Bailey Richards
Bailey Richards is a writer-reporter at People magazine who approaches food coverage as news about how people live, shop and remember places, not just what they eat. Her stories treat restaurant closures, product recalls and food-adjacent trends as consumer events with emotional and cultural stakes, often connecting them to entertainment and online culture. She works on the magazine’s digital news operation, filing multiple stories a day across verticals, with food sitting alongside pop culture, fashion and celebrity coverage in her regular output.
Food news, recalls and restaurant stories
Richards covers food as a news beat, reporting on recalls and closures that alter everyday routines and carry real consumer consequences. Her work on the ready-to-eat tuna poke sold at Costco and recalled for potentially containing a life-threatening bacteria frames the story around the risk to shoppers and the scope of the recall, rather than technical regulatory detail.
In that piece she focuses on clear facts about the product, the retailer and the health danger, giving readers enough information to decide what to do without leaning into alarmism.
She also reports on the closure of Burrito King, billed as Los Angeles’ first burrito stand, after more than 50 years in business, treating the loss of a long-standing counter-service institution as both a local business story and a cultural moment for regulars. In her food coverage, individual restaurants and packaged products are treated as part of a wider consumer landscape, with attention to history, habit and the practical impact on people’s daily lives.
Food-adjacent pop culture and lifestyle coverage
Alongside straight food news, Richards writes lifestyle pieces that show how consumer products and trends become extensions of identity and fandom. In her essay on “Mini-Me” dolls as the new “it-girl” accessory, she argues for lookalike dolls as storytelling objects that help their owners feel seen, framing a niche accessory in terms of personal narrative and cultural visibility.
That piece moves between her own experience and examples from current pop culture, such as Olivia Rodrigo using a fashion doll styled to match her album imagery, to show how a small object can carry the same weight as clothing or makeup in a public persona. This way of writing - tying a product or trend to the way people present themselves online and in public - is the same lens she brings to food-adjacent stories, where campaigns, snacks or mascots are treated as part of a broader lifestyle picture rather than isolated novelties.
Her background interest in thrifting, secondhand fashion and digital trends feeds into this work, giving her food and lifestyle stories a distinct fluency in how scenes and subcultures adopt and remix consumer items.
Entertainment reporting and talent-focused features
Richards’ food stories sit within a larger entertainment and culture portfolio at the magazine, and her approach to celebrity coverage reinforces her angle on food as part of the same ecosystem. She regularly writes news and features about films, television and books, including coverage of memoir releases and casting or project announcements for actors and directors.
She has interviewed high-profile talent such as Stevie Nicks, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Sandra Oh for People, bringing a mix of fandom and precise reporting to conversations about their projects and collaborations.
In her feature on Stevie Nicks being honored with her own Barbie, she treats the doll as an artifact of music history and fan culture, paying attention to design choices, the artist’s reactions and the way such products sit on collectors’ shelves and social media feeds. She also covers projects with strong social or emotional themes, such as Brittany Snow’s Oscar-nominated short film about abortion, presenting the work through detailed quotes and a clear summary of the creative intent.
This focus on what a project represents, and how audiences might connect to it, mirrors how she writes about long-running restaurants or widely sold food products - as cultural touchpoints rather than simple commodities.
High-volume digital news across beats
Richards works on the weekend team at People, where she is responsible for filing a high volume of stories across the site’s verticals. Professional profiles describe her workload as five to seven articles per day, spanning entertainment, fashion, influencers, secondhand culture and other lifestyle beats in addition to food. She joined People in 2023 as a writer-reporter after previously serving as an editorial intern for the magazine, and she continues to report and write news as part of the digital operation. Outside the magazine, she maintains a portfolio that notes her work covering industry events and interviewing talent, reinforcing the picture of a reporter used to switching quickly between breaking items, features and more reflective essays.
The combination of speed, cross-beat range and familiarity with online trends shapes how she handles food stories: they are concise, timely pieces that plug directly into a broader grid of entertainment and lifestyle news rather than stand-alone restaurant reviews or recipe features.
4 more food journalists.
Al Culliton
Al Culliton is a writer and historian whose work focuses on the American cocktail as a living part of food and culture, using obscure, historic drinks to show how bars, spirits and cities change. They write reported features that trace how forgotten recipes move from old bar guides back onto modern menus, reconstructing how cocktails originally tasted and explaining how new builds reshape them. Their beat is revived classics, regional specialties and low-proof aperitifs, covered one drink at a time with close attention to specs, technique, glassware and service. They write about cocktails as cultural artifacts tied to specific communities and geographies, using single recipes to explore place, identity, regional traditions and diaspora histories. Across masthead work and recipe writing, they combine primary-source research with present-day reporting from working bars, in precise, accessible prose grounded in technical detail.
Alaina Chou
Alaina Chou stands out for rigorously testing food and kitchen products and turning those hands-on trials into clear shopping advice. She is a commerce writer at Bon Appétit and Epicurious, where she makes newsletters and shopping guides for home cooks. Her beat is food commerce, with coverage of air fryers, meal kits, protein powders, pepper grinders, electrolyte drinks, and cookbooks. She focuses on what is worth buying, how it performs, how it tastes, and how it fits daily routines and wellness. She also writes sale-driven lists and roundup pieces, and she has worked on Bon Appétit’s Feel Good Food Plan. Her reporting is practical, direct, and grounded in product testing.
Amadea Tanner
Amadea Tanner is a food journalist for Daily Meal whose distinct focus is food history, culinary nostalgia, and the way everyday dishes reveal broader cultural stories. She covers canned baked beans, boomer-era casseroles, cowboy trail food, and sailors’ rations to show how preservation, technology, labor, and survival shaped familiar staples. Her beat includes retro recipes, mid‑20th‑century home cooking, old-school ice cream flavors, and vintage cookbooks, treating them as records of household budgets and aspirations. She also reports on kitchen culture and domestic design, from breakfast alcoves and pie safes to milk doors and wall phones. Tanner investigates global dish origins and contested national claims in pieces on haggis and pavlova. Beyond Daily Meal, she has worked across food, travel, and sustainability, contributing to outlets including Atlas Obscura, Beau Monde Media, Yahoo, and Tasting Table.
Amanda Garrity
Amanda Garrity stands out for turning food, holidays, and family traditions into practical service stories that help readers plan specific celebrations. She is a lifestyle editor at TODAY.com and has more than seven years of experience as a lifestyle writer and editor, including five years on staff at Good Housekeeping, where she covered home, holidays, food, entertainment, and other lifestyle news. Her work also appears in consumer titles including Prevention, Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and Best Products. Her beat centers on event-based menus, holiday explainers, and classic TV and film guides, with clear, list-driven reporting that gives readers specific dates, recipes, viewing options, and simple background for family planning.