The New York Times appears to have come up with an innovative way to stem declining print readership, offering subscribers to its newspapers the chance to order dinner with a paper, too.
The publisher has partnered with meal delivery firm Chef’d who will deliver the ingredients for recipes that appear inside its print products. Readers simply follow the recipe inside The New York Times and assemble the meals themselves.
Readers who subscribe to the offer can order the dinner boxes at anytime with the cost, for a meal for two, put at around $US40 ($A53).
A number of US publishers are now offering the meal kits with their print products. The California-based Chef’d has also teamed with Men’s Health to send its subscribers health based meal kits.
The New York Times has begun offering subscribers a number of products outside its typical print ones including food, jewellery and wine. Revenues from those ventures have increased 6.3 per cent to almost $US100 million a year while at the same time advertising to its print products fell 3.6 per cent to $US638.7 million.
It’s unclear how much the meal delivery service has added to newspaper subscriptions, however, The New York Times reports revenue from subs was up one per cent in 2015.
