As our editors can tell you, it’s a beautiful thing to stand at the presses and watch a new print issue of SAVEUR come off the line. When the brand went independent in 2023, we knew there would be challenges ahead. In a digital-dominant era, the survival of a legacy publication with a shiny new print mag and no corporate support was hardly a given. Yet, as our editor-in-chief Kat Craddock wrote then, the goal was never to revive the “old-school, high-volume print model,” a vestige of a time when publishers relied on “selling subscriptions for a song…just to build massive circulation lists.”
But independent food magazines can do something different by design: With strategically scaled-down print runs, editors, writers, and designers can pay closer attention to their work, speaking directly to the types of stories readers care about most. When you look beyond the newsstand monthlies, you’ll find a wide and rewarding community of independent food magazines, circulated via independent bookstores and specialty shops around the globe. These magazines have the creative and financial freedom to let their stories lead, commissioning writers with diverse interests and surrounding their words with stunning photography and dynamic illustration. It’s a great time to be in the indie food biz, and we’re delighted to share some of our favorite magazines with you for your future reading. Far from a comprehensive list (though it is a long one, organized alphabetically for your convenience), this is just a snapshot of what’s out
