Christine Hayes
Group Editor-in-Chief, BBC Good Food & olive magazine
Rising to the pandemic’s challenge – a huge interest in home cooking, and a team innovating to deliver during lockdown
Christine Hayes is group editor-in-chief of BBC Good Food and olive magazine. The “cook’s choice” for over three decades, they recently won ‘Media Brand of the Year’ at the PPA awards, praised by the judges for their “promotion of diversity and building their subscription business during lockdown” with nearly 9 million daily page views. In this in-depth interview, Christine discusses the opportunities and issues presented by the pandemic, with interest in home cooking growing exponentially, and her team rising to the challenge to deliver under lockdown – creating, testing and photographing the recipes themselves in their own homes; discusses the changes in people’s eating habits – and those that will remain post-pandemic; and shares their corporate drive to boost inclusion, by introducing new contributors and “giving a platform to voices that aren’t heard in food.”