Food, health and interior design: these are the three things you’ll find on Nedahl Stelio’s Instagram page. Being the foodie that she is, the first thing Stelio did after becoming the editor of GoodFood.com.au earlier this year was put her hand up to eat out.
“I did volunteer immediately to go out, but I am yet to organise a single one,” Stelio laughed.
“I know Myffy Rigby, Callan Boys and the rest of the reviewers are out a lot nights of the week.”
Nedahl Stelio
Usually, people wine and dine out to take a break from home-cooked meals. Does eating out ever get tiring? “I don’t think so. Can it?” Stelio quipped. “I am a big restaurant person. If you’re bored go to a different restaurant. There are so many different things to try in Sydney, Melbourne and the whole of Australia. There are always so many exciting launches.
“That’s the thing with food at the moment, it’s such an exciting area.
“It’s about the food and the experience that you have while you are out. There are so many new and exciting ways restaurants are coming up with to make sure customers have a good experience.”
Australians are obsessed with everything to do with food. This is evident from the success of shows such as TEN’s MasterChef Australia and Seven’s My Kitchen Rules. There has never been a more suitable time for the relaunch of the Good Food website, Stelio said. The website is scheduled to go live at the end of June.
“We all have to eat. Food has never been as exciting as it is now. We didn’t know as much about food as we do now. We weren’t exposed to things like MasterChef and My Kitchen Rules. We didn’t know we could cook these amazing dishes in our own homes,” Stelio said.
“People also want to make their lives less mundane. One way to do that is with food. We have to eat three times a day, so if you can’t make that exciting then it is going to get mundane after a while.”
Brisbane Times Good Food Guide 2016 Launch event at Lightspace
Before becoming the editor of GoodFood.com.au, Stelio was responsible for the launch of Fairfax’s online destination Juice Daily. The website focuses on content about health, fitness and nutrition.
Fairfax will be introducing a new health section on the refreshed version of the Good Food website. This is not the Stelio twist to Good Food, she insisted. It’s something that Fairfax had been planning before she came on board.
“Nobody goes on a diet any more,” Stelio claimed. “You don’t eat celery sticks and cottage cheese. That is not how you diet. Eating healthy has turned into a complete business of its own. It’s actually about making food taste fabulous while you are still eating healthy.
“Health and food go hand in hand. This is especially because of the advent of platforms like Instagram. Everything is becoming more of a lifestyle thing. People aren’t really focusing on one area any more. There is a lot of crossover.
Stelio continued: “The whole thing about launching a Good Health section on the Good Food website is making it come from a food background rather than from a health background.
“We will be getting chefs to remake their famous dishes in a healthy way.
“On Juice Daily it was about getting nutritionists and naturopaths to come up with the recipe content, whereas this will be from the chefs and the food side.”
Stelio’s appointment was Fairfax’s first step in transforming the Good Food brand as a digital-first business.
“The website needed a basic technology update. The look and feel of Good Food really needed a refresh,” Stelio said on the need for a relaunch. “The old thinking with websites was that you built it and then you left it alone. That is not the way digital works. What happens now is you build a website and then you are constantly refreshing it and bringing out new things. The market demands this and things are always changing so quickly with technology.”
The biggest task at hand when Stelio joined Good Food was to consolidate the team and the content.
“The way it has worked in the past is content has gone from print to digital. We are actually reversing that now – it’s going to go from digital to print. Good Food is going to be a digital-first business, but print is still obviously important to us,” she said.
The two things users can look forward to on the new Good Food website along with the introduction of Good Health is an improved search functionality and the revival of Good Living – a lifestyle section under the Good Food brand.
The Good Food App
Along with a new website, Fairfax will also be launching a Good Food app in late 2016.
“We will be bringing the Good Food Guide to life in a digital form,” Stelio declared. “People will be able to look up restaurants online, look at a review from Good Food, which they know they can trust. We only have independent reviews. We go in and pay for the meal – we don’t take anything for free. That is a big point of difference for us.”
Why say no to meals for free if reviewers declare it in their pieces?
“I don’t disagree with that,” Stelio admitted. “But depending on the meal and where it was, it may sway your review.”