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Caper is a new food-world media business launching with $2.5 million in funding.
We spoke to half of their eight-person founding team — including the CEO and all three staff journalists — in advance of their launch.
In this episode:
💵 A rare equity-based compensation model for founding journalists
🫒 Food journalism built to make a difference beyond food
Scroll down to read our profile on Caper.
— Francis Zierer, Lead Editor
Illustrations courtesy of Caper
Best new food publications 2026
Great restaurants are at least as much about the atmosphere as they are about the food. Caper, just the same, is less concerned with what to eat than what people in the food world are doing.
In their words, it’s “a new media company covering the people, money, ambition, power and chaos that fuels the food world.” The company’s launch is backed by a seed round in the neighborhood of $2.5 million, funding a full-time staff of eight.
These eight include the two executive co-founders, two editors, a marketer, and three founding journalists: Emma Orlow, formerly of Eater; Chris Crowley, formerly of New York Magazine; and Annie Armstrong, formerly of artnet.
Illustration courtesy of Caper.
Caper’s launch is imminent, but the website is not yet live. However, the three journalists have been publishing weekly newsletters since early February:
Emma wrote about a cheese sample sale at the warehouse of one of New York’s most in-demand cheese suppliers.
Annie wrote about a beloved restaurant losing its lease of two decades to be replaced by a new spot from a more powerful restaurateur.
Chris wrote about rumors of ICE sweeps among bars and restaurants on New York’s Lower East Side.
None of these stories are overly concerned with what’s on the plate; they’re about the people, power, and relationships of which those plates are a product.
“It was sort of about the [ICE sweep] rumors, but the rumors as a way of getting into the fear. To me, that's an important story to write. […] These are conversations people are having that you don't know about unless you're in those circles.”
A $2.5 million bet on prosumer subscribers
First, to attract people working in the industry, for whom the journalism will prove essential.
Second, to attract prosumer diners — and create more of them. These are the people setting alarms to snag impossible reservations, the would-be sommeliers with wine fridges in their apartments.
While the company and its writers are all based in New York, the stories are meant to appeal to an audience beyond the city as well.
Co-founders Max Tcheyan (CEO) and Dan Tsinis (COO) previously worked together at Puck, the business-focused newsletter company covering Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood. Dan led data; Max, a co-founder, oversaw product and growth.
Illustration courtesy of Caper.
Before Puck, Max was VP of Growth at The Athletic, the sports media startup that was acquired by The New York Times for $550 million in 2022. He pulled off Caper’s $2.5 million seed raise by pitching investors on a familiar thesis: build specialist journalism for prosumers, just focused on the food world this time.
It’s a similar audience bet Max leaned into in his time at The Athletic and again at Puck; specialist journalism that respects its audience’s intelligence, increases that audience’s specialist knowledge, and drives demand for itself.
“Can we take category experts and have them turn their lens on this space of food, restaurants, hospitality? It's an audience strategy, but it's also a way to differentiate. [...] The food is the B-roll, is kind of the way we think about it.”
Caper’s decision to bring in Annie — the only one of the three founding journalists without a food-world background — sums up this audience bet well. Her coverage of the art world centered on power and relationships. She joined Caper to “hunt for a new truffle” and to apply her sourcing talent and storytelling style to a new industry.
The restaurant industry, as Annie put it, “sees itself as more for the people” than the art world. This will shape her coverage.
“Anyone can make a reservation online, whether you can afford the food is a different topic, but there is this lower barrier to entry. So I think that that has been a bit of an adjustment to me — how people in the food industry revere the very powerful is quite different than how people in the art industry revere the very powerful.”
A business model in the middle of a barbell
While at Eater, Emma recalls watching the company go through as many as five rounds of layoffs. In the summer of 2025, she was finally affected.
After being laid off, Emma recalls, people were telling her, “rightfully so,” that she should start her own newsletter. She had no desire to do so.
“There's a loneliness in having to build your own brand and be your own [boss]. I'm a writer, but I'm not a business leader in any sense. I've never had any experience doing that. […] It feels much more exciting and natural to me to be in collaboration with people than siloed.”
Caper, as Max describes it, sits in the middle of “the barbell of media.” On one end sit the institutions — a Post, a Times. On the other sit independent creators, solo entrepreneurs who’ve come up all on their own or started anew after leaving one of the institutions.
The independent path offers ownership and upside, but with all the risk and uncertainty of small-business ownership. The institutional path offers the comforts of a salary, health insurance, editorial and legal support.
Publications in the middle can offer the best of both worlds — ownership and health insurance; risk and reward in a more palatable ratio than solo publishing. As Max put it, “if a journalist has the risk tolerance and is ready to participate at this stage,” they’ll be a good fit. This certainly describes Chris, who left New York Magazine after a full decade to join Caper, eager to create something out of nothing.
“I hadn't been a part of something where we were trying to figure out an identity or establish that.”
The three founding journalists are compensated more like tech startup employees than journalists at traditional publications. The model allows Caper to compete with those institutions for top talent.
Illustration courtesy of Caper.
The journalists, in addition to equity in the company, will receive bonuses tied to subscription targets and other company-level goals. After Puck, this is the second media business Max has co-founded with some version of this startup compensation model. He says it’s rooted in his time at The Athletic — “We started in San Francisco. So it was the normal mode. And we brought that to the journalist class.”
Like Max’s alma matres, Caper will be a subscription business at its core. Over the last decade, he’s certainly learned what it takes to get a reader’s credit card out and commit to a paid subscription.
Events. Max stressed that “the convening power of media companies” is a core subscription driver. What will these events look like? One series Max mentioned will be an “underground cooking competition” in which chefs from around the city convene to compete in “places you wouldn’t expect.”
Professional products. These are still in the works, but think business intelligence products included in higher subscription tiers.
Talent. Caper is a journalist-led business. This, Max said, is why subscribers got out their credit cards at his previous businesses. The founding journalists were specifically chosen for their skill, unique points of view, and existing loyal audiences.
“You have to give people a reason to subscribe. And the only reason for someone to subscribe is [if we’re] putting out good work that they think is worth paying a little bit for.”
We’re all diners
As we publish, the Caper homepage still features no more than an email signup form. Soon it will be live and the founding thesis will be put to the test.
I asked the Caper team what they hope to accomplish in 2026. On the business side, of course, it’s about bringing in enough subscriptions to sustain the business. Culturally, as Chris said, they want it “to matter to that wider audience of people” beyond people like himself who spend too much money on restaurants.
“Because it's food, and because my mom in Atlanta and my downstairs neighbor can know who I'm talking about for the first time — with respect to art — I can reach a bigger audience and try to pull more people into my writing, by telling a good story.”
Subscribe to Caper.
