FOODCAST: podcasts, a new listening experience in gastronomy

While video is considered the number one medium of all digital strategies in 2018, the word "podcast" is becoming a kind of leitmotif in the media world. This audio format, which is increasingly popular with consumers, addresses extremely diverse themes. We see many podcasts flourishing on the web on subjects such as fashion, design, justice, and even cooking. Gastronomy, an art for which taste is king, and the sight princess, is therefore gradually giving way to hearing and imagination. So, how can we explain such a media boom around this format? And how can we interpret the development of culinary podcasts when, traditionally, cooking is eaten, contemplated, but little listened to?

This article aims to decipher this trend , which says a lot about the consumption habits of the French. We have immersed ourselves in the podcastsphere to understand the phenomenon and give you a better idea of it.

Audio, the next strategic format after video?

A media boom

The Podcast is in real effervescence in France. According to an OpinionWay survey, 39% of French people now listen to formats of this type. According to Médiamétrie, 4 million people even consume radio podcasts every month. An increase in the number of consumers necessarily rhymes with an increase in advertising resources. For this, the podcast is no exception: the American podcast advertising market jumped by 85% in 2017. Slate has announced that it earns 25% of its revenue from the podcast format and has therefore decided to create its own dedicated production company. So inevitably, the mediasphere is panicking and the word podcast can be read on everyone's lips. France Culture is talking about the past, while at the same time, the 11th Tours Journalism Conference has chosen this year to focus on "the madness of podcasts". And this panic is not just media noise. There is also an increasing production of podcasts. Media outlets such as L'Equipe, Arte and Les Echos are creating their own formats, transforming audio into an opportunity to adapt their content.

A format that adapts to the needs of consumers

While it was considered for several decades that radio had difficulty finding its audience compared to television, in recent years audio seems to be taking its revenge on the image. But how can we explain this renewed interest on the part of consumers, at a time when image sometimes takes precedence over content (we think of the number of limited characters on Twitter, photos on Instagram, media such as Brut which specialise in video, etc.)? It is first and foremost technological progress that provides us with an answer. They have allowed a diversification of information and entertainment sources. Some techniques have been developed, such as binaural sound, which allows you to live a unique listening experience, by restoring natural listening in three dimensions (we invite you to try it out by listening to these confusing examples ). It is also interesting to note that podcasts have managed to take advantage of social transformations to establish themselves in the daily lives of their consumers. In an era where our lifestyles are accelerating and it is sometimes difficult for us to find time for a radio show, podcasts have become a very good way to reconcile mobility and entertainment.

You don't need to be sitting in a café or on a sofa to listen to them, you can download them and devour them while walking, taking public transport or playing sports... They are practical and make us feel like we are optimizing our time because they allow us to multitask while listening to them carefully. Like the radio, you might say. Yes, with the difference that the podcast, delinearized by nature, has no time: it can be consumed at any time of the day, week, month. But how do you explain the production of food podcasts? What do these shows say about our relationship with gastronomy?

In 2018, cooking is lived as a sensory and emotional experience

Sight has emerged as essential alongside taste in the culinary experience

Today, gastronomy is experienced sensorially. You only have to look at Instagram to realize it: the theme "food" is one of the favorites of users of the social network (find our article on the strategies to be deployed by restaurateurs on the social giant).

Sight has never been so mobilized in the kitchen, so much so that the "Instagramable" quality sometimes seems to dethrone that of taste. Seducing the taste buds no longer seems to be enough, you also have to flatter the pupils... We are far from our grandmothers' dishes, which are gourmet but sometimes not very appetizing. Modern gastronomy delights our eyes before delighting our stomachs. However, many media outlets echo an overflow of images, and a desire on the part of consumers to return to more simplicity. In this context, the podcast could very well do well.

Cooking is told in podcasts

The podcast adage could be "out of sight but close to the heart". Food podcasts are indeed an ode to our mouth today in that it is not simply the theater of an explosion of flavors, but also invested with a great narrative dimension. The voice is the instrument that allows knowledge and stories to be transmitted to the ear of those who want to hear it.

Orality makes it possible to put tastes and flavors into words in a much more explicit and precise way. The marriage of sounds within the podcast allows us to approach cooking from a different angle by placing the notion of sharing and transmission at its heart. Via a podcast, it is easier to enter the intimacy of the kitchens and learn about the stories they host. Cooking is told and experienced by hearing. It is no longer a simple delicacy, it becomes a universe in its own right in which a chain of actors (cook, producers, etc.) is involved bearers of stories beyond flavors.

Food podcasts, emotion above all

With the podcast, we are therefore getting out of the foodporn trend consecrated on Instagram, and we are giving substance back to what we eat. Delphine Le Feuvre, creator of the podcast l'Epicurieuse, tells us that she likes to penetrate more intimately into the world of a Chef, into that of the cuisine of a country, the history of a product... She feeds her podcasts with meetings and exchanges with people who are not necessarily known, but who have a particular story with the product she honors in her monthly episode. More than a news review on new food trends or new restaurants that the whole of Paris is snapping up, Delphine is sensitive to the life stories around cooking, to everything it bequeaths from one generation to the next and to the conviviality it spreads. This is the emotion that this journalist in love with gastronomy is looking for.If we look at the podcast of the three-starred chef of Arpèges, Alain Passard, we observe the same desire to spread emotions. And to make this transmission more palpable than ever, the chef has decided to place music at the heart of his show. A cooking recipe is for the chef like a score composed of heart and top notes. Every Saturday on France Musique, he shares one of his symphonies with his listeners in " Le palais musical d'Alain Passard ".

So, yes, radio shows and cooking podcasts are more and more present in our media universe. Some media have even placed these programs at the heart of their editorial strategy. France Inter was one of the pioneer media in this field. Some of the cooking shows that the radio broadcasts have even become cult in the French media field and have certainly participated in their own way in the ever-increasing production of culinary podcasts. One thinks of the superb "On va déguster" presented every Sunday by the great François-Régis Gaudry, surrounded by talented speakers. The team of gourmets brilliantly succeeds in sharing their love of gastronomy and in replacing the little noises of everyday life (simmering pans, champagne bubbles, twirling spoons...) at the heart of the dining experience. The podcast finally pays tribute to this French perception of cuisine, which is conceived as an art full of history and a vector of emotions. This hearing-centric format takes a new approach to gastronomy, in a context where our pupils are saturated with photographs of dishes of all kinds. No less important, hearing allows the kitchen to gain body and thickness.We will conclude this article by saying that, too often, sight has been privileged to the detriment of the other senses, relegated to the background. However, they are very important. Cooking is indeed a multisensory experience that stirs all our senses by soliciting them together and not in their uniqueness. This awareness of our senses in the kitchen allows chefs, restaurateurs and media actors to work on new sensory stimulations by giving a place to the other senses.