Trading the C-Suite for a Substack
Home Style
For Amanda Hesser ’93, home isn’t just a place to live. It’s a place for self-expression and for building community. Not to mention a place that she’s currently in the middle of renovating, which is in large part what led the former New York Times food editor and co-founder and CEO of Food52 to launch Homeward, her new digital newsletter focused on home, lifestyle and, of course, all the details of her own remodeling project.
“My home is the center of my life,” says Hesser, who majored in Finance and Economics at Bentley and serves on the founding executive council for the university’s Entrepreneurship Hub. “And Homeward marks a new phase of life.”
As a kid, both cooking and home gatherings played a central role in Hesser’s family life. So too did entrepreneurship, with Hesser’s parents running their own business.
“I like coming up with ideas and then seeing them through,” she says. Early in her career, Hesser cooked and baked across Europe before becoming a reporter and food editor at The New York Times, writing several cookbooks, and even landing a cameo as herself in Nora Ephron’s film Julie & Julia.
Charting Her Course
In 2009, she co-founded Food52, a crowd-sourcing destination for recipes. The company grew into a business that, at its height, included a curated kitchen and home goods shop, cookbooks, and an engaged community of 13 million users. This winter it was acquired by America’s Test Kitchen. “At Food52 we developed ways for our community to contribute ideas, feedback and content in a meaningful way,” says Hesser, who also served as the company’s CEO. “It created a sense of trust and belonging among the community members, and we all learned from each other.”
When Hesser’s twins headed off to college in the fall of 2024, she and her husband began dreaming of new adventures. Longtime New York renters, the couple bought their first home, a ranch-style fixer-upper across the country in Ojai, California. She thought the experience of relocating and renovating might resonate with others. Six months after the home purchase, Hesser announced that she was stepping away from Food52 and starting Homeward, an online newsletter available to both paid and unpaid subscribers on the Substack platform that follows the remodeling of her home, offers up her trademark lifestyle content, and engages audiences along the way.
“I believe people are experts on their own homes, so I’m always interested in what they have to share,” says Hesser, who has carried her audience engagement ethos from Food52 to her new venture. Homeward readers see it all, from contractor no-shows to expert advice and perfect design finds. Paid subscribers can even weigh in as Hesser seeks reader advice on everything from tile designs and soap dishes to closet storage and flooring. And of course, she includes recipes from time to time. “There are a million before-and-after shows and articles about home renovations, but what’s often missing is a deeper, more personal experience doing a renovation,” she says.
A Success on Substack
Since launching, Homeward has garnered roughly 650,000 subscribers and is the fourth best-selling design newsletter on Substack. “The beauty of digital content is that you can see the data about what people are responding to,” she says. “Views and ‘opens’ are less interesting to me than the number of comments, likes or paid subscribers, which show a deeper level of response and engagement. I believe that, as an entrepreneur, it’s important to use data as an input, but just as critical to trust your gut.
“I enjoy the freedom to take ideas and make them happen,” she continues. “That’s how Food52 started. As companies grow, this becomes increasingly challenging, so it’s refreshing to get back into blue-sky mode.”
