Can You Guess How Many Lemons Our Test Kitchen Used in 2024?

Today, Spotify Wrapped, the music streaming platform’s annual summary of its users’ personal listening habits, turns nine years old. Throughout Wrapped’s existence—and its sustained clutch over your most online friend’s (now private) Instagram story—we’ve learned two things: One, nobody’s cool. We’re all spending hundreds of minutes listening to some "Espresso"-like anthem whose origin story begins on the “Growth” slide of a record label’s quarterly business report. Two, putting numbers to what we consume is fun, sometimes embarrassing, and always revealing.

So we’re going to try it with food—specifically with what’s eaten and drank in our four test kitchens, the Food52 staff kitchen, and at our community events. After working with the two people—Allison, our Test Kitchen Director, and Lauren, our HQ manager—responsible for executing our often chaotic grocery requests, we were able to put together our version of an annual consumption report. Presenting: Food52’s 2024 Grocery Bill, Wrapped.

This year, Food52 employees snacked on roughly:

4. 1,400 Bananas

3. 1,440 mini bags of Cape Cod Chips

2. 1,450 mini bags of Bjorn Corn

1. 2,500 “Tiny” pieces of Tony’s Chocolonely

Every Tuesday, our office gets bagels. We’ve ordered from bagel shops all across New York, but these are our top four (ranked in order of frequence):

4. Smith St. Bagels

3. PopUp Bagels

2. Russ & Daughters

1. Apollo Bagels

During the day, our team routinely grounds coffee beans from two Brooklyn-based roasters: Williamsburg’s Partners and Parlor in Clinton Hill. Those beans have brewed roughly 7200 cups of coffee over the last 12 months.

For community events (like our monthly cookbook club) hosted in our office, we’ll stock the bar with wine, beer, cocktails, and some NA options. Per Lauren, these are the brands she ordered (or made) most often in each category.

Beer: Transmitter’s Pilsner and Belgian Wit beers.

Wine: Whatever Brian from Gnarly Vines recommends.

Cocktails: Erika Kotite’s Margarita

NA: Ghia’s Le Spritz and Pentire’s Coastal Spritz.

When developing recipes our content creators require a wide range of produce. Per Allison, these are the fruits, vegetables, and alliums she ordered most this past year:

3. 120 bunches of kale.

2. 250 bulbs of garlic.

1. 480 lemons.

To hone sweeter recipes like these Norwegian custard buns and this maple & milk chocolate chess pie, our team goes through plenty of eggs and dairy. Here’s what they needed most this year:

3. 60 gallons of milk

2. 150 pints of heavy cream

1. 3,500 eggs

Finally, in regards to seasonings and spices, these are the four we’ve needed to refill most often:

4. Aleppo Pepper

3. Cardamom

2. Oregano

1. MSG

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What should we track next year? Let us know in the comments below!