Andrew Rea, the YouTube cooking creator known as Binging with Babish, is rolling out a cluster of new ventures that mark his most ambitious push yet to extend the channel into a broader media and consumer business.
On Wednesday, Rea announced a partnership with the meal-kit service CookUnity to sell a line of Babish-branded pre-made dishes, a venture that follows on the heels of two additional launches. In May, Babish debuted a podcast in partnership with Vox Media, called In the Booth with Babish, and earlier this spring, he opened Bed n Babish, a short-term rental compound along the Delaware River designed for traveling foodies.
The launches join an existing portfolio that includes several cookbooks, a cookware line carried in Walmart and Amazon, and Baked with Babish, a THC-infused sugar that is expanding its product line this fall.
Together, the announcements position Rea as the latest creator to convert a YouTube audience into the foundation for a diversified business. In doing so, he joins a growing cadre of such creators, including MrBeast and Jesser, who have branched out from the platform in hopes of turning their fame into a more durable enterprise.
“Every YouTuber is a small business,” Rea said. “You are an LLC generating revenue and changing your business model depending on what’s trending.”
Rea, who hit 4 million YouTube subscribers earlier this year, quit his job in post-production within six months of starting the channel in 2016. He has since brought on his longtime friend Sawyer Jacobs to run the company as CEO, and the operation employs four full-time staff, including two editors. The cookware brand Made In invested $3 million in the business to fund native content for the channel, Rea said.
