Tasty ‘Struggle Meals’ succeeds
Tastemade has a U.S. hit in ‘Struggle Meals.’ It sees the show as key to expansion globally.
Tastemade sees the cooking show as a key ingredient in its global expansion plans.
Long before the COVID-19 pandemic, Frankie Celenza had built an online following for his cooking show “Struggle Meals” by coming off as an economy-class Emeril Lagasse for the dorm room set — the kind of guy who’d use a clothing iron as a panini press.
So in the early days of pandemic closures, his frugal foodie brand became newly relevant. Celenza’s videos surged in viewership as he started live-streaming cheap recipes on YouTube and Facebook. In April, he published an episode about going to the grocery store with $3 in his pocket.
Tastemade, the Santa Monica-based media company that produces “Struggle Meals,” sees the show as a key ingredient in its international expansion plans. The company is preparing to produce local-language versions for the Latin American market in Spanish (“Comidas Económicas”) and Portuguese (“Struggle Meals: Receitas que Cabem no Orçamento”).
It’s part of Tastemade’s larger push into international markets as the company, once primarily known for short-form recipe videos on social media, seeks a bigger chunk of global TV advertising revenue with its Food Network-for-theDigital-Age programming.
The 9-year-old firm launched the Portuguese version of its ad-supported linear streaming network in Brazil in December. That month, its Spanish-language channel also debuted in Latin American markets.
The Spanish version, which runs in countries including Mexico and Argentina, is expanding to Spain soon. On Tuesday, it launched an English-language network in India, its first Asian market. Additional rollouts are coming in Sweden and the Netherlands.
Tastemade cofounder Steven Kydd, who runs the company’s international businesses, said the firm is making “a couple dozen” original shows globally in 2021, roughly double what it produced last year. More than half of the new productions are for international audiences. They include local versions of the company’s half-hour recipe show “Make This Tonight” and a new series called “COMvida” (which translates to “With Life” and “Inviting ”) featuring Ana Paula Xongani, a São Paulo-based activist and fashion designer.
Programmers and studios have been taking their most popular series abroad for decades. But Tastemade’s expansion is a
small example of a broader trend in which media companies are spending enormous sums on local-language movies and shows for international audiences. Netf lix is planning to spend $500 million on content for South Korea this year and $400 million on Indian programming over two years.
Disney says it will have 50 original programs for its international streaming brand Star by 2024. And Netf lix’s non-English-language shows now have crossover appeal for Americans, proved by “Lupin” and “Money Heist.”
Kydd said the audience’s openness to international content represents a generational shift.
“We certainly want to appeal to the local audience, but our audience — millennials and Gen Z — are far more open and excited to learn about things around the world,” said Kydd, who previously worked in international distribution for 20th Century Fox.
With about 180 employees,
Tastemade is a small player. The privately held company doesn’t disclose its revenue, though it said it turned a profit in the second half of 2020.
“They’ve probably done well enough as a niche player,” said GroupM analyst Brian Wieser, who tracks the advertising market. And its streaming network is now available in more than 30 countries and 130 million homes through distributors including Sling TV, Xumo, Samsung TV Plus and the Roku Channel.
Its genres — food, travel and home improvement — are “naturally suited to the growth of global content,” said Lightshed Partners’ Rich Greenfield. “Even on YouTube, they did a really good job of finding talent from all over the world, and the genres they’re in travel really well.”
Exporting “Struggle Meals” isn’t as easy as just finding a local budgetconscious Anthony Bourdain, though. The Spanishlanguage version will run for viewers in Argentina,
Chile, Mexico, Spain and Miami.
“We had to create our own currency,” Frederico Leonardo Dora, Tastemade’s managing director for Latin America, said in a video call from his home office in São Paulo. “We haven’t decided yet, but it should be something like, ‘equals five bananas’ or ‘equals a dozen eggs.’ ”
The search for a Portuguese host brought other complications. The company wanted to find someone whose backstory embodied “struggle” in a more serious sense, rather than the American version’s starving college student vibe. The ideal candidate: a person who grew up in the favelas and left to become a popular chef but still comes back to make Sunday meals for the family.
“One thing we had in mind for Brazil was that there are a lot of people struggling, and not in a fun way, but in a very real way,” Dora said. “We had to be careful to use that ‘Struggle Meals’ title with someone that resonates well with that concept.”
Brazil is in the midst of a mounting crisis because of the pandemic. Hundreds of Brazilian business leaders and economists recently published a letter criticizing the government’s response to the outbreak, and they called for new measures to control the spread. Because of the crisis, Tastemade’s Brazilian productions are on hold, though the company is still producing shows in Buenos Aires.
But Tastemade is betting that once the pandemic abates, the struggle will be worth it.
This is taken from the March 30 edition of The Wide Shot, a weekly newsletter about everything happening in the business of entertainment. Sign up at