Interview with Mikhail Mishchenko, Publisher of ZestNews.today

Every great project starts with a personal story. Mikhail, you were born in Kazakhstan, built a career in the dairy industry, and now you're launching a beverage media platform from Spain. Take us back to the beginning: who is Mikhail Mishchenko, and how did you get here?

I was born in Kazakhstan and lived for many years in Moscow. By training I'm actually a lawyer, I have no formal background in media. But starting around 2000–2001, I moved into the media business, first at an international PR agency in Moscow, and later I opened my own agency. It became fairly well known, and we worked with a number of international food-industry clients, several of them connected to dairy. Part of that work involved monitoring daily dairy-sector news for our clients, and eventually I decided to turn that into a media outlet of its own.  When I first pitched the idea, I assumed my PR clients would become our first advertisers. Instead, one of them told me: “Michael, why would we pay to advertise with you? You're not popular enough yet.” That was the moment it clicked, we needed an audience first. Within a couple of years we'd become the biggest media outlet in the Russian-speaking world for our sector, then decided to go international. Together with my partner, we decided to launch ZestNews. I bring the dairy expertise and the analytics background; overall, I'm a publisher, I've built five media outlets, sold some of them, and this is part of a new media holding company.

You created DairyNews, the biggest leading trade media platform for the dairy industry, and it's still running to this day. How many years has it been, what made it successful, and what are two or three moments that defined it for you?

We launched DairyNews.ru in 2008, when we were focused purely on the Russian market. At the time it felt almost revolutionary, I hadn't seen any dedicated online media for a niche industry like ours. People told me I was crazy: “Who needs news about the dairy sector?” I said, let's revisit that in a couple of years. We kept working, and DairyNews grew from nothing into the biggest media outlet in the Russian-speaking dairy world, and eventually the most-read dairy publication globally.  In 2024 I sold DairyNews.ru to a Russian buyer. But back in 2022, we had already rebranded from dairynews.ru to dairynews.today, because by then we were operating internationally. That switch happened because I didn't support the war in Russia,  when Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine, like the Donetsk region, was being annexed, we continued to label it as Ukrainian territory in our coverage. That brought a lot of backlash and pressure from the Russian government and Russian society, so we made the decision to leave Russian territory. I moved to Kazakhstan, to my mother's home in Almaty, and we switched the domain from .ru to .today.  As for what defines success for me: ultimately it comes down to money, not as the goal itself, but as the clearest sign a business is running efficiently. For media specifically, success is built in layers. First you need an audience, because if people read you, advertisers trust that audience and want to be part of it. I often compare a media outlet to a shopping mall, you don't get retailers to rent space until you've built the foot traffic. Once you have real readership, the business model follows.

In 2026, while still running DairyNews, you decided to launch something entirely new for the beverage industry. Why now, and why beverages?

Dairy and beverages are closely linked. A large part of the conversation in dairy right now is about alternative “milks”, almond, soy, and whether they should even be allowed to use the word “milk.” Regulators can pass laws restricting that label, but it doesn't change what happens at the counter: when you order at a coffee shop, the barista still asks if you want dairy milk or almond milk. The categories compete every day regardless of what the law says, which tells you how closely tied these markets really are.  As for timing, I met a very energetic, enthusiastic partner who's deeply involved in the beverage business, and it felt like the right opportunity to build something with someone who shares that same drive.

Who's behind ZestNews? Tell us about the team building this with you.

Right now the core team is small: myself and my partner, plus the infrastructure both of us bring, my publishing and IT background, and his experience on the beverage side. We're still early, essentially at the first step, but I expect the team to grow quickly. I'd also add that AI plays a real role behind the scenes,  it's become almost like another team member, and I don't think many outlets in this space use AI as actively as we do.

If you had to name the three or four most important things ZestNews will deliver to its readers, what would they be?

Innovation comes first , this is a fast-moving market, with new products launching constantly, and that's what we want to cover first. Analytics is right behind it. Beyond that, we'll also cover marketing and regulatory developments, but innovation and analytics are the priorities.

There's a lot of noise in the industry right now, new brands, new trends, new platforms. How would you describe ZestNews to someone who's never heard of it?

In one line: “Global beverage industry news, unfiltered, real insights for a market that never stops moving.” That's the pitch: the main media outlet dedicated to the beverage industry, alcohol excluded.

There are already established players in beverage industry news. What does ZestNews offer that they don't?

First, speed. We're focused on delivering news to the market very fast. Second, and just as important, is language coverage. English is the default language for this industry globally, but as a Russian speaker myself, I know how much happens in Russian-speaking markets, not just Russia, but Central Asia, Ukraine, Belarus, and others, which adds up to roughly 300–400 million people. The same is true for Spanish- and Chinese-language markets. A lot of real news in small markets. Our goal is to build what I'd call a data lake of everything happening across countries and languages, and then layer analytics and analytical reports on top of that. And, as I mentioned, AI is a core part of how we do this, I think we use it more actively than most other outlets in this space.

Who is ZestNews really for? Who's the reader you're writing for every day?

People working across the beverage industry,marketing managers, top executives, owners, procurement managers, sales teams, and everyone in between.

Beyond news, ZestNews seems to be building something bigger, you're also planning conferences. What can the industry expect from a ZestNews conference, and why is bringing people together in person part of the vision?

A conference is a natural part of any B2B media brand, it always has been. We're still deciding exactly what shape ours should take, but it needs to be distinctive. Looking at DairyNews as a model: we created Dairy Olympics while working in Russia, an unusual name that people didn't understand at first, but it became a recognizable brand in its own right. It grew into one of the biggest events of its kind globally, drawing around 500 participants and some of the most important experts in the market. For ZestNews, I expect something similar but adapted to specific categories within the beverage world, apple, dairy-adjacent categories, almond milk, pineapple, and so on, rather than one single, generic conference.

Five years from now, where do you see all of this going? What's the bigger vision behind ZestNews?

Five years from now, I see ZestNews as the biggest media outlet in the beverage market, backed by real, respected experts across the different verticals we cover. Beyond that, I'd like to build additional platforms that connect back into ZestNews.