About Us
Chickpea is a vegan food & writing publication, here to bring whole-foods cooking & living to a beautiful, practical level. We aim to help you be more conscious in your habits, live more DIY, inspire you to cook more, and get offline and enjoy something beautiful.
Our issues are filled with evergreen recipes, DIY projects, personal stories, how-to guides, and articles on important topics. We're not a news magazine - think of us more like a timely, mini-cookbook/coffee table book.
Our print issues are made with gorgeous, thick matte paper, meant to last for years to come; our digital issues are easy to read on tablet, laptop, or computer alike.
OUR VALUES & GOALS
INDEPENDENCE
Ads are everywhere we look in today's world; commoditizing every surface is something we as a society have gotten used to. People tell us all the time to just run ads in our mag to make money, saying "there's no way to avoid it" or "it's inevitable." We completely reject the idea of "having" to include ads in our pages. Why should you "have to" pay to buy a product (our magazine) and then pay AGAIN by having to look at ads on every page? Most magazines intrinsically link their content and ads, so that even though you may not be looking at a traditional ad, they're incorporating that product into their recipe or feature. Their content is anywhere from 40-75% advertising. (Yes, we checked.) We are not beholden to any company or sponsor, just to you - our readers. Every dollar we make is from the issues we sell, whether to stores or to you through our online shop.
Similarly, we do not believe in following a trend just to get more eyeballs on our pages and money in our pockets. Many popular magazines fall victim to fad diets, "wellness" healing, and product-based solutions to all your problems. (What is a chemical, anyway?) They appeal to the most insecure parts of ourselves so that they can sell you more fake medicine. We strive to give actionable, realistic advice based on things we've done in our own lives, without turning to psuedoscience - and do our best to give reputable sources for any claims we make.
We don't come from the publishing industry. We are artists and home cooks who are passionate about our work and our integrity. We may not know much about business or conversion rates, but we know how to share our stories and food with like-minded friends, and that's what matters to us.
ANTI-CONSUMERISM
Most magazines make content just to sell you something. That may be a product, an idea, or a lifestyle - ones you may not be able to afford, but desperately want because of the power of marketing. "Simple Magazine" may say it's simple, but it feeds you features meant to induce fear and anxiety so that you're more likely to buy - or at least, strive to buy. (In case you can't afford that top that costs $500.)
They jump on expensive trends, like bluetooth-enabled yoga pants (literally, this was in an issue of a major publication recently) for "wellness"'s sake, which feeds into the capitalistic cycle of insecurity>want>buy/can't afford>more insecurity.
We only include brand names rarely, when we have an absolute love for it and think you would benefit from our recommendation - not because we're paid to.
Our issues are designed to be evergreen - which means, they are not designed to add to our landfills as soon as you're done reading them. The content inside can be revisited at any time, or shared with a friend, or donated to your local library. We aim to make work that still applies five, ten, or decades in the future. (And try to match that with our printing quality.)
COMMUNITY BASE
Most magazines have large teams and departments for each aspect of their business. Chickpea has a core team of three people and a rotating crew of contributors.
While most magazines have an obsession with celebrity and big names to attract readers and money, we are only interested in the lives of those around us - meaning, the people we can actually relate to: our contributors, and our readers.
It's part of our core mission to have our content come from our readers. We were tired of seeing only polished professionals in every magazine we read, where the content ending up being quite homogenous. We actively look for contributors from all skill levels, all locations, all income levels, all genders, and all races. They are most often not only our writers and photographers, but our readers as well. (Head here to send in your ideas, if you want to work with us!)
DESIGN FOCUS
The imagery we create is from independent artists, no cheesy stock photography or regurgitated photography from other cookbooks and blogs.
It may make us less business, but we don't include any of those annoying paper inserts to subscribe to our magazine in any of our pages. We want you to have a clean reading experience, with no distractions.
Our covers are designed to be beautiful on your coffee table, not just entice you to buy at the newsstand with provocative article titles.
Mainstream magazines cram tidbits of information into every nook and cranny in their layouts. Reading is supposed to be a source of rest, at least from our point of view. So we design our pages to have breathing room, our photographs are there to entice you to make our recipes, and nothing is too polished as to retain the humanity of our work.
Who we are
DESIGN & CONTENT
manages contributors, runs social media, copy editing, leads the direction of & creates content, photography, lettering, layout design, printing
BY DAY
photo teacher, freelance photographer, lettering artist
Cara spends most of her time working, but when she's not she's decorating houses in The Sims or Animal Crossing.
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 SHIPPING & CUSTOMER SERVICE
manages store partnerships, contributor coordination, all the business stuff, answers customer emails and messages, troubleshoots problems with orders and processes, and ships each and every order that we get
BY DAY
senior software engineer
Originally from PA, Bob uses his weekends to fix up his house and enjoy quality time with his two cats.
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