Some people cook just to eat. Other folks sense an inner simmering already when anticipating the ingredients for the evening: fresh vegetables, fragrant spices and that precious walnut kernel oil. Foodies are people to whom food means so much more than just nourishment. Foodies like to try out recipes and share them with others.

But collecting recipes was sometimes difficult in the past. Some foodies would keep handwritten books, collect single torn-out pages from food magazines, or buy piles of cookbooks. But when on holiday or at a friend’s place (when finally there’s plenty of time to cook) – the recipes were usually some place else.

The social cooking experience

Luckily, smartphones today can guide through the cooking process with the right app. The recipe sharing app and community Cookbooth from Barcelona brings you the tastiest recipes from all over the world to any kitchen in the world. Every day, new recipes find their way into Cookbooth. Each step of the preparation is described with photos and text – created by other cooking enthusiasts (foodies) or by cooking professionals (chefs). That's the basic idea: a global cookbook with classics, local specialties, latest experiments and granny’s secret recipes of yesteryear. The app allows chefs and foodies to create high-quality step-by-step recipes easily and in no time, including photos and text – a kind of Instagram for photo recipes.

Founding, launch and the team today

Cookbooth released its app in 2013. Apple promptly featured Cookbooth as Best New App, and it didn’t take long for the first 200,000 users to join. The founding team consists of Creative Director Victor Fortunado; CEO Malwine Steinbock, and COO Iván Icra Salicru, the Italian chef who worked in six restaurants from London to Dubai – among them one with a Michelin star. Victor worked for many years as creative director in an advertising agency. Malwine has also worked in advertising: for very large brands (which you might have in your fridge – or at least know them) she coordinated international brand communication. The Cookbooth budget is certainly smaller, but the idea is bigger.

In the beginning, the founders worked with external designers and software developers. This worked sometimes fine, sometimes not. In the end of the day, the hired CTO was technically less fit than it seemed at first sight – and was fired. But having a technological co-founder in the digital economy is a key ingredient for a start-up. Only he or she can implement the concept and code the idea into a working reality. It took months for the right programmers to be found.

The producer Aldo Guenther joined the team – also with equity – and is responsible mainly for the production of videos and photo recipes, but also for communications with chefs and brands. Later came as employees a fit CTO, a lead developer and a freelancer CFO. When describing such a competent team, any language gourmet easily has the term recipe for success at the tip of the tongue.

Revenue model

Revenue streams of Cookbooth come from in-app purchases to allow for additional features or access to exclusive content. For example, users can create their private recipe library and share it only with friends. Professional chefs can sell their works in small portions – similar to iTunes: books with at least five recipes cost three euros, access to photo recipes from all professional chefs costs five euros per month. For an additional charge, chefs can present their skills and works in a high-quality showcase – a kind of LinkedIn for chefs. Moreover, recipe collections reveal taste preferences of users. Cookbooth does not sell any user information to third parties. But thanks to big data, relevant branded content finds an interested readership in Cookbooth.

Financing

Cookbooth has received a loan from Enisa, a European Union program which has distributed around 100 million euros twice in 2013 and in 2014 to hundreds of innovative start-ups in Spain in different phases: Seed Stage, Early Stage and Expansion Stage. The loan of Enisa is, similar to mezzanine capital, a hybrid financial instrument combining the characteristics of equity and debt. Start-ups such as Cookbooth must contribute 50% equity, Enisa provides the same amount as a loan with an interest rate of around 4.5% – but the loan must be repaid only after two years.

The long time waiting for the loan was a fly in the ointment: More than a year passed between the application and the actual payout. Founders should always be aware of the risk and calculate too tightly with money most surely expected from a funding institution. The official mills often work too slowly to keep up with the rapid start-up rhythm and the need for fast supply of liquidity. It’s a common dilemma not only in Spain.

Spain vs. Silicon Valley

Thanks to the Inlea foundation, an accelerator for creative and innovative start-ups, Malwine could travel to Silicon Valley and participate as Dreamer at the Imagine Creativity Center in 2014. There, she quickly discovered the differences of the two founding landscapes Spain and Silicon Valley: Spanish VC investors often have a classical economic background and don’t know what it means to bring a start-up into being. In the US, most VC investors are former founders and are more hands-on people, willing to take risks. While it is already difficult in Spain to raise 200,000 euros worth of venture capital, seed rounds of 2 million US dollars or more are not uncommon in the Valley – if the idea is big enough and the team is good enough.

Future prospects

Cookbooth continues to grow, invests in marketing, and fosters further cooperations with professional chefs. The team develops the marketplace for purchasable recipes to launch it soon. The aim of the founders is to become the reference platform for recipe sharing: the most successful app to create, share and discover photo recipes for foodies and chefs. If your mouth waters, install the Cookbooth app and take the wooden spoon in your hand.

[October 2014]

Photography by David Ruiz