Eater

Eater is an American food and restaurant publication covering dining news, restaurant reviews, chef profiles, and food culture across more than 20 US cities and internationally. In June 2026, Eater was acquired by Penske Media Corporation as part of a transaction in which Penske bought The Verge, Eater, SB Nation, Popsugar, The Dodo, and Thrillist from Vox Media, folding them into a new Penske subsidiary called PMX Global under president Ryan Pauley; James Murdoch's Lupa Systems simultaneously paid more than $300 million for New York magazine, Vox.com, and the Vox Media Podcast Network, splitting the company in two.

Eater was founded in 2005 by Ben Leventhal and Lockhart Steele as a New York food blog. Vox Media acquired it in 2013 as part of expanding its network of city-focused digital verticals alongside SB Nation and Curbed. Under Vox, Eater grew into a national publication with restaurant and food guides for major US cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Boston, plus international city editions. Its editorial focus on restaurant openings, food-industry news, and dining culture positioned it within a distinct and relatively resilient segment of lifestyle media: food audiences proved more loyal and commerce-linked than general-interest digital audiences during the mid-2010s digital media contraction.

Eater's move into the Penske Media portfolio places it alongside Rolling Stone, Billboard, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and WWD, shifting it from an editorial-digital-first parent into a larger commercial publishing group built around entertainment and lifestyle verticals. The transaction reflects sustained consolidation in US digital media, where advertising fragmentation and the cost of platform-distributed audience acquisition have concentrated mid-tier independent brands into a handful of large portfolio publishers able to offer advertisers cross-title commercial packages and first-party audience data at scale.