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Q3 • 2021


BRANDS WE LOVE Brands We Love Milk Street i


n marketing, there’s an adage that says you can’t do everything, so do less—and


do it well. This is particularly apt in 2021, when platforms, channels, data, and means of communicating are infinite. There are exceptions to this approach, of course, and Milk Street seems to be one. The myriad of ways in which the Boston-based company communicates with its audience and its giving-back activities make it a shoo-in as a Brand We Love. Started by Christopher Kimball in 2016


after he left America’s Test Kitchen (which he cofounded), Milk Street is based on the belief that “all meals are made to be enjoyed” and takes its name from the street address of its location in the city’s historic Flour and Grain Exchange Building. Milk Street offers a “new approach to cooking” through its magazine, cooking school, and public television and radio shows, which are all operated from its Boston


location. It’s also where it develops the recipes that its loyalists have come to love. At the heart of Milk Street’s brand


identity is a website that has as much going on as the busy Boston neighborhood in which the company is located. The content on 117MilkStreet.com is jaw-dropping, yet somehow easy to digest (pardon the pun). Beyond the company’s bread and butter (again, pardon the pun)—its cooking school and magazine—Milk Street’s website offers access to a community of worldwide chefs, recipes, a podcast/radio show, how-to videos, an insider area, and an online store that sells cookbooks, kitchenware, spices and various pantry items, cooking utensils, and much more. Despite the wealth of choices a visitor


encounters on the website, it’s surprisingly easy to find what you’re looking for, thanks to its intuitive site navigation and layout. Do you


want to shop the online store? Join Milk Street? Look at its cookbooks, see what’s on offer at the cooking school, or join an online cooking class? Everything is visible and straightforward. Even its pop-ups—which are an annoying hindrance on most sites—are difficult to resist, such as the offer to “Enter the Milk Street Giveaway.” Elsewhere, inviting calls to action such as “Join for $1” offer visitors the opportunity to try a 12-week membership plan that includes every Milk Street recipe, a magazine subscription, livestreaming of its TV and radio shows, and access to live cooking shows, every recipe in the cookbook or magazine, and every print issue—all for just one dollar. Yes, one dollar. You’re getting hungry just thinking about it, aren’t you? Kimball writes in the “About” section of the


website that rather than thinking of recipes as belonging to a people and place, “Milk Street


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