Eater, Vox Media’s food site aimed at gourmands nationwide, announced Tuesday an expansion of its coverage into drinks.
The new section, Eater Drinks, will debut on Eater’s main site in March and feature coverage of beer, wine, spirits and juices.
Up until now, Eater has mostly written about drinks in the context of nightlife, but the new section will “geek out” over all manner of libations, said Amanda Kludt, Eater’s editor-in-chief.
“We’ve covered drinks through the lens of bars, basically,” Kludt said. “We’ve never just focused in and obsessed over them in the way that we’re going to.”
The new section will feature a variety of freelance contributors who will provide coverage of specific drinks, Kludt said. The site will have a coffee columnist, a sake columnist, a beer critic and a tea writer.
The drinks coverage will be spearheaded by Kat Odell, who was formerly an editorial producer at Eater. Odell, who was previously editor of Eater LA for five years, also worked Condé Nast food magazine Bon Appetit. Eater also announced the promotion of Erin DeJesus to the position of reports editor, in charge of managing the site’s medium-length stories and expanding its editorial breadth to the realms of public policy, science, tech and pop culture.
Late last year, Eater unveiled a redesign that included a new layout, larger restaurant reviews, more prominent feature stories and discussion forums.
Since being acquired by Vox Media in 2013, Eater has grown its editorial ranks, hiring three restaurant critics, a longform features writer and a two-person social media team. In November, Vox Media raised $46.5 million in a funding round led by General Atlantic, which put its valuation at $380 million, according to TechCrunch.
Correction A previous version of this story said that Eater was a network of food sites. In fact, Eater is a singular website with a network of associated websites in various cities across the U.S.
