Andrew Rea, the YouTube cooking creator known as Binging with Babish, is rolling out a series of new ventures that represent his most ambitious effort yet to expand his channel into a broader media and consumer business.
On Wednesday, Rare announced a partnership with meal kit service CookUnity to sell a line of Babish-branded ready-to-cook meals. This follows two additional launches. In May, Babish debuted a podcast called “In the Booth with Babish” in partnership with Vox Media, and earlier this spring opened Bed n Babish, a short-term rental complex along the Delaware River designed for traveling foodies.
These launches join an existing portfolio that includes several cookbooks, a cookware line carried at Walmart and Amazon, and Baked with Babish, a THC-infused sugar product that will expand its product line this fall.
Taken together, these announcements position Rea as the latest creator to turn YouTube’s audience into the foundation of a diversified business. In doing so, he joins a growing cadre of such creators, including MrBeast and Jesser, who have branched out from the platform in hopes of turning their fame into more lasting businesses.
“Every YouTuber is a small business,” Rea said. “You are an LLC that is generating revenue and changing its business model in response to trends.”
Rea, who reached 10 million subscribers on YouTube earlier this year, quit her post-production job within six months of starting her channel in 2016. He has since brought on his longtime friend Sawyer Jacobs to run the company as CEO, and the operation employs four full-time staff members, including two editors. Cookware brand Made In has invested $3 million in the business to fund native content for the channel, Rea said.
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CookUnity, the channel’s longtime advertising partner, has begun selling four Babish-designed dishes in the New York tri-state area, with plans to expand to Chicago and Los Angeles in the coming months. Rea developed each recipe himself and worked with the company’s test kitchen to make them scalable. The final lineup will consist of 10 main products and 5 seasonal products that will be rotated.
The partnership is a natural extension for the food creator, whose viewers routinely watch him prepare dishes they never would have been able to eat themselves. Additionally, many of his recipes, such as his pot roast and fried chicken, are too complex for most home cooks to recreate, making him a prime candidate for meal delivery options.
Babisch declined to disclose financial details of the deal, other than to say he would be paid for each meal sold.
The biweekly podcast, which premiered on May 25, is a series of long-form interviews featuring guests such as William H. Macy and Alton Brown about their relationships with food.
Vox will provide backend support and Rea will retain creative control, he said. The first season consists of 26 episodes. He added that the recent split of Vox Media, which was sold in two installments to Lupa Systems and Penske Media Company, did not influence Rea’s decision to partner with the company.
Rea, who attended film school and spent seven years in post-production before launching his channel, said this broad expansion is rooted in creative ambitions that predate YouTube.
He pointed to the trajectory of creators like Backrooms filmmaker Kane Parsons, who is currently developing projects at A24, as a model for what comes next. The short film Leah has been writing for 10 years, a thriller about beings who wake up as different people every day, will go into production this summer.
“I stepped away from the business side of things so I could focus on the creative side,” Rea said. “I don’t have the Martha Stewart genes in me.”
Correction, July 6, 2026: The original article stated that Rea reached 4 million followers on YouTube this year. He actually achieved 10 million followers.
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