Cornelius Martens from “Pasta!”: It's All About the Haptics

Mr. Martens, what prompted you to found a “Gourmet-Magazine” in a small town like Passau?

Cornelius Martens: My business partner Till Gabriel and I met while studying in Passau in the 1990s. We very quickly realized that the local magazine offering just wasn't picking us up. This was mainly due to the design, but also to the topics. We saw a niche for ourselves and quickly founded our own magazine. In terms of content, we started out as an ordinary city magazine and didn't focus on culinary culture until 2017. Specializing was the best decision we could have made.

What was the media landscape like in Passau when you were founded 25 years ago?

Martens: We had the “Passauer Neue Presse” on our doorstep, which, as a daily and weekly newspaper, was an important journalistic medium then as it is today, but of course always had a completely different focus. There was also a city magazine that served a similar market as a free weekly publication. INNSIDE” has always had a cultural focus. Since the 2000s, there has also been “PAparazzi”, another monthly magazine that focuses on lifestyle. We coexist peacefully, each having found its niche and target group.

Layout, feel and credibility: the Pasta! editors attach particular importance to these aspects

Anyone who has ever held your print magazine in their hands will immediately notice that Pasta! is a very high-quality product. What do you attach particular importance to?

Martens: As we don't originally come from a journalistic background, but are an advertising agency, the look is incredibly important to us: we want to publish an appealing product. All the images we print in the magazine come from a single photographer or photo studio. We work intensively with paper, graphics and haptics – we know this from our daily work as an advertising agency. As a result, we have developed our very own style for Pasta! which, according to many readers, has a coffeetable effect.

In addition to the design, our credibility is also important to us – as restaurant critics and authors. For example, we never accept invitations because it is important to us to remain independent and write unbiased, honest reviews. The fact that we have only been published every two months since the pandemic also gives us the chance to delve deeper into the topics. Here in the editorial office, for example, we brew beer ourselves on a 25-liter mini brewing system. Why is that? From a business point of view, it makes no sense at all. However, we want to show our local breweries what is possible with beer – we experiment with a wide variety of hops and malts and are in close contact with almost all regional breweries; the master brewers regularly taste our beers with interest.

How is your editorial team set up?

Martens: 2017 was a turning point for us. We thought about it: What is our core competence and what do we really want to do in terms of content? We decided that we had to reinvent the magazine as a team of two. Previously, we had a number of trainees, permanent employees, graphic designers, editorial managers and freelancers in the company. We made the decision to continue as a team of two not primarily for financial reasons, but because we wanted to give the magazine a very specific focus: enjoyment. We believe we have the necessary expertise for this. Till Gabriel and I used to run a jazz and cocktail bar in Passau on the side for many years. We now sit in front of the bar, but we know what it's like to be behind it. We know the working methods, hardships and concerns of restaurateurs and are therefore credible – both for readers and customers, on both sides of the bar, so to speak.

Pasta! is published completely free of charge every two months – how does that work financially?

Martens: We finance Pasta! entirely with advertising revenue. This enables us to finance printing despite the massive increase in costs. But we also have to be honest: we couldn't live on the magazine alone with two managing directors' salaries, printing, distribution and graphics. This is only possible because, as an advertising agency, we also implement other projects. We also work exclusively for the food & beverage industry in this area – and that's where Pasta! comes to our aid: through it, we keep winning customers who want a similarly high-quality product.

In recent years, the advertising market for print products has become increasingly difficult to tap into. How much have you noticed this development?

Martens: We are fortunate that we hardly have to actively acquire advertisements any more; customers approach us on their own initiative. Pasta! is known and appreciated in the region – and since 2017, everyone knows what we stand for: delight. Thanks to this unique focus in the region, we not only attract customers from the culinary industry, but also breweries, hotels, spas, bathroom manufacturers, fashion companies and kitchen manufacturers, to name just a few. Basically, we are approached by clients who want to advertise in a high-quality environment because they themselves offer high-quality products or services. Incidentally, most of the clients we have don't just advertise once. Many have been with us for years or even decades.

Pasta! reaches a wider audience by being a free magazine

Why is it important to you that the magazine remains free for your readers?

Martens: We keep getting feedback that we could easily sell Pasta! because the magazine is of such high quality. That's a nice accolade for us, but we don't want that. We have a print run of 10,000 copies and our more than 550 distribution points in the region regularly tell us that all copies are sold out. We choose the distribution points ourselves and are exactly where we want to be. We would need completely different logistics to sell the magazine, and if we're honest: If we were to charge something for the magazine, we would never sell all the copies. We can achieve a much greater reach if Pasta! remains free.

Are there situations that make you sweat as an editor?

Martens: As a gourmet magazine, we are dependent on the restaurant trade. When restaurants had to close during the lockdown, our business was also gone. We were unable to publish many issues in 2020 and 2021. That was bitter. The flood of the century in 2013 also caused a major crisis in Passau. Many restaurants didn't open for years afterwards. That was not only a disaster for the restaurant industry, but also for us: nobody advertises a restaurant that is closed. And we can't distribute pasta there either.

Cornelius Martens: Finding topics for the magazine is the most challenging part

Passau and the surrounding area are a relatively small distribution area, the gastronomic offer is limited. How do you still find new, exciting topics after so many years?

Martens: That's the most time-consuming part of our work: we have to keep identifying topics that interest our readers – and ourselves! – are interested in. When we set our culinary focus, many people thought we were crazy and predicted that we would go round in circles after the first six issues. In reality, however, we have been in the field for seven years and we are still finding new approaches. We don't create hype with every issue. However, some ideas establish themselves very well and develop a good momentum of their own.

Which ones, for example?

Martens: Seven years ago, we had the idea of getting Passau's ice cream parlors to create new ice cream flavours for our summer edition and to support a good cause with the sales. In the first year, we sold 30,000 promotional ice cream scoops in the ice cream parlors – it was a complete success. Since then, the ice cream sale has been a fixed part of our annual schedule. This year, our main theme is the Bavarian Forest. We are also challenging our restaurateurs to be creative - and that's really cool! For some, the Bavarian Forest is a mushroom ice cream, for others it includes beer as an ingredient. Thanks to projects like this, we as a magazine have managed to bring food trends to Passau a few times over the years.

What role do digital formats play in your work?

Martens: Corona was a blessing for us in this respect. Like many others, we came to a standstill overnight and had the opportunity to take a close look at ourselves for the first time. What strategy will we pursue in future? In the current situation, social media was the only way to keep in touch with our customers and readers. During coronavirus, we invested thousands of euros in to-go vouchers from local restaurants and gave them away in competitions on social media. This allowed us to build up our following and help restaurateurs who had to close their businesses or could only offer to-go. Today, we produce snackable content every day – up-to-date, visible and credible.

Let's take a look into the future: could Pasta! become completely digital at some point?

Martens: If we are forced to publish the magazine only digitally for cost reasons, then we will stop. That would no longer appeal to me. The magazine is so much about haptics, about feeling - and if that is no longer there, the time has come for us to go. I am planning our product for the next three to five years and I can imagine that we will be well positioned with our approach over this period. For now, we have a lot of fans and a lot of customers who are happy to work with us and get tangible added value from it. As long as the demand is there and we find new, exciting topics, Pasta! will remain an integral part of Passau's media landscape – in printed form!