The Boston Globe
Steve Dunn samples a slice of Neapolitan pizza during a recipe test prepared by Lan Lam. Steve Klise
updated on July 15, 2026 | 10:21 AM
7 minutes to read
When private equity-owned Marquee Brands bought America’s Test Kitchen in 2023, the new leaders of the Boston food media company assured employees that they hadn’t arrived to make big changes.
At the time, executives spoke at a town hall meeting, as former employees have since recalled to the Globe. The remarks included a pledge not to make changes to personnel, two of them said. Roughly a month later, however, ATK laid off 23 workers — 10 percent of its workforce — and shuttered ATK Kids, which focused on children’s recipes and books.
In the three years since, the company has conducted two additional rounds of layoffs, including shuttering its Cook’s Country magazine and laying off 24 more employees, in May.
The changes at ATK — which also include bringing on influencers, the departure of some longtime employees, and doing more with less — have led some to worry that the company’s leadership is hollowing out a storied brand best known for rigorous recipe testing catered to home cooks.
“They’re really throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks,” said a former employee, whose sentiment was shared by three other former staffers.
In total, nine former employees spoke to the Globe on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution. Many signed non-disparagement agreements as part of severance packages. The company, they said, has strayed from its core mission and overtasked its staff by eliminating key positions.
Company leaders emphasized that the layoffs and changes are not cuts. Chief executive Dan Suratt said he hoped former staffers weren’t mistaking “experimentation for confusion.” Rather, he said, the changes are part of reallocating resources to set the company up for success in a landscape dramatically reshaped by social media and artificial intelligence.
Suratt said overall headcount will stay around 220 after current job postings for engineers and tech staff are filled. Staffing remains within 2 percent of the company’s March 2023 workforce, accounting for hiring in other areas.
“What we’re really trying to do is right-size the organization, not just from a staffing perspective, but from a content output perspective,” Suratt said. “I personally would not have taken this job if my mission as a subscriber for 20 years was to come in and strip this thing down.”
Suratt noted that he and other leaders assured employees in 2023 that they had arrived to grow the company. He added that the previous leaders had the cuts to ATK Kids in the works for about a year before Marquee bought the organization.
From Cook’s Illustrated to ‘sourdough era’
ATK was founded in 1992, but its roots go back further. Christopher Kimball, cofounder of the company, launched what was called Cook’s magazine in 1980. After a sale and the publication’s eventual closure, Kimball bought back the rights and launched Cook’s Illustrated in 1993. Seven years later, the flagship television show “America’s Test Kitchen” aired on PBS. Kimball departed in 2016.
Christopher Kimball, in his office at Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street in downtown Boston in 2018. – Lane Turner
America’s Test Kitchen has long differentiated itself on the promise that its staff would do the hard work of recipe testing so home cooks could follow the best-in-class methods. Its level of precision largely aligned with the most dedicated kitchen enthusiasts.
For decades, ATK operated out of a charming but cramped 2,500-square-foot Brookline brownstone. In 2019, the brand moved to a 52,000-square-foot office in the Seaport, which includes 17,000 square feet of test kitchens.
While the COVID-19 pandemic was rough for many media companies, ATK thrived during what some employees called its “sourdough era.”
Suddenly, the intricate style of cooking the company was known for appealed to even the cooking curious, who found themselves with extra time on their hands. ATK took advantage of the growth with a hiring spree, increasing its staff by 25 percent from 2021 to 2022, according to an email Suratt sent to staff in March 2023 that was obtained by the Globe. (Workers also formed a union in 2022 to bargain for better wages.)
Yet, the purchase in 2023 of ATK by Marquee Brands, a subsidiary of New York-based private equity firm Neuberger Berman, represented an inflection point, former employees said.
The company cut staff and ATK Kids one month into the new leaders’ tenure, as the division was losing more than $1 million per year, Suratt said. Two years later, ATK decided to shutter Cook’s Country magazine because the print product was unprofitable.
While the company still publishes Cook’s Illustrated and print books, the changes are meant to bring the organization more in line with a strategy focused on digital subscriptions and its app, Suratt said. He noted that Cook’s Illustrated had more than 500,000 subscribers, but declined to disclose overall ATK subscription numbers or a specific goal, adding that the company has more recently “stabilized” and that it is “beginning to really grow.”
Former employees, however, said they got less face time with the new leaders, leaving them more in the dark on the brand’s priorities, which they felt were constantly shifting.
‘A rotten zucchini’ as metaphor
Unlike previous rounds, the most recent layoffs were across the company and included video editors, designers, and product managers. Some employees had been there for more than a decade.
Former staffers described how they loved working at ATK. While their jobs were never easy, and the company was far from perfect, it was a collaborative and collegial workplace. That changed once Marquee came in, they said. Workloads increased as the company started to make cuts, putting a strain on employees. That affected the culture, which became more segmented.
One former staffer said a communal fridge to take home leftover ingredients or dishes was a perk and “used to be really full.” By the time the staffer left, one was “lucky if you got a rotten zucchini.” The staffer joked that it was a metaphor for the changing company.
The bigger picture, Suratt said, is that if not for Marquee’s investment and the changes it has implemented, ATK “would be on life support as opposed to the stabilization and growth we are now seeing.”
Christine Tobin styled roasted ducks on set during a photo shoot for the cover of the October-November 2025 issue of Cook’s Country. – Steve Klise
ATK is trying to survive, and thrive, at a time when food media is facing immense challenges. The rise of food influencers and creators threatens longtime brands that used to have an outsized impact on what people eat and where they dine. Similarly, the proliferation of AI chatbots has made it easier — and cheaper — to find recipes, threatening cookbooks and outlets including ATK, Bon Appétit, and NYT Cooking.
Kimball, the cofounder, declined to talk in depth about the changes at ATK because he left the company a decade ago. But speaking broadly about food media, he said the brands that succeed will be the ones that focus on their unique voice and utility, as opposed to trying to chase clicks or aiming to go viral.
“I think ATK has a very strong premise. Our recipes work. I still think that’s a powerful message,” said Kimball, who now runs the food media company Milk Street. “You have to just stop trying to meet the market. You have to do what you do and do more of it.”
ATK‘s long-running PBS show, whose production is paid entirely by ATK, is still the number one driver of subscriptions to the company. But ATK has been turning to social media and streaming services to try to reach younger audiences.
The new efforts include creating a “residency program” to bring on cooking creators for two years “to develop exclusive recipes, produce multimedia content across ATK platforms, and make appearances on ‘America’s Test Kitchen’ shows,” according to an announcement last year. ATK also launched three video podcasts on Netflix earlier this year and added other programs to the streaming service.
The audience push is part of a strategy to bring in subscribers, which includes improving ATK’s app. That puts it in direct competition with its biggest rival, NYT Cooking, which along with games has helped supercharge the newspaper’s digital subscriptions.
ATK is also looking to rein in costs. Suratt said the company has been profitable since roughly 2002, but is looking at ways to be more efficient, including with recipe testing; it spends an average of $11,000 to develop a recipe.
Some former employees said while they understand the need to adapt, they worry the changes align them more closely with competitors rather than doubling down on the quality recipes that distinguished the brand.
One employee said ATK is “using celebrity to power up the brand itself,” which leads to the question of “whether this gets an audience that is interested in recipes.”
An America’s Test Kitchen employee worked out of the company’s offices in the Seaport. – Kritsada Panichgul
Suratt stressed there are no plans to sell the company, pointing out that the other brands Marquee has bought, such as Martha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse, have not been sold.
In fact, Suratt said ATK is the cornerstone of a new food-focused media conglomerate that Marquee is trying to build. ATK’s owner also bought New York-based Food52, which has 15 employees, out of bankruptcy late last year and hopes to keep expanding.
“I think other subscription services in the food space are interesting. I think restaurant reviews are interesting. Food delivery services are interesting,” he said. “You want to fill out a portfolio that really touches consumers across every kind of way they interact with food, and that’s what we’re most focused on.”
