INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Despite the proliferation of recipe websites and apps, finding and organizing the recipes you want to cook has somehow become more difficult
Recipe sites are overrun with ads and long-winded personal stories, while many apps ignore the fact that many of today consumers want to
shop for groceries online, not by making a shopping list to take to the store
Today, a company called Whisk is launching a new meal planning and recipe finding service that helps you better organize your recipe
collection, as well as easily shop for recipe ingredients from a range of grocery delivery providers, including Walmart, Amazon Fresh,
Instacart and others.
Whisk itself was acquired by Samsung NEXT in March of this year, after tripling its revenue, achieving profitability
and powering more than half a billion recipe interactions per month.
Now, it out with its new cross-platform experience, which includes a
website, mobile apps and a voice assistant, all designed to make it easier to meal plan, make and share lists and, finally, shop.
To be
clear, Whisk is not another recipe site
Instead, it a way to save the recipes you find elsewhere.
The recipe site clutter has gotten so bad, it gained media attention and outcry
And while many people today still pin to Pinterest recipes they like, I&ve personally gotten so fed up with the mess that I&ve taken to just
copying into Apple Notes the recipe text and a photo instead
Whisk, however, has me reconsidering my current system.
After signing up for Whisk, which can be as simple as providing an email or phone
number if you don&t want to use Facebook or Google login, you get started by adding a URL of a recipe you found on the web.
On a site like
Pinterest, the link is just saved to your account and you move on
It extracts and structures the pertinent information from the site, like the recipe title, photo, ingredients, serving time and more, and
places them into the appropriate fields on its recipe entry form.
Unfortunately, in tests, it doesn&t seem to pick up the recipe
instructions, but you can copy and paste these in separately
You can also write a description, add notes or even add, edit or remove ingredients based on your own personal tastes
The recipe, which links back to the original source, can then be saved directly or added to a collection of your own choosing on
Whisk.
When you later go to cook the recipe, you can view it without all of the recipe site mess and advertisements.
To be fair, the
process of saving recipes this way takes a little more time than just hitting the &Pin It,& button
In some cases, Whisk doesn&t pick up the photo
Other times, you&ll want to go back to add more details beyond the cooking steps, like a link to the recipe YouTube video, for example.
But
there are advantages that come with taking the extra few minutes on the recipe entry
Beyond just the organizational aspects, Whisk also brings its smart technology to the meal planning process
Once added, every ingredient is identified with a small photo icon as a visual reference and Whisk calculates the recipe nutritional aspects
and gives it a &health score.&
This aspect is powered by Whisk &Food Genome,& a deep learning, natural language-based algorithm that maps
ingredients, their relationships and their properties like nutrition, perishability, flavor, category and more
Today the Whisk ecosystem sees more than 500 million monthly interactions, the company says.
Whisk also lets users click a button to scale
up or down the recipes to different serving sizes without having to do the kitchen math in your head (or a lot of googling.)
And when
you&re ready to shop the ingredients, you just tap a button to create a list where you can select and deselect the individual items you need
This list can be shared over SMS, email or by URL, allowing others to view, edit or save and shop the items you need
Whisk voice apps, including those for Bixby, Alexa and Google Assistant, also let you add items to your list, hands-free.
You can then
select from which store to shop, based on the online grocery delivery services available in your region
This is an area where Whisk outshines many recipe app competitors, which tend to overlook this final step.
At launch, Whisk supports 29
online grocers globally, including major companies like Walmart, Instacart, Amazon Fresh and PeaPod in the U.S., plus Tesco, Ocado,
Waitrose, ASDA and Amazon Fresh in the U.K., as well as GetNow, Woolworths, REWE and others in various overseas markets.
&Over half of the
population still makes shopping lists using pen and paper, yet most people are looking for food inspiration digitally,& said Nick Holzherr,
head of Product, Whisk at Samsung NEXT, in a statement about the app launch
&Hours are spent looking for food content online — seeking new and healthier meals
However, the data shows people generally end up cooking the same 7-9 dishes on repeat
There a fundamental disconnect between the online and offline that Whisk can help connect,& he added.
The company also notes that 70% of the
population is expected to buy from online shopping services by 2025.
As more people shop online, Whisk will grow its service revenues as it
takes an affiliate commission on some grocery checkouts.
Today, Whisk is available online, as a Chrome extension and on Android, Alexa,
Google Assistant, Bixby and soon iOS.
