- Business Insider spoke to 14 current and former contributors or employees at Bon Appétit. All identify as people of color.
- The insiders at Condé Nast's prestigious food outlet claimed that non-white employees are socially slighted and unable to access the same professional networks as their white peers.
- The company regularly features people of color in their videos. However, few of them have the lucrative contracts that their white peers have for appearing in videos.
- Several said Adam Rapoport, who stepped down as editor-in-chief on Monday, and Matt Duckor, who heads video for Condé Nast brands including Bon Appétit, refused to make Bon Appétit content more diverse.
- A Condé Nast representative told Business Insider that the company strives to make its workplace "diverse, inclusive and equitable."
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Days after former Bon Appétit editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport wrote in a May 31 newsletter that "food is inherently political," he again denied a pay raise for the only Black woman on the magazine's staff.
Ryan Walker-Hartshorn, who worked as Rapoport's assistant for the past two years and nine months, had a 24-minute phone call with Rapoport on June 4. She explained to her then-boss why she deserved a raise, or at the very least, a two-week vacation.
Walker-Hartshorn, whose annual base salary is $35,300 before overtime, had not received a pay increase in her tenure as Rapoport's assistant. Aside from her editorial duties, she said she had cleaned Rapoport's golf clubs, fetched his son's passport, and taught his wife how to use Google Calendar.
So, once again, the Stanford graduate asked for more money.
"I thought this conversation might be different this time," Walker-Hartshorn said in a recent interview. After all, Condé Nast, the parent company of Bon Appétit, had just donated $1 million to Black Lives Matter amid global protests over the killing of George Floyd. And her boss, who had been checking in on her throughout the demonstrations, was aware she had been unable to pay rent for three months.
Instead, Walker-Hartshorn says, Rapoport told her, "Well, maybe you should consider that this is not the right job for you."
"I am the only Black woman on his staff," Walker-Hartshorn said. "He treats me like the help."
On June 8, Rapoport announced his resignation following a furious outcry over recent allegations of racism put forth by several people who had worked with Bon Appétit.
The anger stemmed in part from a photo of Rapoport which circulated on Twitter on Monday, showing him dressed in a Halloween costume intended to be stereotypically Puerto Rican. Many called his costume "brownface," which Rapoport denies. In text messages to Business Insider, he said: "On the record: I was not wearing makeup or face coloring of any sort in that photograph." (Rapoport keeps a framed copy of this photo in his desk, according to Walker-Hartshorn.)
But according to more than a dozen current and former employees, the issues at Bon Appétit go beyond Rapoport. These employees told Business Insider that the problem runs to the core of the institution itself, claiming that Bon Appétit does not provide non-white employees the same opportunities on the brand's video side that white employees enjoy, that it excludes non-white employees from social and professional groups, and that it regularly misrepresents or does not represent stories from non-white backgrounds.
It is, these employees say, a workplace that treats people of color as second class to white employees.
"Bon Appétit is an unbelievably hard place to work at as a person of color, and even harder for Black staffers," contributor Priya Krishna told Business Insider in an email. "That became clear to me almost immediately when I was brought on as a contributing writer in 2018. It's why I've never been interested in going on staff."
A representative from Condé Nast said the company is "listening and are taking seriously the concerns raised by our Bon Appétit team members." To that effect, the representative said that the company is "accelerating" its Diversity and Inclusion report, to publish this summer, and a pay equity analysis, to publish at the end of 2020.
Business Insider spoke to 14 former and current Bon Appétit staffers and contributors about their experiences at the company. Seven are still employed by Bon Appétit. Each identifies as a person of color. Some spoke only on the condition of anonymity.
Five told Business Insider that the company has a "toxic" work environment, while two said the leadership is racist.
Under Rapoport's tenure, which lasted from 2010 until this month, Bon Appétit has evolved from a stodgy print outlet to a dynamic, beloved brand. That's largely thanks to its wildly popular YouTube channel, in which editors and guest contributors visit the brand's test kitchen to make recipes from the magazine or website.
The members of the Test Kitchen, as it's commonly known, have become veritable celebrities in recent years. Buzzfeed News, Vulture, and The Daily Beast have all written about the channel; The New Republic declared one series was "a Green New Deal fantasy." Members of the Bon Appétit subreddit sketch their favorite chefs and gossip about them as if they were A-list stars. Claire Saffitz, perhaps the most popular personality, has even appeared on Jimmy Fallon.
Buzz aside, however, non-white food writers have been skeptical of Bon Appétit and the Test Kitchen for years — either online or in private conversations. It's understood among those communities to take caution when pitching or applying for jobs there, according to sources.
"There have been calls for years to diversify the videos, to diversify the staff, to diversify the content, but nothing happens," Rick Martinez, a current contributor to Bon Appétit and former senior food editor, said in an interview. "It's this same thing over and over again."
The demonstrations after the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed after a white police officer knelt on his neck, have sparked greater conversations about the responsibility industries and organizations, particularly media organizations, have to address institutional racism. In the past week, top editors at The New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and other publications have resigned after backlash from employees and readers.
For Bon Appétit, outrage spiked over the weekend, cresting on Monday morning when food journalist Tammie Teclemariam recirculated an old Instagram photo of Rapoport and his wife, Simone Shubuck, dressed up in what were intended to be stereotypical Puerto Rican looks. "#TBT me and my papi @rapo4 #boricua," the caption read.
Bon Appétit staffers publicly disavowed Rapoport's actions, and he resigned later that day. Rapoport called the costume "extremely ill-conceived" in his Instagram post announcing the resignation.
I do not know why Adam Rapoport simply doesn't write about Puerto Rican food for @bonappetit himself!!! https://t.co/rW0k5tjMoS pic.twitter.com/odZnFLz2gd
— chez tammie (@tammieetc) June 8, 2020
Since the photo reemerged, employees and readers have since found damning social media posts of other employees at the company, including Matt Duckor, who heads video programming for Bon Appétit and other Condé Nast brands. After a Twitter user surfaced offensive tweets about gay people and people of color, Duckor apologized, writing on Twitter that there was "no excuse for them."
Another user tweeted a screenshot of a photo of a Confederate flag cake posted to Bon Appétit assistant editor Alex Delany's Tumblr. He and his friends made the cake, the post said, as a send-off for a friend who was moving to South Carolina. Delany apologized on Tuesday, noting that the image was posted when he was 17. "I cannot apologize intensely enough," he said.
The Test Kitchen was a locus for exclusion and toxicity
For many viewers, the Test Kitchen's content provides a respite from the tacky cheer of the Food Network or Buzzfeed's Tasty channel. In the low-key atmosphere of the Test Kitchen, on-camera personalities, including Claire Saffitz, Brad Leone, Molly Baz, and Andy Baraghani, share their creations and banter, giving a veneer of coworker conviviality.
But behind the scenes is a two-tiered system of pay, according to two sources within the company. Some Test Kitchen stars have contracts with Condé Nast Entertainment for their own shows. Some of these, like Saffitz, are freelancers, while others, like Baz, are editors at Bon Appétit who receive additional income through Condé Nast Entertainment, insiders say. Others only appear on the videos when asked, and they are not paid extra for the additional time spent appearing on these videos.
Assistant editor Sohla El-Waylly, who spoke to Business Insider on the evening of June 8, is in the latter category. She's paid $60,000 a year, and her current job description includes testing and developing recipes.
She was put on camera early on in her tenure, but for each one of the dozens of videos El-Waylly hosted or participated in, she says she has received no additional compensation.
Of the Test Kitchen's 10 to 15 most regular on-screen contributors, non-white faces include contributors Priya Krishna and Rick Martinez, test kitchen manager Gaby Melian, and editors Andy Baraghani, Christina Chaey, and El-Waylly. None of them, save for Baraghani, has their own show — meaning they're not eligible for lucrative contracts.
"It's odd to be held up as this one big happy family to the media when we are all being unequally compensated and there is an implicit understanding that white talent is more valuable than their non-white counterparts," Krishna said in an email.
"There is a big difference in terms of how they monetarily value the white employees versus the people of color," El-Waylly told Business Insider.
She said she asked Rapoport and video head Duckor for an on-air contract on numerous occasions. According to her, each time, they said they were unable to get one for her or that the contracts were tied up with the legal department — until she made her issue with the company public on June 8.
One hour after her Instagram posts, El-Waylly said, Duckor sent her a contract that would add $20,000 to her base pay. Duckor did not respond to a Business Insider inquiry about this claim or the others made in this story.
El-Waylly said she was "insulted and appalled" at the offer of $20,000, given that other stars allegedly earn much more over time in per-episode fees.
A representative from Condé Nast pushed back on the claim that people of color on the video team are paid less than their white counterparts."It's simply not true to say that any employee is not paid for their work," a representative said in an emailed statement.
"As a global media company, Condé Nast is dedicated to creating a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace," the representative wrote. "We have a zero-tolerance policy toward discrimination and harassment in all forms. Consistent with that, we go to great lengths to ensure that employees are paid fairly, in accordance with their roles and experience, across the entire company."
While some non-white staffers say they have have been financially hamstrung at Bon Appétit, others say that the spaces they were allowed to occupy were, in practice, limited.
Nikita Richardson, a former assistant editor, and Alyse Whitney, former associate editor, both recalled an email sent to employees banning them from the Test Kitchen. They believed it was directed at staffers of color.
One day in early 2017, Richardson and Whitney were chatting with Alex Delany and Brad Leone, two white staffers, about beer in the Test Kitchen studio.
Later that day, Whitney and Richardson received an email from Carla Lalli Music, then the food director and now an editor-at-large. The email instructed the two women, along with other staffers — all hidden from each other via BCC — to refrain from visiting the Test Kitchen again without permission. (In an email, Lalli Music declined to comment on the incident.)
According to Whitney, Delany received the same email. However, he continued to go to the Test Kitchen — seemingly without consequence. (Neither Delany nor Leone responded to requests for comment.)
For her part, Walker-Hartshorn said she would never recommend another person of color to work at Bon Appétit. But she said that she has made "a handful of lifelong friends" while at the company.
Others interviewed for this piece agreed: the friendship and networking opportunities at Bon Appétit, and the prestige of having that name on one's résumé, are tremendous. "I have a great deal of affinity for the brand, for the content we produce, and for the people that still work there," Martinez said.
But the amount of connections one can make at Bon Appétit as a person of color can be limited by the cliquey atmosphere at the publication, several former staffers said. "It's a very cool kid culture — you're in or you're out," Whitney said.
"You see your coworkers every day of your life and to go into work everyday and feel isolated is misery inducing," said Richardson, who is now a writer at New York Magazine. "Nowhere have I ever felt more isolated than at Bon Appétit."
From 'old and irrelevant and white-washed content to young and trendy white-washed content'
According to two current employees, Bon Appétit used to have a hyper-masculine atmosphere. Rapoport used to swing around golf clubs while chatting with staffers about their stories, sometimes breaking light fixtures, the employees said. They also added that some remnants of that culture remain: Those in the in-crowd call each other by their last names.
In the 2000s, and particularly under Rapoport's tenure starting in 2010, more women were hired. But the people Business Insider spoke to claim there was still little diversity among Bon Appétit's new hires.
"There's just a type of person who works there, culturally speaking," one former freelancer said. "Young, attractive, mostly white or white-adjacent people, and upper-middle class. Every time I was there I felt so poor."
"I think it's a perfectly valid strategy if there's diversity in the mix," Martinez said. "But [the magazine] went from old and irrelevant and white-washed content to young and trendy white-washed content."
Several episodes exposed the absence of non-white staffers — and suggest a lack of interest in getting diverse food right.
One Bon Appétit video in 2016 featured a white chef instructing viewers on "how you should be eating pho," which the site described as "the new ramen." (The video has since been removed from Bon Appétit's website, replaced with a note telling viewers to not harass chefs in the site's comments.)
Later that year, Bon Appétit again came under fire for adding popcorn and gummy bears to halo halo, a popular Filipino dessert. The editorial staff did not apologize.
As a Mexican-American man, Martinez felt compelled in his years on staff at Bon Appétit to keep producing food from his own ethnic background, even as he feared being "pigeon-holed" as someone who could only develop Latinx recipes. According to Martinez, Andrew Knowlton, then the deputy editor of Bon Appétit, once asked Martinez if he was "a one-trick pony" due to his focus on Mexican cuisine. Knowlton also told Martinez that his job developing Mexican recipes must have been easier due to his childhood eating his mother's cooking.
In a statement to Business Insider, Knowlton said, "I apologize to Rick, my comments were unacceptable and hurtful."
Krishna and Walker-Hartshorn both said they have repeatedly brought their concerns on the lack of diversity on the masthead, in the magazine, and on video to key leadership including Rapoport and Duckor. "My concerns were acknowledged, but I witnessed little to no action on this," Krishna said in an email. "Most big decision making meetings continue to be dominated by white staff."
Separately, according to emails seen by Business Insider, Walker-Hartshorn went to Condé Nast's HR department in April of 2019 and March of 2020. She requested both times for Rapoport, her direct boss, to limit his texts to her on the weekend and the amount of personal errands he required her to execute — most of which were outside of her job description. In the second meeting, according to Walker-Hartshorn, HR instructed Rapoport to stop texting her on the weekend. He continued to do so. (Condé Nast did not provide comment on this.)
A reliance on video revenue means complaints of diverse staffers are ignored
Current staffers of color say that Rapoport and Duckor, the video lead, are primarily interested in video for the revenue it brings in.
Bon Appétit's videos have become an unexpected cash cow for Condé Nast, the illustrious magazine publisher behind The New Yorker, Vogue, Wired, and other hallmark magazines. In 2017, Condé Nast lost around $120 million. Audiences moving primarily online slammed Condé Nast, which had largely relied on print advertising.
The concepts for the Test Kitchen's videos are developed by a separate entity called Condé Nast Entertainment. They're often geared towards what people are searching for online, or seasonal trends.
But according to Martinez, the SEO obsession within Condé Nast's video team means the videos become, as he put it, "base."
As a result, he and others say say, Bon Appétit's top videos involve ingredients familiar to a white American audience: every way to make an egg, or a chef's attempt at remaking Skittles.
"White food is considered the most accessible and 'simple,'" Krishna said in an email. "Especially early on, whenever I pitched a home cooking recipe story featuring non-white food, I felt like I had to work twice as hard to prove that it deserved a place in the magazine."
"We're asked to make mac-and-cheese and baked potatoes and try to put our personal spin on it," Martinez said. "I realize you want numbers, but we would never put out that content to the magazine."
Such pitches from Duckor's team came despite efforts from people like Walker-Hartshorn, who started hosting regular pitch meetings to increase diverse content in the magazine and website. "They would still come with the same pitches about Martha's Vineyard and lobster rolls," Walker-Hartshorn said.
Following Rapoport's resignation, Walker-Hartshorn is still processing what it was like to work for him. One memory sticks out from early on in her tenure at Bon Appétit, when she asked Rapoport how he wanted his coffee before a run at Joe and the Juice.
He stared at her for what felt like forever, Walker-Hartshorn said. Then, he declared: "I don't know, like Rihanna."
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