Whether you consider yourself a foodie, a casual home cook, or a traveler who loves to explore other cultures through their food, food writing might be the freelance writing specialty for you.
This post will share a sampling of food writers' markets you can pitch.
Freelance Food Writers' Markets
Explore this collection of food writers' markets, and start pitching your story ideas, food travel pieces, restaurant reviews, recipes, and more to paying publications.
AARP The Magazine
AARP The Magazine claims to be the "world's largest circulation magazine." Catering to the over-50 crowd, the magazine accepts freelance submissions in the following categories: finance, health, food, travel, consumerism, general interest, and relationships. Rate of pay is not currently included in their published writers' guidelines.
Backwoods Home Magazine
Backwoods Home Magazine is a how-to magazine focused on readers living in the country. Stories are about topics such as how to build your own home, grow your own food, etc. Pay is $40-200, and writers are paid on acceptance.
Central Coast Farm & Ranch
Central Coast Farm & Ranch is a quarterly magazine covering the agricultural community in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in California. They cover local food, agriculture, edible gardening, agri-tourism, and more. Pay is $.50 - $1.00 per word for features, and $350 for departments.
Condé Nast Traveler
Condé Nast Traveler accepts story pitches that "inspire travel and inform readers about the world around us." Pay starts at $300 for 500-600 words. They accept stories on a variety of topics including women who travel, destination guides, cruising, outdoors, destination features, air travel, points and miles, shopping stories, stories about identity, food and drink, hotels, vacation rentals, ski and snow, queer travel, family travel, and more. They do not accept pre-written stories on-spec.
Eater
Eater accepts freelance contributions "reporting on, telling stories about, and critically examining the world of food and drink, with a particular focus on restaurants. They accept pitches related to reported to various sections including reported stories, travel, "Voices," shopping, "Eater at Home," and stories covering select cities.
Edible Seattle
Edible Seattle is a quarterly community-based food publication. Pay is $.30 per word with a max rate per article. Features run 300-1500 words.
Midwest Living
This lifestyle magazine focuses on the Midwest region of the U.S. Stories cover travel, garden, food, and home. They generally run 100-1000 word articles on their website. Pay varies, but they state a first-time writer working with them could generally earn around $200 for one of these scouting or online content assignments.
Mother Earth News
Mother Earth news accepts queries for both features and departments. Departments include Home, Health, Food, and Garden. They pay a 25% kill fee if an accepted article will not be used.
Radish Magazine
Radish Magazine covers natural foods, products, and services of western Illinois and eastern Iowa. Topics include diet, health and fitness, cooking, and local farmer's markets. Pay is $25 for the Rooting Around department and $50 - $150 for other articles depending on length and research involved.
The Food Section
The Food Section is seeking freelance contributors for reported stories highlighting the diversity of the American South through articles that explore food-and-drink experiences throughout the region. Articles run around 1200 words and pay $1084.61 per feature story.
WineMaker Magazine
WineMaker caters to home winemakers in the U.S. and Canada. They accept technical features of 1500-3000 words, "recipe" articles, general interest features of 1500-2500 words, and first person 600 word stories for the Dry Finish section. Pay ranges from $75-300 per piece.
Yankee Magazine
Yankee is a magazine for the New England region covering topics like travel, food, and home. They also accept personal essays related to the New England experience. The magazine pays on acceptance of freelance stories and purchases all rights.
More About These Food Writing Markets
Like all specialized market lists here at All Freelance Writing, these food writers' markets are pulled from the larger writers' market database. That means any time a relevant new market is added, or a defunct market is removed, this list will automatically update.
It also means any time a market is reviewed and updated, such as updating payment details, this list will also automatically update to reflect those changes.
Make sure you bookmark this page and check back from time to time so you don't miss any market additions or updates.
Do You Run a Paying Food-related Market?
Do you run a print or digital publication that pays freelance writers for contributions? If so, you can submit your market for consideration to be added to the All Freelance Writing database. It's free.
The basic rules are your publication must be paying, your description should be brief (a paragraph, not a full profile or full writers' guidelines), and you must have publicly-available writers' guidelines / submission guidelines to link to (and those guidelines must make it clear that your publication pays for published freelance contributions).
