal writing style.
If the story requires reporting or investigating, show us you’ve done some groundwork to support the angle you wish to pursue. Give us an idea of who you’ve already talked to, who you plan to include, and/or where the idea came from.
Include a few links to relevant articles you’ve written. These clips don’t have to be about food, but they should show your writing voice at its best. If you don’t have clips, don’t worry! We welcome new and emerging writers.
Our standard rates begin at $250 for stories in the 400-word range and go up from there as determined by word count, experience, and the complexity and/or amount of reporting in the piece.
If there’s a social component that makes sense, please include that in your pitch. (Let’s say you’re going to write about pajeon, and you think an Instagram Story would be a great way to show how you make it.) We provide additional compensation for social storytelling.
We’re committed to featuring a wide variety of stories and culinary traditions, and to building lasting relationships with BIPOC and LGBTQ writers.
- How to pitch Cooking stories
- How to pitch Shopping stories
- How to pitch Culture stories
- How to pitch Restaurant stories
Cooking
For over 60 years, cooking has been the heart and soul of Bon Appétit. In addition to sharing delicious, user-friendly recipes, we strive to publish a wide range of instructional content that helps our readers grow as cooks and feel more confident in the kitchen. That can mean deep dives into specific ingredients (like gochujang) and techniques (like poaching chicken breasts), but we also know that cooking doesn’t start and end in the kitchen. We cover everything from navigating the wall of shelf-stable milks to washing dishes without wasting gallons of water.
Our articles are typically short (in the 400–600–word ballpark). The stories that perform best have one clear takeaway—say, how to pit peaches with pliers, or why you should never throw out olive brine.
We’d love to hear from you. If your idea is cooking-tangential and service-forward (as in, it teaches something), we’re listening.
General: Pitch us on a technique that changed your pie crust game (hello, laminated dough) or the secret to chewier cookies at home (it’s agave syrup). Write about why you always keep a bottle of abalone sauce in your fridge or the best way to keep basil from wilting. Be as focused as possible. Instead of suggesting a tahini tell-all, pitch a story about why you store your tahini jar upside down.
It’s That Simple: Walk us through a dish (or condiment or beverage or snack) that’s so easy, you could make it in your sleep. The “recipe” should be so straightforward, you could explain it to a friend over text. Maybe you want to transform any soup into egg drop soup. Maybe you know a spice blend to overhaul so-so fruit salad. Bonus points if the dish can serve as a template—so readers can make do with what they have—like this riffable pickle dip.
Cheap Tricks: Tell us about a supermarket staple that is worth its weight in gold. Think: how to upgrade canned soup or fancy-ify tinned fish. Perhaps you always have pancake mix on hand, but it’s not for pancakes. The chosen ingredient should be inexpensive, widely available, and ideally shelf-stable.
Cookbooks: If we could devour every single cookbook that comes out in a year, we would. Happily! But we can’t. That’s where you come in. Did a book make you a melted butter believer? Or introduce you to your new favorite pantry pasta? Or teach you how to bake cookies in a muffin tin? Like our other Cooking stories, the goal is to highlight one game-changing ingredient, tip, or technique. We prefer to cover new books (say, released in the last six months or so), though older books are fair game if there’s a compelling case.
Please email cooking@bonappetit.com with “PITCH: [your idea here]” as the subject line.
Shopping
Send commerce content and product review pitches to carina_finn@condenast.com. No PR pitches, please.
Culture
Food—and the hows and whys of what we eat—reflects the way we live. For culture and lifestyle, we are seeking stories that treat food as a gateway to talking about other aspects of living, including: pop culture, the internet, health, work, relationships, identity, money, etc.
We assign a very limited number of stories specific to regions outside the U.S., but we welcome pitches from local perspectives and with a global appeal. And we’re always interested in fun and humor, whether in a piece entirely dedicated to making us laugh or in moments of levity within a more serious story.
Keep in mind that our primary audience is the consumer.
This pitch guide should serve as a starting point for the kinds of stories that we’re looking to run. If your pitch doesn’t fall into one of these categories, reach out and make the argument.
Reported features: Spot something in the food world that you think speaks to the way we live now? We’re always looking for pieces that explore cultural trends, moments, and behaviors. We’re interested in stories about what’s happening in food culture, including how people interact with food on the internet, deep dives into regional food favorites such as Provel cheese, answers to timely questions that are popping off online, and historical dives into modern trends. It can be a report based on something happening in pop culture, such as this piece on why fine dining chefs struggled to watch the FX show “The Bear.”
If it’s a trend, tell us what the trend is, its origins, why it’s interesting, the cultural context, and why it’s sticking (or why it’s inevitably going to flop). You need at least three examples.
If it’s on one person or place, please note why you think a national audience should care about it. Please see the profiles section for more.
Whatever the pitch is, tell us why it’s relevant right now—such as a news peg, a cultural moment, an economic factor, etc.
Opinion and analysis: Do you have a strong opinion on a food, an eating or drinking lifestyle, or anything else going on in the food world? Send us a pitch! Though based on your own point of view, the piece should still be well-researched. Please also let us know why you are the person to write this piece and why it matters to write about right now.
It could be an argument for or odes to mundane or irreverent subjects, such as this one to flash photos of food on Instagram or this one to Cheez-Its or this one on the restorative power of eating chips before bed. It can be about a cult-favorite brand or regional food such as Grocery Outlet or the chile relleno. It can be about a trend you’re observing, such as this one about more and more drink chains selling boba beverages.
It can also be a case against something: A deeply researched essay interrogating the phrase “junk food,” for instance, or a short roast of Starbucks’s new chicken sandwich, or a critique of the latest internet fad.
We welcome pitches with a personal connection to the material, but it’s not necessary.
Profiles or Q&As: We occasionally take profiles or q&a’s with fascinating food-related people, like this interview with a chef who researches diners before accepting reservations or an expert who has deep and specific insight into snack and beverage trends or a committee of superfans obsessed with bringing back a retired soda. When pitching, please include why this person or what they have to say matters in this moment.
Personal essays: On occasion, Bon Appétit accepts personal essays with strong narrative hooks and a reflective voice, such as this piece about a transgender woman’s last meal as a man or this piece on how cooking helped the writer recover from brain surgery. However, we are limiting the number of personal essays that we accept. If there’s a story you want to tell, consider what other formats might work.
What we’re NOT looking for: the typical tropes (read this great essay for one example of why), e.g., how your grandma taught you to make TK type of food, how cooking taught you to embrace TK identity, or how TK dish keeps the memory of a specific family member alive—instead, take us a layer or two deeper. If it’s your first time pitching us a personal essay, please send a full essay draft for us to consider on spec.
Send culture and lifestyle pitches to culture@bonappetit.com with “WRITER PITCH” in the subject line. No PR pitches please.
Restaurants
Bon Appétit writes about restaurants in a myriad of ways, including covering where to eat, why we’re eating there, who’s behind these restaurants, and what it all means. As a national publication, we run stories that, even when focusing on a certain region, can speak to dining culture across the country. We particularly welcome pitches that explore the ways that restaurants and restaurant culture intersect with technology, identity, pop culture, and other areas of everyday life.
This pitch guide should serve as a starting point for the kinds of stories that we’re looking to run. If your pitch doesn’t fall into one of these categories, reach out and make the argument for why it still belongs on BA.com.
Reported features: Spot something in the restaurant world that’s worth a deeper dive? It could be a trend: an ingredient, a dish, a design element, or a method of service that’s suddenly all over the place. It could be a change in the way that people are doing business that will impact diners across the country. Or it could be the story of one fascinating person, and how their work is impacting broader restaurant culture.
If it’s a trend, tell us what the trend is, its origins, why it’s interesting, the cultural context, and why it’s sticking (or why it’s inevitably going to flop). Please provide at least three examples.
If your pitch focuses on a single person or place, as opposed to a multi-sourced piece, please note why you think a national audience should care about this one person or restaurant.
Whatever the pitch is, tell us why it’s relevant right now—such as a news peg, a cultural moment, an economic factor, etc.
Examples of reported features that encapsulate what we’re looking for: Maritozzi buns, a sudden stateside obsession with Japanese milk bread, pricey cocktails, colorful tortillas, fancy butter, the rise of ghost kitchens, how outdoor dining setups in New York City revealed a deep economic divide, what it’s like to be undocumented and unemployed during the pandemic, and how omakase became a status symbol.
Travel guides: The best way to pitch a restaurant guide is through our regular travel column, The Getaway. These digital stories guide readers through the very best way to eat through a new-to-you city for a single day. These guides are organized by mealtimes, with several cultural recommendations included between each meal.
We’re primarily seeking coverage of cities or neighborhoods within the United States. Make the argument for why this location is an interesting restaurant destination right now. Has the scene developed recently? Are there any relatively new restaurants or tourist attractions that make it worth visiting? Give us an idea of what’s cool about this place, and why you’re the right person to write the piece. The more specific your angle, the more likely it will be a fit—instead of pitching a story about everything to eat in California, consider how you would guide a reader through a day of eating in Vallejo, or a specific Los Angeles neighborhood.
When thinking about whether you’re the right person to cover this local food scene, please keep in mind that—while there are exceptions—we prioritize travel stories written by locals with a depth of knowledge.
Note: There is also a print version of The Getaway, which follows a slightly different format, and focuses more regularly on international destinations.
Examples: Ojai, Tulsa, Raleigh
Restaurant industry analysis: Do you have a strong opinion on recent happenings in the restaurant world? Send us a pitch! While the piece will be based on your own point of view, it should still be well-researched. Please also let us know why you are the person to write this piece and why it matters to write about right now. Pitches for these stories are most likely to be accepted if they can point directly to a recent news story, a controversy in the restaurant world, or an otherwise-current event that feels urgent and which you feel requires a strong response right now.
Examples: What Went Wrong at Eleven Madison Park, World’s 50 Best Is Our Rich, Out-of-Touch Uncle, The Problem With Male-Chef Redemption Stories
First-person perspectives: If you feel like you have a unique perspective on the restaurant industry, or a current, timely topic in the restaurant space, we want to hear from you. Have you spent time in kitchens, working front of house, on a farm, or even as a food critic? We’re looking for thoughtful, highly opinionated first-person essays. Examples of stories we’ve published that fit into this section include one on the importance of tipping despite so-called “tipping fatigue”, this one arguing against banning kids from restaurants, and an essay about why it’s a good thing ultra-fine dining is going out of fashion.
Please include as much detail as possible about your idea/argument, and why you’re the right one to tell this story. If your idea is greenlit, we’ll either pair you with a writer to help craft your story as an as-told-to or assign you the writing assignment.
Send pitches for your BA Perspective to restaurants@bonappetit.com and make sure the subject line of your email starts with [PERSPECTIVE]. Example: “[PERSPECTIVE] the importance of tipping.”
What we're not looking for:
- Profiles of people in the restaurant world without a specific peg (e.g., a certain cultural moment we’re in, timeliness, etc.) and connection to a larger cultural/historical narrative
- International restaurants and chefs, unless connected to a travel guide.
- Buzzwords. For example, if you are pitching a story about how a restaurant person is addressing systemic inequity within the industry, include specifics of how they’re doing this. What initiatives have they started? How does it work? Is it working? What’s the response been? How are they growing/tweaking/changing their process?
Please send your pitch in an email with “PITCH” as the first word in the subject line to restaurants@bonappetit.com.