Edible magazines expands to Worcester
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The inaugural issue of Edible Worcester
The food-centric magazine chain Edible has expanded to Worcester.
Edible Worcester, whose first print edition came out July 1, joins six others in Massachusetts: Edible Boston, Edible South Shore & South Coast, Edible Cape Cod, Edible Berkshires, Edible Vineyard and Edible Pioneer Valley.
Ilene Bezahler, Edible Boston's editor-in-chief and publisher since its founding in 2006, said she was sure to include Worcester County in that magazine’s territory, knowing how many farms provided to Boston restaurants or set up booths at farmers markets there.
“I grabbed Worcester because it was so important to Boston food,” Bezahler said.
Now, with the city’s growing restaurant scene, the timing was right to add a standalone Edible Worcester edition, said Sarah Blackburn, the associate publisher and managing editor of Edible Worcester.
With Edible Boston, they found businesses in the city of Worcester to be less receptive to being lumped in with Boston than farms and others farther away, she said. They preferred a publication with their own city’s name.
“People were saying to us, ‘Worcester’s not Boston,’” Blackburn said. “They said, ‘If you ever have an Edible Worcester, we’d be in.’”
The first issue of Edible Worcester includes features on CraftRoots Brewing in Milford, Indian Head Farm in Berlin, Lettuce Be Local of Sterling and others. Edible issues typically focus more on those producing food than on restaurants themselves, finding a niche while letting others run, say, restaurant reviews.
“We feel like we’re the voice of the producer,” Bezahler said.
The growth of Edible magazines coincides with consumers’ preference for local food, as well as the struggles of farms dealing with higher land and labor costs. The foodie movement has been able to lift many of those farms, Blackburn said.
“It’s been really lucky for all the Edible magazines in general,” she said of the stronger focus on local food and produce.
Edible Worcester is planned to be published quarterly, with another issue coming out this fall. The magazine has committed to those first two issues, gauging advertiser support before continuing on.
Bezahler publishes Edible Boston and Edible Worcester through a licensing agreement with the Edible parent company.
Other Edible publications have been published in Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont's Green Mountains and Connecticut, where there are two, among more than 90 across the United States and Canada.
Edible Boston publishes 35,000 copies per issue, with 5,000 copies printed for the first Edible Worcester run. The goal, Blackburn said, is to eventually get to 10,000 to 15,000 copies for Worcester.
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