Sauce Magazine’s print future is again in jeopardy after a series of layoffs earlier this week.
Big Lou Holdings, the entity that in May sold the Riverfront Times to an undisclosed buyer, shed three full-time Sauce employees earlier this summer and one last week. Now Friday will be the last day for the St. Louis-based food monthly’s managing editor and digital creative director. The cuts leave only one digital editor, one sales person, an events coordinator, and a part-time designer.
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Big Lou bought Sauce in October 2023 and resurrected its print issue that December, eight months after its previous owner, Sauce co-founder Allyson Mace, scrapped it.
Big Lou owner Chris Keating says there will be a Sauce Magazine on newsstands in October and November, but after that, “We’ll have to take a look and kind of see exactly what print looks like.”
Keating described this week’s layoffs as part of a larger pivot toward events. He says he plans to lean on a “consortium of freelancers” to create content for the website, which will be getting an update at the end of the month.
“We’re going really, really heavy on the events side, because that’s where we’ve been the most successful,” Keating says. “That’s certainly a little bit [more] profitable structure than print.”
Keating lives in St. Louis and says he’s committed to maintaining a presence here at least through 2025. He cited recent mac ‘n’ cheese and pickle-themed events, which were run by out-of-town operators and received tepid responses, as reasons why there needs to be a company like his with a local presence hosting events for foodies. (Keating previously brought a popular mac ‘n’ cheese event to St. Louis through the RFT, which relied on events to help underwrite its journalism.)
“When out-of-towners come in, they ruin it for everybody,” Keating says.
Big Lou owns alt-weekly papers in Detroit, Cincinnati and Louisville in addition to the food-focused Sauce. A longtime player in the alt-weekly space, Keating maintained a low public profile until he sold the Riverfront Times to an undisclosed buyer, who did not retain any of the staff and turned the paper into a melange of aggregated content and OnlyFans listicles.
“I have a tremendous amount of regret and guilt for selling RFT to the buyers,” he says. “And I wish it would have ended up in better hands.”
Editor’s note: Author Ryan Krull is a former employee of the Riverfront Times who lost his job as part of the May 2024 sale to an undisclosed buyer.
