Here’s one thing that people all over the world will continue to need even in the worst of recessions: food. And while there are many places you can go to if you want to discover great recipes for home cooking, Cookstr is launching a website later tonight at a press event in New York City that takes a different route than all the cluttered and user-generated content sites out there: it’s all about the top chefs and cookbook authors, baby.
Cookstr has managed to sign up over 200 star chefs, cookbook authors and publishers who contribute to a database of high-quality recipes for a wide variety of dishes, with more being added every day (both chefs and recipes). The contributor list is impressive, to say the least, including people like Mark Bittman, Jamie Oliver, Mario Batali, Nigella Lawson, Daniel Boulud, Jacques Pepin, Julia Child, Alice Waters … the list just goes on and on.
The site, which has just been opened up a couple of minutes ago, features a nice interface and a powerful engine for searching recipes and information about the chefs, with menus and ‘tips & techniques’ coming soon. There are a lot of ways to search for great recipes: by main ingredients, cuisine, occasion, method, etc., and once you start looking there’s an intuitive filter in the left sidebar that helps you narrow down your search to find the right recipe.
(CenterNetworks recorded a demo by CEO Will Schwalbe recently at a NY Tech Meetup you might want to check out)
Other than that, the site is intentionally clean; there’s currently only a print button for recipes and a way for people to send recipes to friends by e-mail. Soon you will be able to create your own MyCookstr, where you’ll be able to save recipes, notes, and shopping lists. More community features are also on the works.
Business model, you asked? Cookstr plans to integrate advertising in the beginning of 2009, and as a recent NY Times article on the startup points out, they’ll also be collecting affiliate revenue when books are sold on e-commerce sites via their website.
Cookstr is completely bootstrapped by its founder and CEO Will Schwalbe, who stepped down as editor in chief of Hyperion Books in January 2008, and was co-developed by New York incubator Tipping Point Partners. The company is actively looking for funding to take the web service to a new level, which I’m pretty sure they’ll find based on what they’ve already accomplished on a shoestring budget.
That said, Cookstr is up against some stiff competition from well-known recipe databases that are less high-end but offer an adequate solution for many home cookers, such as FoodNetwork (owned by Scribbs), AllRecipes (owned by Reader’s Digest), Yahoo Recipes, Epicurious (owned by Conde Nast), Delish.com (owned by Hearst Communications), and so on. It’s not that there’s not an audience: comScore reported earlier that food sites attracted 45.6 million unique visitors in September, more than double the rate of total Internet growth in the United States.
Cookstr is also looking to expand the service internationally.
You could also imagine a business model where they helped you buy the ingredients (partner with Peapod of FreshDirect for groceries or sell hard to find ingredients). And of course potential sales of all things kitchen supply.
Great insight! Our editor-in-chief Katie Workman developed the concept to integrate recipes from Workman Publishing with FreshDirect.
Helloo??? They totally stole their UI and logo from Allrecipes.com. What a bunch of hacks.
What am I missing? Anyone else out there help me with this comment? Take a look at http://allrecipes.com/.
Well, they both do use orange…
However, I am not convinced that AllRecipe’s orange is just seasonal, nor am I convinced that Cookstr’s orange isn’t seasonal either.
So I am back to square one; they both use orange.
Hate to be that nit-picky guy, but such is the internet: it’s Julia Child, not Julia Childs.
Thanks Austin, fixed it
I for one, find no humor in your typos!
An interesting approach to removing the signal from the noise. If you’re looking for a Risotto recipe sorting through the 100 recipes on many of the network is an exercise in futility. Having 2 recipes to choose makes a lot of sense.
Yes, this is backwards to Web2.0 and user generated content, but there is a level at which too much for people handle.
I don’t know if people will differentiate… when my wife is looking for a recipe, she just types it into Google. She has no loyalty to any recipe site.
Really interested in what your wife thinks if she sees it.
Really bad name, but looks like a cool site.
Disclosure – I own one of those “cluttered and user-generated” recipe sites, called http://www.opensourcefood.com (which was voted one of Time magazine’s Best Websites of 2008…ahem).
The Cookstr design is nice and clean, but I’m having trouble with the wording of this article. Are these chefs “contributors” in the CGM sense? Or have cookstr simply done a licensing deal with each.
I highly doubt Jamie Oliver is sitting there pumping his recipes into the site, and I’m guessing that what’s happened is they have done a content deal with his publisher for X amount of recipes which they will post on his behalf over the course of some set amount of time.
My question I guess is can you build a community successfully like that – whilst this is a nicely designed site, is it going to engage consumers enough if they get the feeling that they are just being talked to via proxy? People tend to see through this stuff quite easily and the stock press photos etc kind of make the site reek of PR machine.
If I’m wrong though and they really have managed to get Mario Batali to take time out from managing half the restaurants in America to post free recipes on their site, then kudos! If they have done more than just a content deal then it would be nice to see that – exclusive videos of the chefs cooking in the cookstr studios, interacting with users in a forum, that kind of thing.
Thanks for the link Robin. As for your question Yongfook, I believe when Will showed off the site last week he said that the recipes come from cookbooks only. So basically Mario would take recipes from his books and contribute those to the site. He isn’t working up a new recipe for lasagna and sending it in.
That’s right — we are using recipes from cookbooks. Our goal is to get the best-loved and most-trusted recipes up on the site. But many of the chefs are very involved with the site. For example, Jamie will be answering questions from users of the site as soon as we introduce the community elements. And your site, Yongfook, is terrific. Our goal is to provide a specific kind of curated experience, but we think there is room for lots of different kinds of sites.
We are offering cookbook authors and chefs a way to engage with their readers — and will be introducing lots of features for them to do so. They seem really excited and many of them helped enormously with the development of the site. Thanks so much, Yongfook, for your feedback. I enjoy visiting your site — and hope you have a good time on cookstr.
best,
Will Schwalbe, founder
Here’s a hint: you look desperate replying to comments about your site on TC. My advice is to NOT reply to every comment on a blog just because it’s TC. You want to give the impression you’re run by guys who know their stuff with “clout”, but obviously that’s not the case here.
And as Julia Child is dead, therefore how could she contribute? (sorry just messing with you guys). I actually will check out this site. I am one of those weirdoes who reads cookbooks “for fun”.
What has this got to do with technology? I though this was at tech blog, most of your posts are about publishing stuff on the Interent and creating web sites.
Actually, IMO this is exactly what TechCrunch *should* be writing about– uses of tech to enhance people’s lives, rather than tech for its own sake. In these times more than ever.
I want to send a shout-out to two critical, food-obsessed partners without whom Cookstr would not have happened: Pivotal Labs , who built the software, search and other fun toys that you’ll see over the coming months, and The Barbarian Group , who crafted the yummy interface.
Long day at work. I thought the name was Cockster at first glance.
This is actually super-useful as it stands today: simple and powerful interface; I can dial in searches based on low-effort, low-cost, *and* low-carbs, etc in the same query. Epicurious wouldn’t let me do that.
I’d like to see it get some critical mass in volumes of recipes; looks like it’s off to a good start for that already. Kudos.
I read the NYT article few weeks back and have been looking forward to seeing the site. As to the differentiator, I’m with yongfook in not seeing much more here than copying recipes from cookbooks of established chefs and cooks. Is there an audience for that? Definitely. Will they go out and buy books? It depends – how much will I get from the book of one chef versus perusing a few recipes from many and printing/saving them locally?
Like many, my wife and I have started sharing our cooking episodes online, and its great to know that the community of the like minded cooking hobbyist have anothe resource to avail ourselves of.
If you’ve not stumbled upon it as of yet and are a food enthusiast, you have to check out http://www.rouxbe.com
It’s a fantastic recipe / cooking video / how-to site that has hooked up with the North Vancouver Culinary Institute and actually offers cooking school online.
I have also always enjoyed the way that recipes are submitted and then put through a “test-kitchen” process to see whether or not they make the grade.
someone mention too many recipes and too much ‘noise’to wade through at most if not all of these recipe sites. Totally agree. I did stumble across a website (a search engine of sorts )that cuts through the ‘clutter’. It’s called http://www.reci...ecomparison.com . It would be great to see cookstr content show up over there! Or better yet, can’t wait for Cookstr to show up there! I have had a lot of sucess drilling down through hundreds of apple pie recipes( for example) to end up with five effortlessly.
Heaven! I’m in Heaven!!
Unless these guys have enough dough to last them through 2010-2011, they are toast (pun intended)…how in the world can these guys monetize when EVERYONE else is going through the grinder???
Thank you Will for taking the time to respond to Yang Fook’s concerns and comments. It shows concern and respect for others’ opinions as well as passion for cookstr.com. With all your experience at Hyperion as editor-in- chief, you know what you’re doing and will no doubt be met with success. Much luck to you!
It’s nice to see this site (or any food site really) getting coverage –
I’d like to welcome Will and his staff to the techcruch comment system.. it’s pretty harsh, but it’s a good way to get your feet wet and get free feedback. Half of what is said here is useless, but there are morsels of helpful feedback you can use to help shape your site before it gets out to the masses. Use your instincts to take what you want and grow from it. The rest of it ignore because most of these folks have never created anything.
Now that I’ve welcomed you and your team… I agree with Yongfook about transparency. Members like to feel that they are talking to a real person on the other end of the recipe – that’s why true food social networks (none of which are mentioned in the article above) are so popular.
You mentioned that your chef talent is going to be answering questions and so on… seriously? We work with talent and brands all the time and from my experience it’s highly unlikely that they have the time or the desire to create a genuine connection. I would say forgo the Q&A and add personal content from the talent – home videos.. candid photos… anything to make it seem like the profile is legit and not corporate and that doesn’t need to be monitored or updated. Also, with a small development team you’re setting yourself up for a lot of time management issues and could find that the Q&A doesn’t get you that much mileage with SEO or traffic. It just gives your team more work to do. Plus, it creates a “pass-it-on” opportunity.. “see Jamie cooking in his own kitchen… making a mess.. whatever”
Regarding the look and layout.. you may want to give your site a “voice”… something that helps create your brand. Yongfook and I are both pretty transparent on our sites.. who will your members be able to talk to when they need help? Jamie Oliver? Most likely not.. so then who is going to welcome them when they join and be there for them when Jamie doesn’t get back to them in a timely manner? :) Something to think about…
A few comments above mentioned the colors of allrecipes.. they do have a point. (sorry!) While it may give some visitors a sense of familiarity, you might want to give the site a less corporate feel. Plus, Allrecipes is probably not a good target for emulate… they mainly build out their own features instead of buying sites. The further you can get away from their look the better. Plus, it’s not that warm of a look.
I think building momentum in an already crowded space will have its challenges – while I agree with Will that there is a lot of room still for a variety of food themed sites, it’s going to be tough. No one likes to be the first at the party. So growing a member base and gaining momentum will be a slower than you anticipated… that’s for sure.
The business model of using cookbooks to generate revenue is a good one and Will obviously has the experience to understand sales forecasts and the connections to get exclusives/special offers. The only thing that concerns me about this model is that it seems more like a feature than building the entire site around these branded cookbooks and the authors. It’s always better to build the community and have the authors participate in it. That way your members feel they are part of something they are helping build. By allowing them to be friends with the chefs and buy their cookbooks.. that’s just a cleaver way to market the cookbooks.. not build a community. You may want to push your community out asap – there’s no telling when one of the more established sites incorporate cookbooks and authors.. I’m just saying.
The food sector is extremely competitive – mix that with passion and the speed at which the internet moves and it’s a far cry from the publishing business where you have long lead times from concept to print. You may want to hold on to your hats.. it’s going to be quite a ride.
Thanks, Babette! And I’ve found the comments really helpful. Even the one that said I shouldn’t answer so much! But I still do believe that it’s best to err on the side of answering too much rather than too little. Plus, I like to do it.
Thanks for the many great points, including the one about relying overly on the chefs and authors to answer questions and the like. We are doubling our efforts to get our community features up and running. I should also add that by having so many cookbook authors participating on the site, we have been able to include lots of people who are extremely admired but who aren’t household names, and many of these people love engaging with cooks and readers and are excited to do that on the site. But the reminder about the importance of having our own voice is a great one, too.
It has been five months from first meeting to launch — so it’s already been quite a wild ride. But that’s one of the reasons I’m having so much fun. Definitely not publishing lead times.
Thanks for the good wishes and great suggestions.
I’m always looking for new simple recipes I can use. I will be checking out this site.
Craig
http://www.budgetpulse.com
that pictue of spoons instead of peoples’ faces is so annoying. they should have waited to launch if the site was going to be so empty.
This is another recipe site. Who cares? A bunch of great chefs but I’d rather watch them on Food Network.
Another disclosure – I work for http://www.foodchannel.com. We’re still in beta on the site and consider ourselves a curated site for food bloggers and others to get a bigger audience, alongside the work of our chefs and food editors. We love user generated content, although right now we work on an invitation basis – we’ll soon have the ability for people to add their own, have their own pages, etc. Foodies are enjoying the challenge of making it to the front page of The Food Channel. We have been in the business for years, with a background of foodservice (some of the menu items on popular restaurants were created in our kitchens) and now we’re bringing that knowledge out in a web 2.0 way. We’re with the guy from http://www.opensourcefood.com in thinking that its about interaction and community, plus some real food knowledge to further the conversation. Thanks for covering food sites – we have tech development issues, too, and learn a lot form Techcrunch.
Yeah the name of the site can be misinterpreted for a quite obscene term. NOT smart. Not cute.
Congratulations on the launch of Cookstr, Will and Art! It’s beautiful. When I look for recipes online, I have two standards:
1) Are the recipes good recipes? (ie, are they clearly written? do they work? etc.)
2) Does the site make it easy for me to find the right recipe? (ie, is it cleanly designed and easy to navigate? does it offer smart and useful filters? etc.)
These seem to be Cookstr’s priorities, and I think there’s always room for another recipe site that puts these two things first.
i am just curious as to what are the copyright implications for recipes. aren’t recipes by nature so generic ?
Caveat: CEO & Co-founder of http://rouxbe.com – online instructional cooking site (complement to your favorite recipe resource).
Interesting new site. So interesting in fact that I felt compelled to write a blog post on this one: http://blog.rou...-by-best-chefs/
I like the concept and business model but from a user perspective I’m mixed. I like the clean design, search and browse functionality. I also like that they filter through content for the user.
I’m not sure I agree that these recipes necessarily represent the best of the best. Nor am I convinced that they will be able to build a strong author supported community but I’ll be watching. Best of luck Will & the Cookstr team. Their roster certainly contains some of the very best chefs, but I have to say, not all cookbooks print recipes that work.
I guess my biggest challenge from a user perspective is the claim that these are “trusted” recipes. Trust implies that recipes on Cookstr will work when in fact, a recipe is only as good as the home cook that is executing it. So while Jamie O. might have the best X recipe, let’s not give the world at home the false expectation that they will be able to recreate a Jamie masterpiece (or a recipe from any other great cookbook author on the site for that matter).
For those with some skill & technique background, I believe that Cookstr is as good as any place to gain some excellent culinary inspiration from some “trusted palates” – maybe even a bit better than some of the other major players in the online food space.
Cookstr is a very usable site and has built smart searching and browsing functionality for the home cook (especially lesser known views like mood and taste/texture). They also bringing completely new content to the web. But will they sell cookbooks? And will the recipes of celebrity chefs and cookbooks stars be enough to put together a weekly grocery list? http://asmartmo...riends-or-foes/
Wow, crazy bad business name. Wonder how much traffic they lose from people typing in cookster vs cookstr?
thank you for this, you are at exect place for gift and chocolate covered strawberries with all suggestion
Just want to let you know about a new recipe metasearch engine we launched called http://primorecipes.com. Primo Recipes searches other major recipe sites to bring back the best results from around the web.
Please let us know what you think.