The Infatuation: Both Sides of the Table

Context

In 2021 JPMorgan Chase acquired The Infatuation — Zagat included — to accelerate dining: benefits cardmembers actually use, content worth reading, experiences competitors cannot copy. The logic was the Chase Dining thesis made permanent: an editorial moat is the one dining asset money alone cannot assemble.

I helped build Chase Dining around this partner from the bank’s side of the table. I now lead product at The Infatuation. Same thesis, other chair.

Goal

Make the acquisition true: integrate onto the firm’s rails and prove return — while growing The Infatuation’s own brand, audience and standing. Both, or it failed. A moat that stops growing stops being a moat.

Problem

An acquired editorial brand inside a bank sits between two failure modes: absorb it and kill what was bought; leave it alone and never prove return — and an unproven acquisition loses its sponsor.

The product problem underneath: integrate every layer that does not touch the voice — platforms, standards, measurement — so an editorial company can operate inside a global bank without either pretending to be the other.

Stakeholders

• Readers and diners came for a voice they trust. One review that reads like a benefit placement, and the asset is gone.
• Cardmembers and the firm need discovery that lands a table, and a table that justifies the card.
• The editorial team is the moat. Product serves the voice, not the reverse.
• The dining ecosystem must see The Infatuation growing as itself, not shrinking into an amenity.

Same discipline as travel and dining, other chair: a decision counts when every side keeps its reason to defend it.

Constraints

• Trust, twice: bank-grade controls and reader-grade honesty. Neither bends.
• Tech: a startup’s stack meeting the firm’s rails without freezing the roadmap.
• Brand: grow its own audience while serving the dining strategy. Either alone is failure.
• Org: editorial, product, engineering and bank stakeholders as one company, in blended roles.

Options Considered

1. Option A: absorb — run it as a bank channel. Full control, dead moat.
2. Option B: preserve in amber. Living brand, unprovable return.
3. Option C: integrate the rails, protect the voice.

Decision

Option C. The line is drawn at the voice: everything beneath it integrates, nothing above it does. The bank gets rails it can stand behind and a return it can see; the brand gets an owner whose scale grows the audience instead of consuming it.

Holding that line is the job — product, design and technology at once, because the line runs through all three. That is what a blended leadership role is for.

The Mechanism

Metrics

• Primary: discovery that converts to dining — readers landing tables, cardmembers using the benefit because it is genuinely the best way in.
• Guardrails: editorial integrity absolute; the firm’s standards met without exception.
• Strategic: the brand’s own growth. The moat is only worth defending while it deepens.

Risks & Mitigations

• The voice erodes one compromise at a time → the line written down, held at the product level.
• Integration freezes the roadmap → transform and deliver in parallel — the travel model, again.
• The bank measures the brand like a bank product → return framed on the acquisition’s own terms: retention, benefit usage, a moat competitors still cannot assemble.

Where It Stands

The work is live: the platform integrating to the firm’s standards while the brand grows as itself. The whole portfolio runs to here — the grammar that unified wealth, the vision that aligned travel, the capability built around a partner too good to rent. I liked that partner’s cards enough to go play them myself.