New magazine caters for foodies' growing appetite

By JULIE MIDDLETON


The heat is being turned up in the kitchen - hit foodie magazine Cuisine, which has 377,000 readers, is facing competition from a new glossy called Dish.

The first edition of the 146-page title was served up last Monday. Slightly larger format than Cuisine but with fewer pages, it is owned and edited by Catherine Bell, the founder of Auckland cooking school Epicurean Workshop, and reflects the personalities and recipes associated with it.

Ms Bell expects Dish to be quarterly and has printed an ambitious 25,000 copies of the first edition. Like Cuisine, her first foray into editing is colourful, full of upmarket lifestyle advertising, and sells for $8.95.

But Ms Bell is not trying to topple Cuisine, which sells 76,731 copies monthly. Rather, she thinks there is room for another food magazine.

"I have an enormous amount of respect for Cuisine. I'm sure they feel a bit nervous - but it's good."

But Dish is not the only new entrant. Next week, Gourmet Traveller Wine, formerly published as Australian Gourmet Traveller Wine, will be launched in New Zealand as a transtasman magazine.


Kate Coughlan, the editor-in-chief of Cuisine, welcomes competition - "It makes us feel invigorated".

New Zealanders' appetite for lifestyle magazines is yet to peak, she says.

Spark Media partner Louise Bond said local magazines increased their advertising revenue 12 per cent in the year to June, but she questioned whether Dish would be able to attract the necessary advertising dollars long-term.

Cuisine, founded in 1986 by Julie Dalzell, blazed the foodie magazine trail, and was eventually followed by recipe-oriented, bi-monthly supermarket publications.

The Foodtown Magazine, edited by food writer Jan Bilton, is three years old and has a circulation of 37,000; New World's four-year-old magazine essentially food claims 157,000 readers.

Former Cuisine editor Lyn Barnes last year described glossy food mags as "the new porn" on people's bedside tables.

More generally oriented lifestyle magazines and newspapers have upped their food sections to compete. ACP's Home and Building became Home and Entertaining in early 1999 and expanded its food space.

Next will add up to 10 pages to its food section by the end of the year, says Debra Millar, ACP's group publisher of consumer titles.

Ms Dalzell says New Zealanders are spending more on eating out and are aware of the variety of local produce.

Also fuelling their interest in food magazines are health consciousness and the "cult of the chef".

But thanks to a wide range of ingredients once considered exotic, "you don't have to be a strongly good cook to put together good food", said Ms Dalzell.