Food52
- Thanksgiving is a massive day for food content sites like Food52.
- The web publisher has a digital hotline promising readers help with cooking queries and emergencies within 10 minutes.
- Forgetting to defrost is a big issue. And sometimes it’s a “purple turkey.”
For food publisher like Food52, Thanksgiving is its Super Bowl.
The site’s November user base is already up 60% versus the same month last year, and its search traffic has surged by 80% over the same period.
Back on July 1, Food52 attracted 192,000 unique visitors in a single day. On Monday of this week the site drew 344,000 unique visitors. That audience is expected to swell over the next few days, as Food52 hosts its annual Thanksgiving hotline, via which the site promises visitors it will answer queries within 10 minutes.
That mean the site has a dozen staffers working two hour shifts between now and Thanksgiving night, answering turkey queries like doctors on call.
Business Insider caught up with cofounder and CEO Amanda Hesser to talk about what it’s like to man a holiday hotline.
Mike Shields: So what is this week like for you guys?
Amanda Hesser: It’s really our moment to shine. We’re here to help people. Thanksgiving is a big daunting meal for people. Even experienced cooks don’t make turkey that often.
Food52And you’ve got the presentation, and the cousins that aren’t getting along, you’re supposed to put this big meal on at 4:00 in the afternoon, and the family pressure – it’s all completely at odds with regular cooking. So all of a sudden you have a bunch of questions.
Shields: What’s it like doing the hotline?
Hesser: We’ve learned a lot in the seven or eight years we’ve been doing it. We take two-hour shifts, and get email alerts when people have questions. I actually find it really fun to help people.
Shields: What kind of questions do you get?
Hesser: Well, the most common mistake is that people forget to defrost the turkey. And once you realized you’ve forgotten, there’s only so much you can do. It’s a big bird to defrost. Yet people don’t think ‘I should really do this on Monday.’ That doesn’t seem logical. So we actually post a reminder of this on the site all week.
Shields: What other kinds of questions are common?
Hesser: Most people want reassurance. Or they’ll ask things about whether they can replace certain things in a given recipe. The way we come at it is, we share their anxieties. We’ll get hundreds of questions. And our search tool has become bigger.
Another thing we offer people is a menu maker. People can essentially take a quiz, walk through what they want to serve and how many people they expect, and this generates a menu they can print as a place setting. Plus they can print out all the recipes they need. [A variation of the menu maker will be available on the site throughout the holidays; it’s being sponsored by Braun cookware].
Shields: Any funny stories?
Hesser: There have been some unusual ones. For example:
My oven is broken the night before Thanksgiving.
Food52
Another My turkery is purple.
Help! I date someone from Texas who wants brisket for Thanksgiving. Should I make turkey?
And more.
Hesser: A few years ago we started a commerce business. And that year, we decided to also sell turkeys for Thanksgiving. We sold 90 turkeys that year. And 89 made it there, and one didn’t. There was a shipping problem. It took five of us to find a way to deliver that customer an alternate turkey, along with a gift. You just don’t want to be the one not delivering Thanksgiving dinner to some one. So we’ll never sell turkeys again
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