German media entrepreneur Jörg Schütte, who founded BonGusto 18 years ago together with Marc Pasture, is taking over the food TV channel again.
As part of an asset deal, Schütte acquires the pay-TV channel for gourmets and hobby chefs from German media company Burda and moves broadcasting operations back to Cologne. Financial details were not disclosed.
The new BonGusto team wants to expand original productions and refocus the content: “We will turn BonGusto into a vegetarian-vegan food channel – out of conviction and with a lot of desire for the incredible variety and quality that now exists. An offer to everyone, also to those who like meat and fish but want to try vegetarian products and recipes,” said Schütte.
All new original productions and acquired programmes have vegetarian content since the beginning of 2023, but the Cologne team will continue to broadcast the current BonGusto formats. From 2024, BonGusto will be a purely vegetarian channel. The refocus is in line with a trend: More than 10 million people in Germany now eat a vegetarian or vegan diet. And more than half of Germans lean toward the vegetarian lifestyle as “flexitarians.”
All current distribution partners will remain on board, according to the channel. BonGusto’s technical reach is to be expanded with streaming services. In addition, the new team is counting on video-on-demand offerings.
