About Ricardo

Ricardo

Ricardo is a Montreal-based French-language food magazine built around Ricardo Larrivée — Quebec's most famous television chef and food entrepreneur. Founded in 2002 alongside Larrivée's television show, the magazine is published eight times a year in French, with a print run of about 100,000 copies per issue and a claimed readership of more than one million readers per issue. It is the print flagship of RICARDO Media, the company Larrivée co-founded with his wife Brigitte Coutu, headquartered in Saint-Lambert, Quebec — an empire that spans television, digital, publishing, food products and retail.

Overview

Ricardo the magazine is inseparable from Ricardo the man: Ricardo Larrivée, the ITHQ-trained chef whose cooking show — filmed in the kitchen of his Chambly home — became the longest-running cooking show in Canadian television history. The magazine extends the show's philosophy into print: accessible, seasonal, family-oriented cooking, with recipes developed and tested by the RICARDO test kitchen, food photography, entertaining ideas and features on food culture. Published eight times a year in French, it is one of the most successful food magazines in Canadian history, with roughly 100,000 copies printed per issue and more than a million readers per issue claimed.

The magazine sits within a diversified media and food business. RICARDO Media was co-founded in 2002 by Larrivée and his wife Brigitte Coutu, who serves as president. The company's activities include the television productions, the ricardocuisine.com website launched in 2009, cookbooks, a line of food products, kitchen accessories, and Café Ricardo, the restaurant and boutique opened in 2016 in Saint-Lambert. Larrivée was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2014.

History

The Ricardo story begins with the television show: in 2002, Ricardo Larrivée launched his daily cooking program, filmed in his own home kitchen in Chambly, on the strength of a simple proposition — real cooking for real families, without pretension. The show's success made Larrivée a Quebec star, and the magazine followed the same year, founded together with the television property as the print arm of the new RICARDO Media company.

The magazine grew rapidly through the 2000s and 2010s, establishing itself as Quebec's dominant food title. An English-language edition was launched around 2015 in an attempt to replicate the success in English Canada — but in March 2019 the company announced it was shuttering the English print edition. Distribution costs, which accounted for roughly 70 percent of the English edition's revenue, made the economics unsustainable; the French edition, with its deep Quebec roots, continued unaffected. The closure illustrated both the strength of the RICARDO brand in its home market and the brutal economics of English-Canadian print distribution.

Through it all, the French magazine has maintained its eight-issues-a-year rhythm, its test-kitchen rigour and its position as the reference for Quebec home cooking — while the broader RICARDO business has expanded into digital, products, publishing and hospitality.

The magazine's audience numbers place it at the very top of Quebec publishing. Vividata measurements have repeatedly ranked Ricardo Magazine as the number-one French-language magazine in Canada by average-issue audience: 1.6 million readers across print and digital in the 2015 rankings (with 1 million in print alone), rising to 1.95 million across platforms in 2017 (1.4 million in print), and 1.78 million in the 2018 rankings (1.22 million in print) — ahead of Coup de pouce, CAA Quebec Touring, Vivre mieux and the French edition of Châtelaine. Its digital reach has led the French-magazine category as well, at 709,000 monthly readers in 2017 and 673,000 in 2018. At the time of the English edition's launch, the French magazine counted 742,000 readers aged 12 and over per issue in Print Measurement Bureau data — up from 616,000 a year earlier — with 44,000 subscribers and a newsstand sell-through rate of 70 to 80 percent, while ricardocuisine.com was averaging 14 million page views a month, rising to 21 million in peak holiday periods. The English launch issue itself ran 164 pages with a print run of 125,000 and a $6.99 cover price, carrying advertisers such as Biotherm and Nespresso, and the magazine maintained a 70:30 editorial-to-ad ratio — far richer in editorial than the industry's typical 50:50 split. The brand's publishing director said the magazine was profitable and could stand on its own, while noting it was more successful as part of the larger multi-platform ecosystem.

The industry has taken notice: in 2018, Strategy magazine named Ricardo its Brand of the Year, marvelling that while other print publications were retreating to digital and cutting costs, Ricardo Media was thriving — with six cookbooks in print, a growing merchandise line and expanding retail locations, all under the continued ownership of Larrivée and Coutu. Larrivée himself, named to the Order of Canada in 2014, has become a beloved public figure in Quebec well beyond food, appearing across the province's networks to weigh in on subjects from school reform to married life. "Everything we do is bilingual all the time, to promote the importance of cooking and eating together," he has said of the brand's philosophy — a philosophy the shuttered English print edition's digital afterlife continues, with English recipes, videos and food content still published across Ricardo's digital properties to an audience the company says reaches about 600,000 people on Facebook, Instagram and its other platforms.

Content

Each issue of the French magazine delivers the RICARDO formula: seasonal recipes developed and tested in the company's test kitchen, with step-by-step photography and the practical, encouraging voice that is Larrivée's trademark. Features cover entertaining, weeknight cooking, baking, preserving, and Quebec's food traditions and producers. The magazine also carries lifestyle content around the table — table settings, kitchen organization, food travel — and the occasional personal feature on Larrivée himself, whose public persona as a family man cooking in his own kitchen remains the brand's emotional core.

The editorial standard is the test kitchen: every recipe is developed, tested and retested before publication, a discipline that has built the brand's authority with Quebec home cooks over more than two decades.

Coverage & Audience

Ricardo magazine is published in French and distributed primarily in Quebec, with readership across francophone Canada. Its claimed audience of more than one million readers per issue on a 100,000-copy print run reflects the magazine's pass-along power in Quebec households — the test-kitchen recipes are clipped, shared and cooked from, giving the title a reach far beyond its buyers. The audience is home cooks, predominantly women, who trust the RICARDO brand for reliable, family-friendly cooking.

Ownership

Ricardo magazine is published by RICARDO Media, the Saint-Lambert, Quebec-based company co-founded in 2002 by Ricardo Larrivée and his wife Brigitte Coutu, who serves as president. The company is independent and family-controlled, spanning media, digital, publishing, food products and retail.

Digital Presence

Ricardocuisine.com, launched in 2009, is one of Canada's most-visited food websites: thousands of test-kitchen recipes, video content, meal-planning tools and e-commerce for the brand's food products and kitchen accessories. The site extends the magazine's authority into daily digital use — the place Quebec cooks search when they need a reliable recipe tonight. The brand's social channels, newsletters and video content amplify the magazine and television properties, and the English-language digital presence continues the brand's reach beyond the French print edition. The eight-times-a-year French magazine remains the print flagship, but ricardocuisine.com is the brand's daily engine.