Bon Appétit (BA), a 64-year-old food and entertainment publication, gained popularity with Millennials and Gen-Z via its YouTube channel. It was a key part of editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport’s rebrand of BA as a too-cool-for-school food hub.
The BA YouTube channel featured a personality-driven approach to cooking, starring a diverse group of employees known as the Test Kitchen. The channel features videos, reminiscent of a feel-good sitcom, with episodes ranging from a pastry chef crafting gourmet Twinkies to a food editor recreating Guy Fieri’s Trash Can Nachos.
Fans glorified BA, and members of the Test Kitchen became micro-celebrities. The channel grew more than 600 percent and gained a net worth of $8.5 million. It became the fastest-growing YouTube channel in the food space with more than 40 million views per month and five billion total minutes watched, or about 9,512 years.
The Crisis
During the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in June 2020, BA issued a statement from Rapoport saying the brand had “work to do” on diversity. He said BA would cover more stories on Black chefs, Black-owned businesses and “racial and political issues at the core of the food world.”
In a series of tweets following the statement, Puerto Rican food writer Illyanna Maisonet accused BA of tokenizing the work of BIPOC staff and freelancers. In addition, Maisonet posted messages Rapoport sent her when she pitched him. The messages maligned her pitch. Her tweets went viral.
Soon after, photos and posts resurfaced from white employees’ social media feeds. One included Rapoport in Brown face, a photo of a Confederate Flag cake drinks editor Alex Delany made and the racially offensive tweets of Matt Duckor, an executive at BA parent Condé Nast.
Sohla El-Waylly, an assistant food editor, later shared on Instagram she was hired at a salary of $50,000, despite having 15+ years experience in the food industry. El-Waylly also said she was pushed to be a face on the YouTube channel, for diversity’s sake. None of the BIPOC Test Kitchen employees were compensated for their YouTube work, unlike their white counterparts, she added.
Former and current employees echoed El-Waylly’s accounts, described Rapoport’s racist remarks, the toxic work environment that made it impossible for them to advance and how recipes were appropriated and white-washed. Ultimately, 10 of 13 Test Kitchen stars said they would no longer appear in YouTube videos.
Gen-Z's Response
BA’s fanbase took to social media to ‘cancel’ the brand, leading to a 200,000+ YouTube-subscriber loss and immense reputation damage to the company’s golden goose.
Twitter became the hub for Gen-Z’s discourse about BA’s reckoning. From threads of ruthless Internet banter to creation of anti-BA accounts, the brand was hit with a storm of angry fans. The word Sohla trended worldwide and unwavering support of BIPOC BA employees circulated on the Internet.
Aftermath
Since the controversy, BA has made significant changes in an attempt to win back Gen-Z viewers. Rapoport is gone. The YouTube channel features a largely new group of Test Kitchen employees. Video views, though significant, are dismal compared to the millions garnered at BA’s height.
El-Waylly continues to shed light on her experiences. She has appeared on podcasts, YouTube channels and in news articles encouraging BIPOC chefs, journalists and professionals to never settle for the kind of treatment she received.
BA’s reckoning exposed the long-standing institutional defects in Condé Nast’s leadership, why the American food magazine industry needs to reshape how it empowers BIPOC employees and the importance of maintaining Gen-Z favorability in the YouTube arena.
Lessons Learned
- The Value of DEI: Equality is a key issue with Gen-Z. Promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), such as having an anti-racist workplace culture and providing fair compensation, is especially crucial in winning over Gen-Z as an audience base and employees.
- Recognizing Cancel Culture as Accountability: While cancel culture has its fair share of negative consequences, noticing when an audience is cancelling a brand and also keeping it accountable for mistakes is key in making long-lasting organizational repairs. A brand must be able to reflect internally and see where change is needed.
- Understanding the Gen-Z Brain: Gen-Z users are immersed in crises as soon as they open their device. While BA’s widespread approval among Gen-Z has not returned to its previous level, the YouTube channel still garners hundreds of thousands of views. Understanding Gen-Z’s desensitization of crisis situations is vital in tackling a crisis with these stakeholders.
- Taking the Side of Employees: This case highlights employees’ role in crisis mitigation. When a company faces a reputation crisis, the best response team is employees who take the organization’s side. When the beloved Test Kitchen stars were the driving factors in reprimanding BA, Gen-Z unmistakably took the side of the employees and were not as receptive to the organization’s response.
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