FoodFM - telling food stories from around world!

“I called Karen, and said, Are you up for it? It was wonderful when she said yes, we both wanted something joyful and exciting to think about.” 

Some good things came out of the lockdowns - and one of them was FoodFM https://foodfmradio.com

FoodFM is the unique podcast platform all about food set up by friends Karen Morris and Caroline Kenyon just over 20 months ago. 

Both were stuck at home, Karen trying to run her sponsorship agency and to homeschool three lively boys, while also volunteering for Chefs in Schools. Caroline had become a carer overnight for her elderly mother, also running her international food awards business and away from her family. 

Caroline had the idea a few years ago for a radio station all about food. “I’m obsessed with food, both in my professional life and in my private life, and I love radio. But it seemed to me there was very little about a subject that is so politically and culturally important. I wanted to hear the stories of the people behind the news, the businesses, the cookbooks.”

She'd mentioned her idea to Karen over coffee, and it was Karen who gave it the name. Quick as a flash, she said, “You’ve got to call it FoodFM!” The name gave it substance, says Caroline, but it was not the right time. 

But then FoodFM came back into her mind in the first lockdown, when the social media world seemed to be obsessed with baking sourdough and banana bread. Cooking for her mother every night and listening to the radio was her comfort in such disturbing times.  

It was soon full steam ahead. Karen brought in her past experience as Head of Sponsorship at ClassicFM, and also introduced her old colleague Steve Orchard, who’d run ClassicFM and taken the audience from 4m to 6m. While Caroline got in touch with campaigning chef Arthur Potts Dawson, of Channel 4’s The People’s Supermarket, to ask if he’d be interested in presenting. Then the fifth member of the team joined, Jeremy Scholl, founder of Ryland Peters & Small, the lifestyle publisher, and major investor in JazzFM.

The platform is already a rich smorgasbord of content, from an enormously wide range of contributors. “We hear from people asking every day if they can be featured on FoodFM,” says Caroline. “Although we’re new on the scene, one very well known UK food name said, It feels like it’s always been there, it’s so obvious it should have been.”

Presenters include Netflix-starring chef Asma Khan, of Darjeeling Express, wine buff David Kermode who presents The Drinking Hour every Friday with International Wine & Spirit Competition, award-winning food writer Jenny Linford whose long-running series A Slice of Cheese with Peter’s Yard has a devoted audience around the world. A host of guests has included James Metcalfe of Pret and Itsu fame, Guy Singh-Watson, Founder of Riverford Organics, UK-based Ukrainian chef Oil Hercules and many more. Their series A Bit of a Mouthful with Mob Kitchen shot to the UK top 10 in the first two episodes, as did Drinking Well with Berry Brothers & Rudd. 

“The amount of content we can put out is limitless,” agree Karen and Caroline. “There are food stories in the press every single day, right around the world. Our aim is to make it the world’s greatest podcast platform for absolutely anything to do with food. It makes every single day an adventure!”