Gilt Taste, Ruth Reichl
The company which has been selling luxury clothing and travel deals online, Gilt Group has spread now at the food version by launching Gilt Taste, a high end grocery service selling products that were normally only available to professional chefs. The site provides hundreds of products that consumers can order online, but it is the outlandish prices that come to a shock. From a pair of steaks ranging from $72 to $148 it is the quality of the food that keeps consumers buying. The products are handpicked by an expert team of chefs and gourmet food retailers.
The site won’t cater to online retail alone; it will offer editorial content as well. Overseeing this content will be former Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl who is Gilt Taste’s editorial advisor. She will be in charge of the content, whether essays, articles or recipes and curating the food selections as well. Calling it a new kind of magazine, Reichl described the website as a radical venture. She wrote, We don’t just want to sell you great products—we want to tell you the stories of the people who create them and inspire you with delicious new ways to use them.
Among the gourmet foods on offer are caviar, charcuterie, high-end vinegars, West Coast oysters and Afghan mezze. Gilt Taste will be exclusively offering Murray’s Cheese as well. The lead buyer also included a list of six things they’ll never sell, including ice, durian, bananas, biscuit mix, genetically engineered glow-in-the-dark pork, and non-dairy creamer.
The site went live Tuesday night and had nearly 350,000 page views by the next afternoon. Gilt Taste is still growing and isn’t looking to compete with Food Network Magazine, Fine Cooking or Cook’s Illustrated, Reichl said. We’re really trying to give people the entire feast, she said.
Gilt Taste, Skillet Chicken with Green Onions and Ramps
