Food magazines. You see them on the shelves: glossy pages, perfectly styled dishes, headlines screaming that you need to make this now. Everything looks effortless. But anyone who has ever worked with editorial teams knows that behind that polished cover lies a world that is anything but simple. It’s a mix of passion, stress, deadlines, chaos, and creativity – and it’s precisely that tension that drives them.
It starts with an idea
A food magazine doesn’t live in the present; it’s always months ahead. While you’re still enjoying a barbecue and a glass of rosé in the garden, editors are already planning Christmas menus. In January, they’re already discussing Easter. It’s all about themes, angles, and the constant battle to be different from last year.
Every editorial meeting is a struggle between trends, budgets, and the audience. What will sell? What will resonate? What fits our style? Some ideas get cut because they’re too expensive, others because they don’t look “sexy enough” on paper. Only dishes with a story, a hook, make the cut.
From concept to kitchen
Then the machine starts rolling. Recipe developers, writers, and stylists work together to bring that idea to life. And believe me: just as many recipes fail along the way as make it into the magazine. A dish that tastes brilliant but doesn’t photograph well is out. A dish that looks stunning but is too complicated for the average reader, same deal.
Image Rules
In food magazines, image rules above all. A photographer and stylist can spend days making a plate of spaghetti look so tempting that you want to dive in immediately. The right light, the right bowl, a drizzle of sauce perfectly placed. Behind the scenes, that dish is often already cold or completely dried out. No one would actually want to eat it—but in the photo, it has to pop.
And yes, sometimes there’s trickery. A sauce thickened with glue. Steam rising from a pan created with a hidden cotton swab and hot water. The end result? A perfect image that tempts you to cook.
Deadlines and chaos
The romance of “cooking together around the table” is, in reality, a race against the clock. A day in the editorial office is often pure chaos: dishes that fail, ingredients that are unavailable, deadlines that won’t budge. Sometimes an entire production has to be redone simply because it didn’t work. Behind every issue lies sweat, frustration, and yet also pride – because despite everything, the magazine still makes it to print.
the creator and his voice
For anyone writing or developing recipes, working with a magazine is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s a dream: your work published in a magazine read by thousands. On the other hand, you sometimes lose a piece of your own voice. Your recipe gets rewritten to match the magazine’s tone of voice. Your words are molded—sometimes so much that you barely recognize them. It’s part of the process. It’s their magazine, their style.
Marketing above taste
What readers often forget: a food magazine isn’t just about the food. It’s also business. Every recipe, every article, is a balance between taste and marketing. A dish doesn’t make it into the magazine just because it tastes good—it’s there because it attracts readers, aligns with Google search trends, or performs well on Instagram. Increasingly, the kitchen is guided by what sells, not just what tastes good.
And yet… there’s something magical about them. Food magazines are a mirror of their time. They show not only what people eat, but also who they want to be. Healthy, nostalgic, adventurous, festive. And that is exactly what fascinates us.
Our ’70s project fits perfectly into this. It brings out the raw side of cooking: dishes that were sometimes over-the-top, sometimes bland, but always created to impress and bring people together. That’s the essence magazines are still looking for today – content that connects, tells a story, and is more than just a list of ingredients.
Food magazines are not a perfect dream world. They are, like cooking itself, messy, rushed, but with moments of magic that stay with you. And once you’ve seen what goes on behind the scenes, you understand much better how to bring your own story to the forefront.
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