If your FYP and Instagram explore pages are dominated by food content creators, you may have seen a video where Meredith Hayden (also known as Wishbone Kitchen) claims that food magazine Bon Appétit blatantly copied her with its new series, “Dinner With Friends.”
What is the Wishbone Kitchen Bon Appétit drama?
Better known by her brand and social media handle, “Wishbone Kitchen,” Hayden is a content creator and cookbook author who gained popularity posting short videos and TikToks about her life as a private chef in the Hamptons. Hayden started a YouTube channel in January 2024, where she launched the series “Dinner With Friends.” Though TikTok and Instagram are her primary channels, Hayden has posted 12 YouTube videos featuring recipes that would be perfect for entertaining. The Dinner With Friends series has performed well on YouTube, with some videos garnering 250,000 views.
On Tuesday, Bon Appétit announced a brand new series called, you guessed it, “Dinner With Friends.” In the series, Kendra Vaculin, a Test Kitchen editor, will share tips, tricks, and recipes for hosting a better dinner party.
“Each month Kendra hosts a real-life get-together in her apartment, then passes her expert game plan along to you: the menu, the grocery and prep lists, and all her tips and tricks,” writes Bon Appetit. After seeing the announcement, Hayden took to TikTok to voice her complaints.
“So, Bon Appétit launched a new video series today based on dinner parties, and guess what it’s called?” Hayden asks in the short video, with Bon Appétit’s Instagram post playing behind her. “Now, in case you’re new here, Dinner With Friends is the name of my dinner party video series that I launched on YouTube in January 2024. It is self-directed, self-produced, and self-shot (most of the time). I’ve done this all on my own, all by myself.”
Hayden acknowledges that the phrase Dinner With Friends is not a “revolutionary title, but they should’ve done some due diligence and at least given it a Google to make sure that title wasn’t already spoken for.” As Hayden also points out in her TikTok, Bon Appetit’s DWF logo uses a pink-and-red color scheme that’s pretty similar to hers.
Hayden’s video currently has almost 900,000 views on TikTok and over 800,000 views on Instagram, and her combined 3.6 million followers across both platforms aren’t happy. In addition to supporting Hayden on her own posts, Wishbone Kitchen fans are also calling out Bon Appétit in the brand’s Instagram post announcing the series, saying that “taking the entire concept of @wishbonekitchen dinner with friends is WILD.”
“There’s no way you didn’t know beforehand,” writes Instagram user @patrirann. “It’s the same concept! Same name! Same colors!”
Bon Appétit did respond in a pinned comment on their post, writing “‘Dinner With Friends’ is a common phrase…and we believe there’s room for multiple ways to engage with it.”
Beyond the similar design and concept, Hayden shares one additional piece of evidence that’s too similar for her to ignore: the caption under Bon Appetit’s Instagram post announcing the series. The BA caption says “Head to the link in bio for Kendra’s menu, then get on the group chat to see who’s free Friday night.”
The phrase may seem inconspicuous at first, but “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Hayden says. Hayden’s newsletter — which features all the menus from her Dinner With Friends series — is called (you guessed it) “The Group Chat.”
“Bon Appétit, what the actual hell is going on?” Hayden asks in the video.
Hayden used to work in marketing at Bon Appétit’s publisher, Condé Nast. In the video calling out BA, Hayden reveals that she applied to work at the brand and was continuously rejected.
“You rejected me to work [at Bon Appétit] for two years, and I accepted that,” says Hayden. “But now that I’ve gone off on my own and made something for myself, you have to take that, too?”
What does Hayden have to say about the Wishbone Kitchen Bon Appetit Drama?
In a statement to The Cut, Hayden says, “The entire situation is extremely disheartening, and just another example of traditional media’s unwillingness to properly embrace, acknowledge, and credit digital creators.”
Even though this Bon Appétit controversy isn’t the same caliber as the magazine’s 2020 controversy — when several Test Kitchen stars and editors very publicly left the brand citing inequitable pay — this controversy isn’t the best look for a brand that’s been chastised in the past.
The question of whether Bon Appétit deliberately imitated Wishbone Kitchen or if it’s a genuine coincidence remains open. Hayden’s prior experience and employment with Condé Nast make it plausible that creative influences were exchanged, and both outlets may be responding to Gen Z’s post-pandemic yearning for community in similar ways.