Food52 CEO Erika Ayers Badan: Building Brands, Leading Teams, and Changing Work Culture

Gene Marks (00:00)

Hey, everybody, it's Gene Marks. And welcome to this week's episode of the Paychex THRIVE Podcast. I interviewed Erika Ayers Badan for this podcast. She was formerly the CEO of Barstool Sports. I know my kids, particularly my sons, are going to love this. She ran Barstool for eight years from 2016 to 2024. Now she's the CEO of a foodie platform called Food52. Erica has learned a bunch of things about building brands and managing people. She shared with me a bunch of advice, managing those different cultures, how to motivate employees, performance reviews as well, how often to give feedback and other things and dynamics, working from home, too, she has some thoughts on that I think will be of real interest to you. In addition, we talked about building a brand. How, when she started at Barstool, did she manage to build this brand into, like, a global juggernaut? And what lessons did she learn that she's going to take with her to Food52? Great conversation. You'll enjoy Erika a lot. And let's get to it right now.

Announcer (01:02)

Welcome to THRIVE, a Paychex Business Podcast. Your blueprint for navigating everything from people to policies to profits. And now your host, Gene Marks.

Gene Marks (01:13)

So, you know, I'm glad you're here. It's Erika Ayers Badan. Now, Erika, you know, I've given an introduction for you previously, so people know who you are and what you do. But just to reiterate it as well, you were the CEO of Barstool from 2016 to 2024, and now you're the CEO of Food52. So, let's first of all start with a little bit of bio of you. Give us a little bit of a history. How did you wind up at Barstool? And then how did you ultimately transition over to Food52? And then we want to talk a little bit about what Food52 does.

Erika Badan (01:47)

Great. Yeah, I, you know, I didn't know what I wanted to do coming out of college. The economy was great. I graduated in the late 90s. I got a job at Fidelity Investments and, you know, thought I wanted to be a lawyer and realized I did not want to be a lawyer. And I was super bored, and I hated it. And I took a big jump early in my career to work in marketing, and I really never looked back. And that was a good big jump for me because it was a jump that most people at Fidelity and otherwise were like, what are you doing? Why would you do that? You're on a great track. But I knew for me that it was, that it was a better career path and it would create more opportunity for me. And I've always been, my parents were teachers, I've always been a big student of work. I think work is tuition you get paid for. I just wrote a book about work called Nobody Cares About Your Career. And it's really everything that I've learned, not just at Barstool, but the lead up to Barstool and coming out of Barstool. But I've really spent most of my career in the internet, which has been great. I've loved the Internet and I think AI is going to be the new Internet, the future Internet. But what the majority of my time has spent doing is leading teams, creating products, monetizing opportunities, connecting technology, content and monetization in a way that can create a sustainable and growing business. And that's really, I did that at Yahoo, I've done that at Microsoft, I worked at AOL. I've launched and been part of failed startups and great startups and disaster startups and all those things led me about 10 years ago to Barstool Sports. I fell in love with it. I loved Barstool before I joined. I was a fan of it. I read it on the train when I was in Boston and we built it into a really big juggernaut and a cultural force and a global brand and a really differentiated platform. And I did that for almost a decade and it was amazing. In 2023 I sold it twice and at that point I was like, I think I've done everything here I can do. And I wanted to work with women and I wanted to go back and try to grow a startup and that's how I came to Food52.

Gene Marks (04:06)

So actually, let me, before we even get into Food52, I mean you said you, you wanted to work with your women. To explain to me what you mean by that.

Erika Badan (04:15)

Yeah, I mean Barstool Sports was amazing. I, I describe it as, I, you know, spent a decade obsessing over 18 to 34-year-old men. Like I can sell anyone a drink on the beach, and I am not an 18- to 34-year-old man. And I really wanted to have a chance to connect with women my age or around interests that I had which, you know, I'm kind of a homebody. I like design, I like the home space. I think women are interesting creators. I think, you know, they're the, they're the super consumer, they drive most consumer spending around the world and I wanted to make a pivot to a Type of company that I didn't totally understand, but I knew a lot of and to bring what I had learned at Barstool and also to learn a great deal.

Gene Marks (05:03)

Food52, tell me about the site.

Erika Badan (05:06)

Yeah, Food52 is awesome. So Food52 is really a holding company brand for a really incredible design company called Schoolhouse, which makes lighting and textiles and furniture. Kind of mid-century modern design. Really a strong belief in modern heirlooms and modern utility, very known for color and print and pattern. and Food52 was, you know, started on the Internet around the same time as Glossier and a lot of really interesting brands. And it started as a blog, it was started by two food writers and it became a blog that became a shop, that became a bigger shop, that became a bigger shop than that and really has a really wonderful eye to solutions in the kitchen, solutions for entertaining in the home, and what my vision is to create both a content company, which is really what I did at Barstool Sports, and a leading design and commerce company, which is what we have here with Food52, Dansk, and Schoolhouse.

Gene Marks (06:10)

So when, when you left Barstool, I mean, obviously you were there for a while. You, you, you said, I mean, you, you clearly enjoyed it. You know, you, you did all that you felt you could do. Yeah. And you, you know, it was time for you to move on and do something differently. I am assuming that when you made that decision and you were moving on, you were like, all right, for this, this new company, I'm going to, I have learned a lot from my days at Barstool. I'm going to take a lot of that knowledge with me to Food52 and apply it here. Like really, you know, run it the way that I want to run it. So, what did you learn when you were at Barstool? And let's start with people. You know, tell me a little bit about the demographics of the people at Barstool that you were managing. Tell me about, you know, what you learned about working with them, hiring them, motivating them, and then what you're taking with you along with you to Food52.

Erika Badan (07:03)

Sure. So one is, I had a great honor and luxury at Barstool Sports of working with really young people. Like, it was awesome. You know, most of our employee base was under the age of 28, I would say.

Gene Marks (07:18)

You do realize I could name you a countless number of my clients that have the exact opposite point of view.

Erika Badan (07:27)

Yes, its own thing. It's its own thing. I think what made Barstool so cool is it was very tough to get a job there. Less tough as we got, more successful. But certainly, by the time I left, you know, I remember probably in 2023, 2024, we were looking for a camera person for Dave Portnoy and we had 16,000 applicants. So we really got the best of the best. So, one is just to, you know, I think a lot of times people complain about managing Gen Z and for like totally good reasons. But what we, I think need to remember, especially if you're in your late 30s or in your 40s or in your 50s, is they just don't know, you know, they're coming into the workforce, nobody's told them, you know, you were an idiot when you were 20 and they're idiots. And they also have a lot of skills. They're faster than you are, they're more adept at using the internet. They can be extremely resourceful if directed to go be resourceful. And at Barstool we, we really had a very strong work ethic. It's a very blue-collar company in terms of mindset and work ethic. And it also was a place where it was, the social norm was to be very busy and to be extremely entrepreneurial. And that was really one of my big things, which is you should trust people to try things. You should enable people to accelerate and to fail. And when they fail, it's not a problem unless they don't learn from it. And that's really how we ran our teams.

Gene Marks (09:07)

You know, you talk about work ethic, you know, I mean, I know millennials right now, they complain about Gen Zers that they don't work hard enough. You know, it is, what, how did you get these kids, these people, their younger 20s? How did you motivate them? I mean, I have to imagine, you know, Erika, that, you know, working for Barstool is super cool and exciting, but you know, in the end it's like any other job. Right? I mean, and that, you know, has to sort of wear off after a little bit and then it's just actual work. Did you, did you figure out any ways to get these, these younger people coming to work on time, putting in the hours, you know, and also the environment itself, and I don't know how the environment is, but you know, I mean, judging from the brand itself is pretty rough and tumble, you know, pretty honest place. It's a locker room.

Erika Badan (10:00)

Yeah, work in a locker room.

Gene Marks (10:04)

And that's another issue altogether, you know, like, you know, because people are so, you know, afraid of what to say and you know, they don't want to get sued and they want to be careful around the environment. So specifically, you know, what did you do to motivate these people and how did you balance this sort of locker room mentality with making sure you weren't constantly being investigated by the EEOC?

Erika Badan (10:26)

Yeah, I think, you know, so one is you have to have a vision. I think we had a vision at Barstool Sports. We wanted to grow, we wanted to be the best, we wanted to be the biggest. We wanted to, you know, we, we were underdogs and we created a culture of underdogs. And when a company is motivated to fight for something and to rally around something and to be bigger than any one part, it becomes really exciting and it becomes really motivating. And then you get the right kind of people because you want the people who are bought into a vision and make the vision their own. And we did a very good job of that. And I'm trying to do that here at Food52. I think the second piece is you have to have people's backs, right? People make mistakes all the time. Like it's, I make mistakes all day at work. You make mistakes all day at work. Twenty-somethings make mistakes all day at work. And you have to have people's backs and you have to, you have to work through mistakes. And then the third piece is, you know, we, we were a very high-functioning, high-integrity company that just looked like total chaos on the outside. And we let that layer of chaos permeate because it's good for business. But we kept things pretty tight. The work ethic was very high, the pressure was very strong and the standard, it was hard. And you know, I think that's one thing. Like if you don't have people coming to work on time, you know, my thing is then fire them. Like, if you can't come to work, if you don't have enough respect to show up at work on time, then, then you're out of here and we're going to find somebody who can come to work on time. I think a lot of times we as managers or people who are older complain about people coming to work not on time, but then they don't create any consequence for it. So then I'm like, well then people are just going to do it.

Gene Marks (12:18)

Know, so I'll, I'll push back on it a little bit. Only because you worked... I mean, Barstool was super cool. You said you got 16,000 applicants for, you know, a camera operator, you know, and, and I, I think Food52 is super cool as well. And I can see that you probably do not have, you know, super, you know, big challenges in attracting people to work for a platform like Food52 because you're probably getting people that are super into, you know, food and everything about it. What would you say to like, I don't know, the person running like the company that manufactures, you know, tubes or, you know, distributes corrugated containers. It's very tough to excite your workforce and give them a vision and, and then when you do bring somebody on board, it's pretty tough to fire them. When unemployment is 4% and you know, it's, it's tough to... What would you say to that person?

Erika Badan (13:08)

You know, one is like, every company offers something, and you know, I feel very fortunate that I work in a consumer-facing company that, you know, people find interesting, and I'm interested in that and I feel like that's a great luxury. I also just really like to work. So if I'm working at the tube company, then like, I want to find people that are like, I want to be the best tube packing people on the planet. And a lot of it, everything has to do with people, right? You've got to find the people who have passion for what they do every day. And that passion, your environment is very relentless. It's contagious. So that environment will carry. I also think that even when you don't work at a sexy company or it's not a brand that's cool or that anybody recognizes or knows, if you are in the business of solving hard problems and accomplishing milestones, it will feel great. And I think that's a big piece of it which is creating a winning team, creating a winning culture, creating a culture of perseverance and resilience. I think that comes from great leadership and that, you know, whether you run a flower shop or packing plan or you know, a food and lifestyle company that can translate.

Gene Marks (14:25)

So I, I love what you just said. I think you're right and I even want to add to it as well. I mean, the client that I know actually that is a, you're a manufacturer of. They're like rubber tubes that are using in machinery and equipment. Those tubes go into machinery, equipment that are then used to create products and those products are then sold. And those companies that buy their tubes for their machines employ people and give them livelihoods so those people can have good lives and you know, you know, coach little league and go on vacations. You know, I mean my, my company sells CRM software like Salesforce and Zelto. You know, it's not that very sexy. But, you know, you know, I tell my employees I have 10 people, and I'm like, listen, we're offering software to help our clients grow and do better and make more sales. They can employ more people, you know, people real... You know, so we are helping the universe in just everybody's little, small way. You don't necessarily have to be, like, a cool and sexy total platform. You know what I mean?

Erika Badan (15:22)

Totally agree.

Gene Marks (15:23)

Yeah, I totally agree with that. You mentioned earlier also about... You made reference to Barstool being like a bro culture, and, you know, and it's mostly 18 to 34 males that are your audience as well as, I'm sure, a big swath of your employees. And then you move to Food52, which is more, you know, female, I'm assuming, oriented. Talk to me a little bit about the differences there, you know, like, yeah, how do you give us some advice on, you know, And I hate when people say, like, you shouldn't distinguish between the two, and everybody's the same. Talk to me about it.

Erika Badan (16:02)

I don't know if you agree with that, because the bathrooms are much nicer here, so I will say that. The bathrooms are amazing. You know, it was, in some ways, a mostly male workforce. It makes things easy. And a younger workforce I found to be easier. I think Food52, you know, what was cool about Barstool was we really built it from not much infrastructure, and there was no legacy. It was all about chasing whatever was new, which is very easy. At Food52, it's a lot of change. It was, we tried this, it didn't work. And there's all this scaffolding that we have to take down and replace, and. And that can be really challenging. That's challenging, and it's painful. And it's also really personal because you built the scaffolding, and the scaffolding is coming down. So that's been a hard. Not a hard challenge, but it's been a new. and different challenge for me, which I'm very grateful for. You know, I think my advice is always. And what I try to follow is, you know, the more and more clearly you can communicate, the more open and just forthright you are about, like, this is working and this isn't working, the more, you know, you can clear out bad static and inertia. I think there's a lot of times where, for whatever reason, and things just start swirling the drain at work and really staying out of that, I think, is super important. And really staying focused on a very limited but very clear number of results can make a big difference.

Gene Marks (17:34)

Does this apply, I mean, both to females and males, or are you talking like this is more, you know, more for, you know, a female demographic in a workforce?

Erika Badan (17:44)

No, I think it applies to both. You know, I think working with more women than, you know, women are interesting. They're so much... They're a lot more, you know, stereotypically empathetic. They notice so much more. They're, they can be more sensitive. Although, I'll tell you, like, at barstool, people cried a lot. Guys cried a lot at work. It was frustrating. And here, people cry at work, too, which is maybe a reflection of me. But, you know, I think people want opportunity. They want to be respected, they want to be heard, they want to be given choice chances, they want to be treated fairly, and they want to be recognized when they have. When they do good work. And, you know, I think the challenge with some employees now is they don't want feedback when they don't, which is difficult. And, you know, I think that's a big management challenge. But in general, I think if you treat people with respect and fairly and give opportunity and almost too much opportunity, it usually takes care of itself.

Gene Marks (18:44)

Yeah, you just, you just say about feedback and that you're saying that, you know, unfortunately, like, a lot of people don't want feedback. And then, you know, I. And then I hear, like, you know, oh, the. The age of the annual performance review is over. And, you know, you know, we should be giving more feedback more frequently. You know, I mean, what have you felt like about that? And when it comes, I'm still. Still kind of harping on the male, female dynamic. You know, I mean, is that. Is that a guy thing? That they don't want more feedback? Like, are women...

Erika Badan (19:13)

No, I think women are the same. I think it's an age. I think it's an age thing. You know, I have a chapter in my book called feed forward is for wimps, which I really agree with. So what does that mean?

Gene Marks (19:25)

What is… What does feed forward mean?

Erika Badan (19:26)

Like, feed forward, I guess, is the new word where people don't want feedback because feedback is too negative. The perception is you're only looking backwards. I think it's just semantics, but, you know, I think, look, everyone can get better. And people have opinions on other people's performance always. Peers have opinions, subordinates have opinions. Your boss has an opinion. Most times, people keep that opinion to themselves. And that actually doesn't help you. Feedback is a chance where someone is giving you the gift of their perspective on your experience and your performance, and that actually gives you the opportunity to do something about it. And you may be like, hey, I hate those people. I don't want their feedback. But it also, you might say, ooh, they're kind of right. And I, you know, I now have this arrow is in my quiver. It's not in theirs. And I think that's an important thing in thinking about feedback. I think annual reviews are super important. You know, I like annual reviews. I also, you know, I just had this conversation this morning. I think real time feedback is super important because you can't hold some... If something goes great, you should say it went great, and if something went wrong, you should say it went wrong. You hold that for a year and you're just like, that's not helpful.

Gene Marks (20:45)

Yeah, I agree. I agree. I also think that giving people when things went wrong, if you're honest with them, then when things go right, they appreciate that more. Like, all right, you know, my manager's bringing me the good and the bad.

Erika Badan (20:58)

And the bad, and they have a high standard and it pushes you.

Gene Marks (21:02)

Yeah, Yeah, I agree. All right, that makes sense. One final question on employees, then. I do, in the few minutes that we have, I do want to talk a little bit about, about branding. But, you know, you're talking about feedback, you're talking about supervision, you're talking about having that communication with your employees. I'm getting the vibe from you that you're. You're not. You don't lean more towards remote working and working from home. Like, you seem like you're more of a we want to have a team and collaboration in the office. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Erika Badan (21:32)

Yeah. It's Friday afternoon. I'm in the office. I like in office work. I like flexible work. I think most companies will always have some type of hybrid unless you work, you know, some... You know, we are seeing, and who knows what the economy like, we are seeing employers want people to come back.

Erika Badan (21:53)

I think in person work is important because I think you learn more and I think you can get your hands on more, and I think you can accomplish more. And I think when you work at home, I can only speak for me personally, I feel so much more anxious. I work five hours longer than when I work in an office, and there is no break between when I'm at work and I'm at home. It's all the same. And I also think it really creates a distance between people and it creates an apathy that is not healthy. And so, I am a big proponent of if you want to move forward in your career and you have the opportunity to do so in person, you should take advantage of it.

Gene Marks (22:32)

Good. All right, that's fair enough. All right, you just changing gears a little bit. You mentioned earlier in our conversation about your involvement. You joined Barstool in its infancy, grew it into a global brand recognized everywhere. Very, you know, incredibly impressive. You know, you finished doing that and then you're taking that to Food52. Right? So what lessons, what did you learn about growing, you know, a platform that was unknown into something that's recognized around the world? What are you going to take with you now to Food52? And can I ask you, maybe I should know this. When did you start as CEO at Food52? Like how long ago now?

Erika Badan (23:16)

A year ago.

Gene Marks (23:17)

Okay, good. So it's recent enough so, you know, you, you again, you, you change jobs and you've got ideas in your head, you know, like what you're, you know, doing. I don't expect you to be accomplishing those things right away. So what is the plan that you, and what have you learned from Barstool?

Erika Badan (23:34)

I mean, I learned so much from Barstool and there will never be another Barstool Sports. So, you know, I think it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I really feel like what I will take with me here is the knowledge that a brand can be built at any time by anyone. That is the glory of the internet age is it's, there is so democratized, anything can happen. The second is you've got to be relentless and consistent in building that brand, in how much content you post, where you post it, how you post it, how you're nurturing a community. Building brands is, is building community at this point in time and in this era. And I think that's really important. Three is just failing and being willing to try things and fail and correct and evolve and movement and really trying to grow through momentum. And then the last one is that you really, your audience will tell you where to go and what to do. And you've got to follow your, your customer.

Gene Marks (24:44)

Right. You know, Dave Portnoy, you know, the founder of Barstool, you know, a lot of Barstool's success was about his own brand and people loved him and, but he was able to move on from that and involve a lot of other people to carry that brand forward. One of the many great things about the brand that you built with him is that Barstool was very opinionated. You know, I mean it took sides and people love that stuff. You know, they really, you know, it's very honest, straight up. Now you're at Food52. Do you, is it, is it the same now at your own place?

Erika Badan (25:24)

No, we don't have the same... There's no Dave Portnoy here, you know, so that's. And he's a one of one. But I do think, look, you know, Dave is arguably the largest food critic in the world with pizza reviews.

Gene Marks (25:38)

At least pizza, yeah.

Erika Badan (25:39)

You know, and he, he does that because he posts a three-minute pizza review every day at 6 p.m. every day. And you know, we will start to, we will start to have more discourse and content that has a dialogue and show more opinion and to have more perspective and also have fun like Barstool. At Barstool, everything was fun. And you know, I think in the food and home space there's a lot of fun to be had and there's a lot of great creators out there who we will bring into our mix.

Gene Marks (26:13)

And that's the plan is to leverage the creators themselves.

Erika Badan (26:16)

Yes, definitely.

Gene Marks (26:18)

To do just that. A lot of this takes money. Barstool took money as well. I mean, what do you say again to a business that's trying to create a brand but is really got a limited budget?

Erika Badan (26:29)

You just gotta start somewhere. You know, like you just, you have an iPhone or you know, an Android phone, it has a camera on it, you can turn that on, you can get an editing software, you can use Canva for almost free. And you know, it doesn't take a lot of money. We built Barstool off of very little money. And we will do the same here at Food52. So you know, it's not going to look perfect and exactly the way you want it, but if you start, if you start something and the audience follows, the money will follow after that.

Gene Marks (27:02)

You built Barstool during, you know, it was in the mid-teens, you know, it was right from 2016 to 2024. Now you're at this, at this new place, Food52. What's changed from a technology perspective? And you mentioned earlier about AI. What kind of influence do you think that's going to have and how are you thinking of incorporating that stuff into your brand.

Erika Badan (27:24)

Your AI is going to be profound. AI will change everything. It will change, you know, in my world how content is created, how customer service is conceived of how you manage your day the type of resources you employ. So, you know, I think, you know, distribution has changed. Substack came out of nowhere. You know, when I was at Barstool, Substack wasn't a big platform. Now Substack's huge platform and then AI, I think, will really change most everything.

Gene Marks (27:56)

Do you have any specific plans for using AI at Food52?

Erika Badan (28:00)

Yeah. You know, we'll use it to think about how we scale content. We will use it to think about how we automate menial tasks. We'll use it to think about how we can be more intelligent with our customer service. I think those are probably the big three ways that we'll use it.

Gene Marks (28:15)

Okay, fair enough. Final question then. It's just, you know, overall advice that you have for businesses. You know, do you think in this world of digital, you know, digital brands as it is, do you think every company has to focus on online, you know, your assets to build their brand, or is there still a way to do that with just old school?

Erika Badan (28:40)

No, old school's over. You've got to, you know, I think the world is becoming very digital and is also becoming more physical. Right. In real life really matters. And you don't only need to live on the internet, but the internet is the single fastest way to start, grow, and to scale something. So, I think understanding that as part of a business is really, really critical.

Gene Marks (29:08)

Erika Ayers Badan is now currently the CEO of Food52. She served as CEO at Barstool Sports from 2016 to 2024. And Erika, you're the author. Can you give the name of your book and also where people can find you?

Erika Badan (29:22)

It's Nobody Cares About Your Career. And you can find me on Instagram @Erika or on TikTok @Erika_.

Gene Marks (29:31)

That's great. Hey, thank you so much for spending time with me today. I learned a lot. I know our audience will feel the same as well and want to wish you best of luck with Food52. I am a fan, and we'll continue to follow. Okay.

Erika Badan (29:43)

Okay, great. Thank you.

Gene Marks (29:44)

Take care. Thanks. Do you have a topic or a guest that you would like to hear on THRIVE, please let us know. Visit payx.me/ThriveTopics and send us your ideas or matters of interest. Also, if your business is looking to simplify your HR, payroll, benefits or insurance services, see how Paychex can help. Visit the resource hub at paychex.com/worx. That's W-O-R-X. Paychex can help manage those complexities while you focus on all the ways you want your business to thrive. I'm your host, Gene Marks, and thanks for joining us. Till next time, take care.

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