Kate Taylor explores corporate failure
This Business Insider senior correspondent delves deeper into consumer markets and minds, delivering insights that shape a company’s growth and its downfalls.
When attending a friend’s dinner party, a guest wouldn’t normally bring their own entrée, right? Well, Kate Taylor, a journalist covering Subway's infamous "Subway diet" in 2016, did exactly that with a 6-inch rotisserie chicken sandwich.
Taylor, 33, is a senior correspondent on the Business Insider features team, covering food, culture and business from various angles. Seeking to understand what drives a brand’s popularity, Taylor dives into the behind-the-scenes of consumer spending tactics and explores what keeps consumers effortlessly loyal.
While investigating Subway’s struggling business strategy, Taylor examined the brand’s core message: its "Eat Fresh" slogan. During her week-long devotion to the diet, Taylor ate two Subway sandwiches a day after discovering that Jared Fogle, the former spokesperson of the multibillion-dollar company, had contributed massively to sandwich sales by claiming extreme weight loss on the diet.
With reporting acknowledging Subway’s un-fresh vegetables and a “queasy” feeling after eating its breakfast options, Taylor wrote on the reality behind Fogle’s money-making statement. In 2015, Subway cut ties with Fogle, who is currently serving a nearly 16-year sentence for the possession of child pornography and having sex with minors, which Taylor highlights in her story, "I Spent a Week on the Infamous Subway Diet." In her reporting, and through her eating, Taylor found that Subway’s misleading advertisements reflect a brand healthier than what it serves.
Today, Taylor continues to grow her expertise as a Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia Business School in New York, where she aims to refocus on the multifaceted skills of business reporting. This allows her not only to report more cohesively but also to better understand the corporate arena affecting her, her friends and any factor influencing a company’s potential for success.
Zooming from a New York City coffee shop, Taylor shares the start of her investigative journey. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a history and sociology degree, and in 2013, her plans to “write and research every day” translated into a position at Forbes, where she interned between her junior and senior years, Taylor said.
From Forbes, Taylor moved to Entrepreneur Media, where she covered franchise reporting for two years. Then, in 2015, the Business Insider team invited Taylor to cover the business of food.
When Business Insider created its features team in 2020, Taylor began to take on greater investigations, writing more long-form features and exploring documentary narratives. Like her dedication to the “Subway diet,” Taylor was ready to further understand the people directly impacted by profitable brands and industries.
“She is good at fully committing to whatever she is doing,” said New York Times Upfront editor and friend Lauren Vespoli.
Throughout COVID-19’s quarantine, when new business ideas were on the rise, Taylor “hermit-ed for a week in her apartment” exploring emerging at-home services. “She truly connects with her investigative work,” Vespoli said.
When the pandemic’s drive-thru sales were at a high and human contact was low, Taylor investigated frontline workers and their responses to the transformative strategies meant to keep businesses alive. Taylor also discovered hidden dangers, including pay cuts and crowding violations, through interviewing employees at Costco, Walgreens, Hobby Lobby, Burger King and McDonald’s.
Not only does Taylor put herself in the shoes of the consumer, but her reporting catches the sometimes-hidden company motives by accessing the voices of employees, customers, state actors and sometimes herself. Her writing provides a ubiquitous approach to all concepts—"it’s something that intersects the world in different ways," said Taylor.
In 2022, Taylor wrote a story on Dan Schneider, an acclaimed screenwriter and producer at Nickelodeon from 1994 to 2019, and his hyper-sexualized culture at the children’s network. The article highlighted Nickelodeon’s organized innuendos in popular shows such as "Zoey 101" and "Victorious," the presence of sexual predators on set and the sexist treatment of female employees, including unequal pay, unsolicited sex jokes and their dismissal in writers' rooms.
Taylor’s long-form writing later progressed into the five-part, Emmy-nominated 2024 series “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV,” where she served as executive producer. In a world glamorized by green slime and gripped with TheSlap nostalgia, “Quiet on Set” had audiences on the edge of their couches, streaming new episodes every few days on HBO Max. Taylor’s work reached mass audiences, revealing the corruption behind children’s television that had many reconsidering their favorite childhood shows.
When deciding to cover this story, Taylor said her ideas spark from curiosity, often finding herself “going down rabbit holes.” “These are things that I would want to be talking with my friends about,” she said.
Holding interviews with “Drake & Josh's” Drake Bell, “Zoey 101's” Alexa Nikolas and “All That’s” Giovonnie Samuels, Taylor finds voices that encompass the whole story. Her investigation included accounts from children affected, discriminated staff writers and employees who tolerated Schneider’s behavior for decades, answering questions many now-adult viewers ponder.
For Taylor, it can be challenging to decide when a story is complete due to the long-lasting and multi-layered effects a profit-driven institution can have. “Sometimes, you find something so good at the last minute and it totally changes your story. I completely rewrote my Dan Schneider article because it was so much more,” she said.
When Taylor discovered Schneider claimed alumni status from Harvard University, she called the Harvard Admissions office and found he never attended the school. Fact-checking is crucial, especially in investigations, because facts can sometimes be quickly debunked. While some information was harder to verify, in uncovering Schneider’s past, she confirmed nearly every detail.
“It’s your entire job to do that,” Taylor said.
In her shift from writing to working on documentaries, Taylor reflects on how many hands it takes to complete long-form investigative projects. “It’s such a communal thing to do,” she said. “That was a thing that I didn't fully grasp until I was in it.”
Following the docuseries, Taylor explored fast fashion with “Brandy Hellville & The Cult of Fast Fashion” in 2024, where she served as a features journalist exposing Brandy Melville CEO Stephan Marsan’s racist and fatphobic leadership structure. “It was wrong in so many bizarre, strange, and uniquely cruel ways that interacted with its popularity,” she said.
“I’d be on Instagram or Reddit at 2 a.m. asking, ‘What happened here?’ and ‘What is this?’”
Eliza Relman, a correspondent and co-worker on the Business Insider economy team, said, “Kate is always brimming with ideas” but more importantly, she’s “so genuinely interested in what she writes about.”
Along with her “welcoming” demeanor, Taylor also holds a compassionate attitude when approaching delicate issues, Relman said. Uncovering new perspectives is vital for the reporter. In covering more complex stories, Taylor said, “I remind [sources] that their story is the priority.”
Reflecting on her next steps, Taylor finds herself exploring greater impact through her documentary work. “Both of the documentaries [‘Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV’ and ‘Brandy Hellville’] succeeded because they did more than the original investigation did, and I think that's awesome,” Taylor said.
“They took things one step further,” she added.
Whether exploring the extremes of Red Lobster’s all-you-can-eat tagline or disclosing the challenges contestants on "America’s Next Top Model" faced, Taylor is often feeding her own curiosity, along with questions stakeholders have, when reporting. When it comes to understanding the individuals involved, Taylor becomes one.
From fast food to fashion, her relentless pursuit of the facts not only informs but also inspires possibilities for change. Taylor's reporting journey is a testament to the power of curiosity, commitment and the courage to answer questions many are tiptoeing around.
And to conclude, the answer is 305 shrimp. In 2016, Taylor, along with fellow journalist Hollis Johnson, managed to conquer 305 shrimp at Red Lobster’s endless buffet while testing the limits of an all-you-can-eat restaurant promotion.
