Eater London calls it quits

After over five years of publication, Eater London will be no more. The site’s editor, Adam Coghlan, announced the news yesterday on the Eater London website. He said that “as a result of economic circumstances in the U.S. right now, a daily news and service outlet in London can no longer be a commercial priority for the business,” adding that the site’s core maps will continue to be updated a few times per year.

For now, it appears that London is the only city where Eater plans a departure. There are currently twenty-six separate Eater sites (including London) that feature major metropolitan areas spanning the continental US plus Montreal, Canada, and the flagship Eater.com page. Founded in 2005, Eater was acquired by Vox Media eight years later, in 2013. Subsequently, the brand has expanded to include the Gastropod podcast, a subscription wine club, and multiple television series. Eater has garnered four James Beard Foundation awards for excellence in food media, the most recent in 2018.

As stated in Coghlan’s post announcing the departure from the UK, sites that report on restaurants are facing significant headwinds due to seismic shifts in the hospitality industry following the pandemic and other crises such as Brexit and the #Metoo movement that shined a spotlight on sometimes toxic restaurant work environments.

Of interest, Eater has a cookbook coming out this September: Eater: 100 Essential Restaurant Recipes from the Authority on Where to Eat and Why It Matters by Eater and Hillary Dixler Canavan