Infatuated with Unlikely Pairings

got us already hustling. Laura's calling in from Jersey. I'm in Connecticut. We're doing our thing. I wish I was calling in on my way to the gym, but clearly that resolution hasn't taken off yet, so better luck tomorrow. I like this new thing that people are saying. It's not a resolution, it's an intention. So I talk to go to the gym tomorrow. I intend to go, but now I'm really excited about I think there's a lot of promise. I agree. I mean, coming off the Golden

Globes this weekend, like Oprah speech. I mean, if you're noting hope and a new horizon, is ahead of us. I don't. I don't know what you're feeling. Who's your VP? Pick I would say, I thought the Natalie Portman thing was hilarious, but you mentioned Michelle Obama and I agree, so Oprah Michelle twenty I'm in. I'm all yeah, there was. There was so much emotion and passion, and it was really exciting to see UM the platform of Time's Up

and the women. You know, on Sundays we wear black, all of the actors and actresses wearing black in solidarity around equality. And you know, we talked a lot about UM, this idea of causes and building these sort of purpose driven platforms, which has given way to these collaborations and unlikely pairings as you've talked much about two. Yeah, I think that, you know, we don't like to do a lot of like future casting, but I think that one thing that Laura and I are really excited about right

now is in is like these unlikely partnerships UM. I think there's a ton of opportunity for people to not just see what is already established, but to establish new. And we've talked a lot in we talked a lot about creating new I p creating new partnerships creating new brands.

Um so one that I think is kind of interesting and it's a smaller one, but I think it's really interesting because a big um, you know, global brand, Duncan Donuts partner to celebrate the darkest day of the year with warm Town Brewery, which is in um Worcester, Massachusetts. I think things like that, this is a signal. Right, you say, oh, it's a stunt. It was to celebrate the darkest day of the year to talk about their

dark growth. Yes, but Duncan has been pivoting and really talking more about their drink category and now them going into alcoholic beverages through partnership that's local with rabid fans. Actually is very interesting. So these are the types of things that we're talking about. And they were selling out in a day. They were selling out of this beer in a day. So the it's not just a stunt.

It's really about how do you start getting into new categories, how do you start reaching new customers, how do you actually root yourself in kind of the local fabric and local zeitgeist, but still do it at a national or

global brand. And I think that's really interesting. I love that. Yeah, because there's a couple of different ways you can sort of slice this, right, what you're talking about is creating limited edition products, and then there's other ways, like over the break, I went to a local spin studio and Hoboken, New Jersey called prime Cycle, and I just saw recently that they're pairing with Birch Box UM to do certain products that are specific to the studio. Right. So again

this pairing of local with a national entity. And I think it's interesting to think about UM that one being around community, right Son you talk exclusive products, you're talking about like mind of brands, you know, fusing together. I think one of the ones Rachel Typograph alluded to in seventeen was interesting about how DTC brands are sort of galvanizing around community as well and cheering technology that allows them to create best practices and learnings to grow their audiences.

So that signal that you just said, Alex, I think it is so interesting this idea of national established brands partnering with local UM you know, sort of startup, homegrown, community driven brands will be one that it's it's not necessarily a new thing, but I think one we can probably expect to see more of one thing that I thought was so smart and UM a lot of people were talking about was how we work invested in the way if that doesn't have like layers of signals and

the noise, both from kind of a female capital standpoint, but also you know, the future of work and how we're going to work and working outside of offices and collaborating with um, maybe somewhat unlikely partners think is what we're really excited about. And we brought a guest on

to talk to us about kind of all of those things. Yeah, andrews Dienthal, co founder of The Infatuation, who, along with his co founder Chris Stang, started a food discovery platform that was really meant to allow people to learn about new restaurants UM within certain cities that is really just

meant to fulfill the context of your everyday life. Yeah, and so I think that Andrew is going to talk a lot about building a brand from the ground up, of building a community from the ground up, what it takes, how important trust is, and then going out and looking at different types of partners and partnerships and being kind of relentlessly focused on who they were partnering with because they wanted to make sure that their community was there.

Kind of most valuable asset, and I think that is kind of key going into your audience and your community. So with that, Andrew Steinshal the Infatuation and kicking it in. So we're in the studio having spicy margarita's with not spicy, no, but they're they're damn good, Like you don't even need there's a hint of spice in here. There's a spice. According to Lauren Lauren our bartender, guest bartender, I mean,

watch out, Andy Cohen. This is like watch what happens live at Landia, compliments of our guest Andrew Steinthal, the co founder and c r O of The Infatuation Eats. You did that really well, Thank you. I did. And that's how do you know that Rachel typograph? Do you know Rachel? So? She told me about eats like two years ago and when it was like there was like I don't know sixty people who were like hashtagging eats

and you guys created it. We didn't. The best thing anybody's ever said to us once was oh, you guys created eats. I thought that was like internet speak, like b RB. So tell our listeners who at home who for whatever reason, aren't subscribed to the Infatuation. If you aren't, you better go online right now and do it. Um what it is, how you built it, and we'll get into the backstory loaded question. All right, let's do this. Uh,

The Infatuation is a restaurant discovery platform. So we help you find great places to eat, drink, spicy margarita's, go on a date, go out with your friends, you know, go somewhere late night, business lunch, situational based dining experiences, you know. Yeah, we we We started because myself and my business partner, Chris Stang, we were both in the

music business, right we were. I was the VP of pr at Warner Brothers Records, Chris was a VP of Marketing Atlantic Records, And we were these dudes who were

out all the time, going to shows, eating meals. Because going out to shows, you're eating or drinking or whatever three times a week and you're out, and like, there was no resus out there for us to turn to to find situational based recommendations that were, you know, spoken in a voice that we could relate to, you know, all the all the food and restaurant discovery you know platforms out there were you know, more catered towards people who really care about celebrity chefs or cooking or you

know that one percent of people who take this stuff really really seriously. The rest of us just want to know, is this supposed to have a good burger? Can I go here? Before show at Bowery Ballroom? Can I go here? After taping an episode of at Landia in Brooklyn? You know, like, you know, situational based dining recommendations in a way that's fun and interesting and you know, speaks to the way

that we all live our lives. And you hear it's almost like hearing it from a friends, the way you guys, your editorial, your tone, everything, even like your social media, which I love, we love. We were talking about it earlier. Um, it feels like we're sitting down with your friends. Like we've always tried to relate to people the way that they would relate to their friends. You know, we don't

hire professional food writers, don't really high professional writers. We've hire people to write about restaurants that experienced it the same way that your friends experienced it. And I think that's what is so relatable about our content and why initially it it really reacted with people was because it was just me and Chris talking to our friends. You know.

That's why it started in the first place, was because we were like, we need this for ourselves and for our friends, and that just started to grow from there. So you have you You said that you and Chris both got your start um in the music industry, record business. Um, when we had first met, you gave me the backstory that the Infatuation really just started as a side hustle.

Can you talk a little bit about, um, what that was like in terms of growing something on the side and at what point you and Chris knew that we've arrived at a place where we can walk away from our jobs at these labels and actually make the Infatuation a full time gig. Yeah. Um, so we we did this for five years while we had our full time gigs in the music business. Um. It was quite quite

a journey, um from the beginning. But this was always it was never something that we arted that we were like, oh, this is a side project that we're just doing it for the passion, right, Like this was always like we're building a business. Yeah, Like we had always we met a long time. We actually met on set at TRL of all places were amazing when we were both college music college music directors at our respective college radio stations. When we were I told you that I had a

guest appearance on the grind. That's that is amazing. Where is that of my prom weekend? Is that it? Does the tape exist? I hope not? All? Right? Anyway, keeping it was cool because we've you know, we we had the luxury of working in the music business and our bosses approved of what we were doing, which was huge, and they were really supportive. And I don't know that any other industry would have supported something like this, but they got it, and it was a compliment to what

we were doing. And you know, we were able to build slowly, right. We spent so much time just in it marketing and guerrilla grassroots marketing our brand the way

that we knew how to build a band. You know, we we basically applied everything we knew about building a band to building a brand that happened to be a brand that encapsulated restaurant reviews, right, and and we took all the tricks that we had learned in terms of building audience, building community and really connecting with them and taking the time to communicate and make people feel like

they're part of something. In addition to trying to write hit songs right, trying to continue to write stuff that people were going to respond to and connect with. So it took you know, not building a brand is it takes a long time. You know, learning trust is something that you cannot as Chris, my business partner, says all the time, you can't growth hack trust. There's just no way to do it. And you know, we're we've been at you know, it took a minute, but you know,

slowly but surely, you would just see it. Every point we would get another hit or something would happen and like we move up a notch and it would keep growing, slowly but surely, and you you know, I first our friends and our friends and friends and then strangers, and then all of a sudden we were d having people into restaurants and making a difference and you just could see it growing and at you know, one point and it was just like, all right, if this is going

to be fully realized, um to its full potential, it's time to jump. And it took us like a year to fully unwind from our jobs and like convince people that we were actually going to do this time and this is gonna be our thing, even though we knew deep down that this was what we were going to do.

Let's go into the community, because Alex and I kind of about what it takes, because I don't think a lot of people understand, especially in the fact that you talked a lot about this off Mike, that you didn't put paid investment behind, that you haven't taken money from vcs to investigate. Everything was very grassroots in the same way as you you um referenced, in the same way you would build a band or a following up a band.

Can you talk about what community building look like at the Infatuation early days and how that plan has evolved like early early days. I mean, look, we we we launched the Infatuation in April two nine, right, and the iPhone was like two years old. Twitter was brand new, and we knew that this was going to be a business and a you know, brand that was built on the back of social media. And we spent hours on

Twitter building community. I mean, like we would go in there and just start responding to anybody talking about Momofuku or shake Shack or any of the restaurants that were popular and cool and people were talking about on social Media's hop into conversations like posts, follow people and hope they would follow us back. And I would sit there

for three hours literally a day, just doing stuff. And at that point it was like I'll go on chow Hound and start like jumping into conversations because it was like a message board back then that like people actually kind of used to get recommendations, and I would. I had no business, I've never been on it before in my life, but like I started going in there and posting part of our reviews to relevant things, and you know, hoping that people would click on our links and we'd

go on Yelp. We got kicked off Yelp like three times because because I'd basically go on all the restaurant pages and then be like, here's two or three lines from our review, go check out the whole thing. At that point, it was a maculate infatuation dot com and they kicked me off because they like, see you later. What are you're doing? Stop? Stop using this to self promote. But it's all about trying to find audience that might be interested in what you're doing and spending the time

to go connect with people in those worlds. And like that's what we did for literally five years. And how big is the community today. It's tough to I mean, like across all platforms, we probably reach about three million people a month. But you know we have like Instagram is also a huge piece of our community, puzzle right, And and so we're events, Like we started doing events

one year in as a company. We put tickets on sale though an event that we called Turkey Leg Ball and it was like a fun just like ridiculous party where we got a couple of brands to come in McCallan being one of them, and come poor drinks and

serve food and have a good time. And you know, we had remember going into a meeting at work we had put tickets on sale, went into a meeting, came out an hour later and we were sold out three tickets and we were like are they before we could even go to friends and family and we were like

who are these people? But like the reality is that people want to come and hang, they want they want to meet like minded people, create something, you know, a community around an idea that people want to share on and it's it's similar, like what you guys are doing right now. I think people who listened to this show want more. Like I started listening to the show and I'm like, this is amazing because I'm really interested in this world, and I think you guys know what you know?

You you connect on a real level. How did you find it? I was tipped off by a girl we were interviewing, who was like, do you listen to this podcast? And I was like, what did you hire? I tried to started binging all but and then immediately I hopped on Twitter and it was like, what are you guys doing? Because it's something that I think is necessary and interesting, and I think there's a there's a big need for a fresh voice in the whole advertising stings. There is,

and I think it's the same the same. It was the same thing for food, right, like the same want to say, the same voices had been around for so long it was you know they all do who are those voices? So it's like New York Times and New York Meg and Food and Wine and the Food Network and like those those are all great publications, right like they all serve a specific audience and they do it really really well. But like for a community that is being you know, connected to each other via social and

the Internet, it's it's a different thing. I think what Alex and I are after marketing is the very same thing you know you're talking about in the food business.

It's it's access. It's sort of that underground niche we've been talking about this rat pack community that we're creating that um really speaks to the author that, like you talked about, I just want to get a review about where to get a burger with my buddy, and we want to talk about the conversations over spicy margarita that people don't hear and they're not having these kind of provocative conversations that they need to have and bring it

mainstream and stereo sound, you know, totally. And it's also about empowering people with knowledge, right, I think I think it's like the one of the best things that people have always said to us is that, like you make me look so good because you give us all this information and we pass it on as our own and like we look like a million bucks. And that's the

whole point for us at least. Right, It's like this discovery platform where we want people to know all the great spots and like, if we're helping you pack a great restaurant for a first date and that works out, you're gonna So what are brands when they are coming to you? Because I assume a lot of them, I know are coming to you. Yeah, I mean they come,

we go to them. That's been our like, we we were really pretty you say I want to work with you because we we we I mean, our whole world is curation, right, So like we've been really specific about the brands that we work with from the beginning, and we knew that coming from the music business, brands underwriting a lot of the music because like music business is great because you've got to learn how to market with no money, right, So that is always a challenge that

we you know, we had underwrite videos or you know, back then it was like Diesel was a big brand and like you they have a community people you could get a song on their seeing Yeah, well sure, um, but you know they would create you can they could bring in money, they could create new audience to market

yourself towards. So you know, we we when we started the company, we made a list of brands that were on our hit list from the beginning, from day one that we're like American Express and Nike and Whole Foods and at that time like Seamless and Delta, and you know, we just started hacking away, you know, trying to figure out how to make relationships with these people. And it took a lot of time. Like I was knocking on the m X door for literally five years before I

finally cracked it open to get in there. And now there are longest tenured and biggest partner and we do all kinds of interesting stuff with them. So what are you focusing on? Because you told me, like, I'm not from this industry. I didn't grow up in media. I'm not beholden to legacy. What is that experience? Right? It's like this, So what is your social experience? Where do consumers and real human beings spend their time? Right, they

spend their time on their phones. They are scrolling through Instagram, they are on Twitter, They're on whatever platforms they are choosing right there, messaging with their friends, like texting back and forth, and they're going to do ship do cool things. Right. They want to go and experience things and meet new people and post stuff on their social media about how cool their lives are. Right like, and so that's what we do. We create experiences online and off and like

in a great brand into our world. So right like, we're a restaurant discovery platform. All the guides and content that we do on the web, it's all based around you know, food dining restaurants. You know, we don't do news or anything like that, but we are able to underwrite a lot of that stuff around a narrative or a theme that we would do anyway that we can fit a brand into. And you have a very editorial,

right perspective. It is absolutely editorial, and it's a very specific voice and p O V and and we'll do like a package of content like our Summer Guide, for example, which we've now done for six straight years. We've sold it for five straight years that we sell for a ton of money. That's a big content package that a brand underwrites the stellar artois and what does that look like? What does that incorporate Here incorporates a big launch of content.

They own a couple of the guides inside of it. We do a ton of social content tent where we'll go to a bunch of accounts that they have UM that they serve at and create social first content that live across our twenty four instagrams. I mean like we you know, we have a main infatuation account, we have localized accounts and markets. You have like at burger, at pasta, at tacos. The fact that you actually have those at ice cream at wild and that helps us fill the

spreadsheet with impression. It's like that Internet so and then and then we go and we create cool experiences, will go to a bar restaurant, take it over and invite either consumers or you know people like land listeners, correct, like cool you know, tastemakers, cool people, people with big social followings, the bad eye word that nobody wants to say, but that every brand is interested in all the influencers.

So talk to us a little bit about how the infatuation over the course of five years has been able to get the three million plus. You were talking a little bit earlier about how UM you've been able to stick to the script, You've been able to follow what I would say is probably a finely tuned UM algorithm

formula in a formula yourself. How you've been able to stay the course, continue to grow last episode, Alex and I were talking a lot about how many of these digital first platforms, some of which you know, we use social in the same capacity that you were that Chase scale,

So three million in their world would seem very small thing. Um, why do you think what the approach you're doing has been able to and will presumably outlast some of these others that are either having to sell or Um, you know, I think it's just because it's real, you know, I think that. Yeah, And it's also like there's value, right, and I think that you know, Chris and our editorial editor in chief Hillary Reinsburg like there it's all about

value to the consumer. Like every single piece of content that we do on the web and on social, it's all based around discovery and about value. And like if it's if it's just throw away content garbage, like we're not going to do it, you know. So it all comes down to that, are you a part of people's lives in the day to day? Like that? That's that's what we strive to be, and that's what we've kind of become for a lot of people. There's also a ton of you know, there's passion behind our brand and

what we're doing. People really connect with it. So if you can, if you can figure out how to become a part of people's lives, then that's massive, right, People that that that there's so much more power in that. And that's why it's it's also a challenge for us

because we're small. Right. That's three that three million people a month, right, that's spread across web, Instagram, our messaging platform text Rex, which you text us and you can get you know, real time restaurant recommendations back from humans, you know, and our newsletter and whatever. There's a lot of different platforms. Um our app that we have. You talk about your appy and can you talk about text

backs humanizational and I think is really interesting. Ye app is kind of uh, you know, as as our product team says, a diet version of the website so that it's it's really about like nearby and when you're out running around you can pull up our app and then our our messaging services it's called text rex and it's we're live in New York and l A now. And you know, we heard for a long time that people will come to us and be like, I know you have website and I have an app, but just tell

me where to go. Because it's two thousand, two fifteen we launched it. But like people don't, I don't have the attention span. They don't want to spend so much time looking for something. They just want you to tell them what to do. So like this was human versus because because because automation, it's not correct. Someday a I will be there and and we'll be able to combine what we've got with all the conversation data that we've got over the last uh, you know, the last couple

of years running the service. But right now, like you can't.

There is no robot that can tell you that when you're a party of six and you have a couple of vegetarian friends and you want to eat on the lorry side, that like, you know, this restaurant is the answer for although I will say, like, you know, we're all excited about the future of AI and the ability to program these things, but I over people talking about I have to say every any person that I've talked to that is obsessed, and I feel like you're platform

is one that you're either you're either all in or you don't know about it. Like that's like literally the different um. When they talk about that feature, the first thing they say is that they're talking to a human. The value that we get outside of like from the

messaging platform is invaluable, Like it's crazy. It basically drives like the trends that we see inside, right, Like we're doing a lot of conversations every day, we have stuff coming in all the all this so like so so the data inside of text rex informs our editorial, right, Like we see trends, We're like, oh, people are having trouble finding this, let's do this right, Like, some people in the platform are using the word casual, like that's one of the most popular terms in the in text

rects outside of high and by and like you see it over and over again, and we never thought casual, what does casual actually mean? People use the word right, so they want and they want content based around the words that they use. So we started doing casual this and casual that, casual, Italian, casual sushi and it does really well. Or like the super cute you know guy to go in and hanging out with your friends. I just want to super cute restaurant. That's what are you really?

And yes, are you're redefining the food and travel category based on these sort of what I wouldn't call demographics. I think there are new types of psychographics that you wouldn't be able to get based on traditional media insights. Right, Like people are telling you, they're giving you the vernacular,

I think. I think it's definitely a different audience. And before we came around a really hard audience, especially in food to reach, I don't know where you would go to reach our audience of you know, twenty something and thirty somethings that are maybe really into food, but like or passively into food. Right, It's it's you know, for a lot of the other publications, they've focused on the one percent, right, like of people that are like that's

really into it. And for us, our audience, we look at it and it's like it's everybody, because you know, there's a lot of social capital in knowing where to go, I mean look and get to get back to the tex UXs thing. One last point is like there's just

there's so much data inside of that. We we are sitting on a treasure trove of like real time eight as it pertains to like millennial drinking, dining, you know, trends right that that we're going to start hacking up, putting a Dice data scientist on and like serving as our offering as part of the packages that we offer to brands. What's your most valuable asset? Trust? I mean, that's that's what the audience so people pay for us, that our audience trusts us, and you know, that's what

the brands kind of come in for. And that's why people while while while users come back is because they you know, they're never going to agree with us every single time. You're not gonna be right about every single restaurant, but at least they know where we stand. So it's time, Lauren, we could probably use one more shake before we go. Um killed by d I y. He's slamming his margarite and they prepare for this. I'm nervous somebody who's not

for me to this should be easy. You answer pretty quickly, you've got it all, okay? Can we kill you? Help? I mean, aren't you? Isn't Yelp already dead? Is it? I think it's it's so it's so terrible and no one uses it. You said it, not me, it is. It is terrible. Even the Bard's under agrees, what are you buying? I'm gonna buy anchor, of course we do, and and tell people what you're going to do with anchor when you buy it. I'm gonna put I'm gonna

move everything into that platform. That's that's it. But it'd be interesting to be in your car and be like, hey, what what's near me right now? Using voice and then it comes back to you with like these are this is the Infatuation recommended burger. That's right, And we talked about what's the audio cue for that will be tell everyone eats and what are you killing or what are you doing yourself? How about rebuilding like food TV, but

not on TV. If people want to find you, where they're gonna find you, They're going to find us at the Infatuation dot com, at infatuation on all social platforms. You can find my email on the Infatuation website, but it's Steinthalt the Infatuation dot Com. Hit me up or schmooey on all social platforms, and I love SCHMILLI Well, Andrews, thank you for bringing Lauren, and thank you for bringing

done Julia for having me guys, thank you. So that's our first episode, totally interesting that we decided to start the year with a conversation around food and intentions to go to the gym, but attentions be better. But like the new sol cycle campaign, screw resolutions. We are here for healthy living in and really really good conversations with our community. And with that, thank you, Cameron Drews. You're stuck with us for another year. Matt Turk, Andy Bowers,

all our friends and family up Panoply and Atlantia. Let's do this. We'll talk to you in two weeks. Full disclosure, our opinions, our own I told you that I had a guest appearance on the grind is that it does the tape exist? I hope not promos at media? Actually should well, I know people, we know people of viatcom. Just give him a call. Let's keep moving. That's so really good. So so we brought it up. By the way, I just want to be clear that you brought it

up because you wanted it brought up. Anyway, it's moving. It was cool because we you know, we we had