Bon Appétit

On May 31, 2020, Bon Appétit tweeted that “food has always been political.” In the description, the message continues: 

“As food businesses across the country stand in solidarity with George Floyd and others killed before him, our mandate could not be more clear. In the days and weeks to come, you’ll see more stories from restaurant owners and staff at the front lines of these protests. We’ll be spotlighting Black-owned food businesses in cities nationwide. And you’ll see us tackling more of the racial and political issues at the core of the food world.”

On June 4, 2020, Puerto Rican food writer Illyanna Maisonet tweeted her response to the post, calling out Bon Appétit for its lack of cultural inclusivity. She noted that a story she recently pitched about Afro-Boricuas—Puerto Ricans of African descent—had been rejected by a Bon Appétit editor, who said that it sounded like "a story that could have been told 5 years ago." 

Maisonet also posted on Instagram that day, stating: "So, before we go praising them for patting themselves on the back for showing 'solidarity' during a time when it would be bad for business to NOT show solidarity… maybe we can get some full print issues of the regional foods of Puerto Rico.”

Both posts have since been taken down from Twitter and Instagram, respectively.

On June 8, 2020, a former Bon Appétit contributor, Hawa Hassan, called out Bon Appétit in an Instagram story, alleging that she was underpaid for her brief collaboration with the company and requesting that the executives “remove [her] from this punkass photo” of “Test Kitchen” stars, insinuating that she had only been included in the photo as a token minority. 

When her comments were posted to Twitter, many Bon Appétit critics responded in Hassan’s defense.

The original Instagram Story is no longer available. [Instagram Stories are displayed for 24 hours on a user's profile before disappearing.]

On June 8, 2020, writer Tammie Teclemariam tweeted an Instagram post featuring Bon Appétit editor in chief Adam Rapoport in brownface, as part of a racist Halloween costume depicting himself as a Puerto Rican man. The photo had originally been posted by Rapoport's wife Simone Shubuck to Instagram on October 31, 2013.

The original Instagram post has since been deleted.

On June 8, 2020, assistant food editor Sohla El-Waylly posted a message to her Instagram account responding to Rapoport’s recently released photo. She was “angry and disgusted by the photo of @rapoport in brown face,” and added that “this is just a symptom of the systemic racism that runs rampant within Condé Nast [the umbrella company under which Bon Appétit operates] as a whole.” 

She stated that she was hired as an assistant editor “to assist mostly white editors with significantly less experience than me” and claims that she had been “pushed in front of video as a display of diversity.” She also alleged that while white editors were paid for their video appearances, none of the staff of color had been compensated.

The post has since been deleted.

In an interview released June 9, 2020, El-Waylly confirmed that she had demanded Adam Rapoport’s resignation as editor in chief when photos surfaced of himself in brownface on Twitter. 

Priya Krishna, a co-host on Bon Appétit’s “Test Kitchen,” posted her response to Rapoport’s brownface Halloween costume on June 8, 2020, stating: “I can’t stay silent on this. This is fucked up, plain and simple. It erases the work the BIPOC on staff have long been doing, behind the scenes.” 

The same day that the photo of Adam Rapoport in brownface went viral, critics responded on Twitter, slamming Rapoport for his racist costume choice.

[PLEASE NOTE: The above tweet is from a fan-made account, not Sohla El-Waylly’s official Twitter account.]

Within hours of Teclemariam posting the photo of Rapoport in brownface, he announced his resignation on Instagram, announcing that he was stepping down from his position as editor in chief to “reflect on the work that I need to do as a human being and to allow Bon Appétit to get to a better place.” 

The original Instagram post has since been deleted.

On June 9, 2020, a photo of a cake decorated with the design of the Confederate flag began circulating on Twitter. The photo was taken from Bon Appétit editor Alex Delany’s Tumblr account; he had posted the photo in 2010 when he was seventeen years old and had originally made the cake as a going-away present for a friend who was moving to South Carolina.

The Tumblr post has since been deleted.

Delany responded on Twitter, acknowledging that the Confederate flag is a “despicable symbol that a 17-year-old should understand” and adding, “I cannot apologize intensely enough. I know that doesn’t cut it, but I am truly sorry.” 

The original post has since been deleted.

Critics rejected Delany’s apology, with many making jokes at Delany’s expense.

The same day, Elazar Sontag, a staff writer for the food website “Eater,” posted a video on Instagram that Delany had originally posted to Vine in 2013, titled: “How to not offend gay people." In the video, Delany asks the audience, "You guys wanna see a bunch of faggots lying on top of each other?" and then turns the camera to a pile of sticks. The tweet and the Vine have since been deleted.

In his post Sontag alleged that “no matter how much [men like Delany] 'show up' for queer rights now, I know they don't respect me or any other queer people as their equal,” ending the post with the direct demand: “Resign @alex_delany. Today."

On June 10, 2020, Bon Appétit senior editor Andy Baraghani responded in a series of Instagram Stories to Delany’s use of an anti-gay slur, referring to the video as “hurtful and triggering and all too familiar.”

These Stories are no longer visible on Baraghani’s profile.

The same day that Baraghani posted his Instagram story slamming Delany’s use of anti-gay language, brand developer Ryan Khosravi tweeted directly at Baraghani, accusing him of using his editorial influence to block multiple projects from a Korean female colleague.

Khosravi was referring to a series of tweets in which former Bon Appétit staffer Alyse Whitney accused Baraghani of purposefully blocking a story on “Queer Eye” host Antoni Porowski based on “petty feelings.” She additionally accused Rapoport of rejecting a story she had written about struggling with her adopted Korean-American identity because it didn’t have enough “emotional resonance.”

On June 10, 2020, Bon Appétit tweeted its response to the recent controversies surrounding Delany, Rapoport, and Baraghani. In the post, the company apologized for “toxic, top-down culture that has hurt many members of our staff” and pledged to “acknowledge, honor, and amplify BIPOC voices.”

On June 11, 2020, Bon Appétit video host Claire Saffitz posted her response to El-Waylly’s allegations of systemic racism in the workplace. She confirmed that her post was “not to or for fans, but to and for my colleagues of color” and acknowledged that she was “to some degree aware of the toxic, racist, secretive and ultra-competitive environment we worked in ‘together.’” She pledged to “do the work of repair” necessary to change the Bon Appétit workplace.  

In an Instagram post released on June 14, 2020, Baraghani acknowledged the multiple Bon Appétit controversies that had surfaced over the course of the week. Though he did not specifically address Alyse Whitney’s accusation that he had used his seniority as an editor to undercut her work, he stated, “Reflecting on the events from this week, and the stories about BA’s toxic work culture that have surfaced, has forced me to re-examine my own behavior and privilege in the workplace.”

On June 10, 2020, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, editor in chief of the news website Jezebel, posted an editorial detailing a series of emails between herself and former Bon Appétit editor in chief Adam Rapoport. Rapoport had originally emailed Shepherd in response to an article Jezebel published about the 2013 Instagram photos of himself in brownface. Rapoport stated: “You refer to my being in brown face in that photo. As inexcusable and terrible as that photograph is, I was not wearing any makeup or face coloring in it.”

Editor Hazel Cills responded by email that “the [Jezebel] editors and I do not think the classification of that photo as brown face’ is inaccurate and we will not be correcting [it],” but agreed to add his comments at the bottom of the article clarifying that “in an email to Jezebel, Rapoport denied that he was wearing brown face, writing that he was ‘not wearing any makeup or face coloring’ in the photograph that circulated on social media.”

To which Rapoport responded: “Before adding my email between you and me to your piece, why would you not ask if that was an on-the-record comment that you could use? And why would you excise part of my other quote, while not using the entire thing? I’m happy to provide a proper quote if I knew I was being quoted. … To be clear, because perhaps I wasn’t before, this email is off the record.” 

Shepherd explained in closing her editorial that requesting that one’s testimony is “off the record … is not something that one can simply retroactively claim, without making an agreement between journalist and source.”

Five weeks after Sohla El-Waylly and Illyanna Maisonet publicly addressed the systemic racism they’d experienced in the Bon Appétit workplace, the company began negotiations with current employees to address their compensation in future videos. 

According to Business Insider, the proposed contract offered stars like El-Waylly and Rick Martinez a base pay rate of $1,000 per day for hosted videos, but only guaranteed involvement in 10 videos per year. In contrast, some white producers had been guaranteed at least 60 videos per year. The end result: some BIPOC employees like El-Waylly and Martinez would still make significantly less than white Bon Appétit employees with the same job description. 

In August 2020, “Test Kitchen” stars Sohla El-Waylly, Priya Krishna, Rick Martinez, Molly Baz, Gaby Melian, Carla Lalli Music, and Amiel Stanek confirmed via Instagram and Twitter that they would not be renewing their contracts to appear in future videos. 

Martinez and El-Waylly’s posts have since been deleted. 

On August 6, 2020, El-Waylly confirmed that she would continue to work at Bon Appétit developing recipes but would no longer appear on camera, adding, “No hate to the editors who’ve decided to stay, it’s just not the right thing for me.”

In her post on August 6, 2020, Priya Krishna confirmed that “the contract I received was nowhere near equitable [with my non-POC coworkers], and actually would potentially allow for me to make even less than I do currently,” and for this reason she would not renew her contract to produce Bon Appétit videos. She added, “To my BIPOC peers: Don’t settle. Recognize your worth — these publications need us more than we need them.” 

In his message posted on August 6, 2020, Rick Martinez went into more personal detail, explaining that “after 5 weeks of negotiation, it is clear that I will not get a fair pay rate nor will I get a comparable number of appearances to my colleagues in the test kitchen,” therefore he would not renew his contract or appear in any videos for the foreseeable future. He concluded, “Even in a pandemic, during an economic recession, after I just closed on a house, I could not sign that contract. My happiness and my self-worth are more important to me than returning to the test kitchen.”

On August 7, 2020, “Test Kitchen” host Molly Baz confirmed that she had asked Condé Nast to release her from the video obligations of her contract, as she did not want to appear in future Bon Appétit videos out of solidarity with her BIPOC coworkers.

On August 7, 2020, Gaby Melian, another “Test Kitchen” host and Test Kitchen Manager, announced that because “Condé Nast Entertainment is not meeting my expectations regarding the plans to have a more diverse and inclusive video program” she would not be renewing her contract to appear in future videos, but would remain on staff as Test Kitchen Manager.

On August 12, 2020, “Test Kitchen” host Carla Lalli Music announced that she would also not be renewing her contract with Bon Appétit video out of solidarity with her BIPOC coworkers, acknowledging that the existing system at the company “overwhelming favored white talent,” and that as a result “I have been supported and rewarded for my work. My BIPOC co-hosts have not.” 

On August 15, 2020, editor and video host Amiel Stanek confirmed on Instagram that earlier in the week, he had asked to be released from his video contract with Condé Nast Entertainment. He added that he felt “let down and disappointed in a lot of ways” but that he “also [felt] a lot of gratitude and hope for the future.”

In response to the departure of “Test Kitchen” stars Sohla El-Waylly, Priya Krishna, Rick Martinez, Molly Baz, Gaby Melian, Carla Lalli Music and Amiel Stanek, fans took to social media and slammed Bon Appétit for their alleged unwillingness to provide equal pay for equal work. 

On August 10, 2020, editor Alex Delany posted on his Instagram account apologizing for using an anti-gay slur in a video that had previously surfaced in June 2020. 

In his apology Delany stated: 

"When I was in high school and college, I wrote and said things that were racist, homophobic, and sexist n the internet. I want to be clear that it isn’t anything less than those things. There is no gray area. That’s what they were. And for those things I said and wrote, I am incredibly sorry. […] I was showing plenty of symptoms of white male privilege that I didn't see. The need to be the most important in the room. The assumption that I was. […] 

I was lazy and inconsiderate and unwilling to look. I rolled around in my privilege, and that impeded progress within my own mind and outside of it. […] I may have different values, views, and tendencies now, but I am still the person who released hurt into the world. And I always will be. […] I am sincerely sorry."

Claire Saffitz, a contributing editor at Bon Appétit and “Test Kitchen” star, announced via Instagram on October 10, 2020 that her formal relationship with Condé Nast Entertainment had ended in May 2020, and that she would no longer work with the company. She added that she was “grateful to Bon Appétit and CNE for the opportunity to build my career on their platforms, but this opportunity was not granted equally to all.”