Local food movement spawns franchised newsletter in Golden Horseshoe

Edible Communities seems to be a combination of a movement and a franchise operation. Its members publish 22 city- or region-based quarterly publications (they refer to them as "newsletters") -- mostly in the U.S. -- celebrating local food and food sources.

Starting in September, a Toronto version is being launched and it seems likely that if it is successful, other Canadian cities will see similar launches.

The new magazine, Edible Toronto, will follow the seasons and celebrate the food resources of the Golden Horseshoe. The publication will have a controlled distribution (there is no circulation information published yet, though at least some of the distribution will be by advertisers). A full page ad in the magazine will be $2,600, which suggests that distribution will be in the area of 20,000 copies.

The Toronto project is being fronted by publisher and editor Gail Gordon Oliver, a native of Montreal and a graduate of McGill University who moved to Toronto with her family in 1996, graduated with a culinary management diploma from The George Brown Chef School in 1999 and joined the test kitchen staff at Canadian Living magazine, working for food editor Elizabeth Baird. In 2004, she started her own consulting company, Flavours of Home, specializing in the fields of culinary education, food writing and editing, recipe development and testing, and menu development. The following year, Gail teamed up with Maran Graphics to produce Maran Illustrated Cooking Basics, an instructional cooking book that was published in 2006.

Edible Communities Inc. is essentially a franchiser, providing a template for interested local publishers to use and charging an (undisclosed) fee. It also sets up a website for each edition and solicits advertising for the network. Prospective publishers are told that "the average Edible begins to see a profit in issue 3." EC requires interested parties to sign a non-disclosure agreement before entering into negotiations. Each edition carries a shared column called Edible Nation (perhaps problematic when it is now moving into Canada). Members of the Edible Communities staff work with local publisher/members to launch the first issue.