Dia Stronach: What did winning the ACE Newsstand Magazine Of The Year title mean for Healthy Eating and Anthem?

Sally FitzGerald: “Healthy Eating has had such an incredible launch year, and to win this award was the perfect recognition of that. It was just as much a win for Marketforce as it was us, because so much of the success of Healthy Eating has been down to the hard work of our Marketforce account team and their determination to get us the best listings. Within about four months of launching the series we had almost 2,400 grocery listings, which is just unbelievable. The ACE judges praised us for our innovative approach and bravery in turning a one-shot into a new publication, and that’s something that’s really important to us too. Innovation is core to our publishing approach, and we’d never knowingly miss out on an opportunity to launch a new monthly magazine in the right sector.”

What’s the thinking behind Healthy Eating?

SF: “We’ve kept the umbrella series quite broad so that we can make the most of new trends in this area and create magazines wherever the need for information lies. Healthy Eating launched from our one-shot AirFryer Cookbook. In spring 2023 we could see that the air fryer trend was finally reaching the UK – we were behind the curve compared to most countries – but knew that if people were going to invest in buying an air fryer, they also needed to know what to cook in it. Air fryers were gaining popularity because they’re more energy efficient than an oven, but also provide a healthier way to cook. So many people were just using them to cook chips, but they can cook almost anything. So we launched the one-shot as a way to help people learn how to use their air fryer every day, cooking everything from curries to Sunday lunch – you can even bake in them really well.

Once we saw the popularity of the first issue, it made sense to turn it into a regular magazine, but we didn’t want to overload people by publishing it monthly. So now AirFryer Cookbook rotates in the Healthy Eating series with other health-focused titles such as Menopause Cookbook, Anti-inflammatory Cookbook and Gluten-Free Cookbook.”

What’s so special about the new issue?

SF: “The September issue of Healthy Eating is a new venture for us. We’ve partnered with slimming-friendly cookbook phenomenon Pinch of Nom, to create an official Pinch of Nom Magazine. Their cookbooks have sold over 5 million copies to date, and they wanted to diversify to have a magazine as well. When they approached us to work with them on it, we jumped at the opportunity because we knew it would have the perfect home within our Healthy Eating series.

“Community is incredibly important to Pinch of Nom, so the magazine is a hybrid of their cookbooks where they share recipes, their Facebook page where the community supports each other on their cooking and weight loss journeys, and their website where PON share cooking advice and even more recipes. Although the slimming-friendly element is core to the brand, the PON team is passionate about helping their audience learn how to cook and make healthier choices.

“The result is a magazine that has 30 delicious recipes, stories from four incredible PON superfans about their weight loss journeys, behind the scenes at a PON photoshoot feature, kitchen gadgets put to the test, a feature on how to cut up and use an entire chicken… There’s just so much. We’re so excited to see people’s reactions when it launches on 4 September.”

The magazine has established itself relatively quickly, why has it been so successful?

SF: “In our experience, niche food titles do well as they have such passionate audiences. And when it comes to air fryers, people can definitely be passionate! We talk to people who have two or three in their kitchen rather than just one, and they haven’t used their oven for months. Because we were one of the first air fryer magazines to market, we gained the readers’ trust early on and they’ve stayed with us. Add to that the amazing distribution we’ve achieved, which allows new readers to discover us all the time, and we’ve got a brilliant formula.

“We actually brought back one of our previous monthly mags that we had to stop publishing during the pandemic within the Healthy Eating series too. We’d published Gluten-Free Heaven for about five years and didn’t want to let go of it entirely, so when we stopped publishing the monthly magazine we kept the socials alive and continued to send regular editorial emails to our newsletter and subscriber lists. This meant that when we published our Gluten-Free Cookbook as part of the Healthy Eating series, we had a ready-made audience to market to.”

How important is independent retail to the title?

SF: “As we don’t have subscriptions for Healthy Eating, all retail is important to the success of the brand. For many of the titles in the series, for example air fryer and anti-inflammatory, we don’t necessarily have a wide audience to direct market to, so a lot of Healthy Eating relies on discoverability. Independent retail provides readers with a great opportunity to browse the shelves and discover new titles that they might not have seen elsewhere. This was particularly important in the early days of the brand before we got big supermarket listings, but is just as important today.”

Where does Healthy Eating fit into the rest of Anthem’s portfolio?

SF: “Food magazines have been an important part of Anthem’s portfolio since 2011 when we launched Cupcake Heaven, which then turned into our Food Heaven series. This was followed by our Gluten-Free Heaven/FreeFrom Heaven series, and then by Vegan Food & Living. Healthy Eating feels like a natural next step for us within this division. At Anthem, our mission is to help people lead happier, healthier lives, and food is such an important part of this. As our Healthy Eating series allows us to diversify to cover many health-related topics, hopefully it’ll be a thriving part of our business for many years to come.”

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