3 Ways Recipe Content Was Used To Engage Consumers In 2019

It won't surprise you that our daily Google Alerts are dominated by recipe news. If a company is using recipe content, we want to know about it. It's why we have a pretty good grasp on how, where and why recipe content is being used to engage consumers. 2019 was dominated by shoppable recipes, but it's not the only way recipes have been used to grab the attention of hungry consumers this year. Here are just three of our favourite ways recipe content has been used in 2019.

Cookware added value with recipe content

Using recipe content to add value for consumers is nothing new for cookware brands. In 2019 though, two companies took a more innovative approach than simply adding a recipe booklet into the box. In June, cookware startup Great Jones launched Potline, a text service that provides free recipe inspiration, cooking tips and advice from an actual human. Potline is now available for 5 hours a week spread over five days. Despite the short opening hours, this sort of human engagement with consumers is an incredibly valuable strategy when building brand awareness and increasing loyalty, particularly when you consider that one-third of consumers don't decide what to have for dinner until 4 pm. Great Jones wasn't alone in introducing a text service for consumers in 2019 however. Equal Parts launched a similar service, bundling 8 weeks of recipe inspiration and cooking tips via text with their cookware. Guided cooking experiences like those from Great Jones and Equal Parts give home cooks of all abilities access to expert, in-the-moment recipes and cooking advice, help create an authentic, lasting connection with consumers, and enable cookware brands to stand out from the crowd. This hyper-personalised strategy would be difficult for more established brands with large customer bases to implement, but it will be interesting to see if any mainstream cookware brands take their cue from these innovative startups and launch their own attempt to disrupt the space using recipes in 2020.

Amazon went all-in on smart displays in the kitchen

Back in 2017, we wrote about the Amazon Echo Show and why it was a game-changer in the kitchen. Fast forward to 2019 and if you're not working on food experiences for kitchen smart displays you're already behind. In September, Discovery and Amazon took the concept of guided cooking to a new level with the announcement of Food Network Kitchen, a monthly subscription service that offers access to live and on-demand cooking classes, Food Network shows and recipes on the Echo Show. Guided cooking on smart displays is not a new thing, but this partnership leverages Food Network's leading reputation and people's emotional attachment to their favourite celebrity chefs. Not just that, but it gives people who don't currently use smart screens a familiar reason to give them a try. Amazon also leveraged the popularity of quick, thumb-stopping recipe videos this year by partnering with Tasty to offer step-by-step voice and video instructions. Meanwhile, Google Assistant users can follow step-by-step versions of Ayesha Curry's recipes thanks to Google's partnership with the cookbook author, so the race to position smart displays as a go-to for visual recipe content is well and truly underway.

Shoppable recipes went truly mainstream

We've already declared 2019 'The Year of the Shoppable Recipe' and there was one big shoppable recipes story that dominated the headlines this year. In August, Walmart and Tasty announced that they were extending their partnership to include shoppable recipes. What surprised us the most about this announcement was that many consumers were hearing about shoppable recipes for the first time. Although shoppable recipes took off in a meaningful way this year, it is not a new concept. The Walmart/Tasty partnership gives increased visibility to the concept while encouraging competitors to up their shoppable recipes game into 2020. You can read more about what this partnership means for shoppable recipes here. In more recent news, smart food platform Whisk just released a consumer-facing shoppable recipes app that enables hungry consumers to make any recipe shoppable. This could be as much of a game-changer for online groceries and shoppable recipes as the Walmart/Tasty partnership, particularly since it doesn't limit consumers to in-app recipe content.

If you want to update your recipe database for 2020, giving your customers access to the sort of recipes they truly crave, we'd love to help. Get in touch with us at jane@therecipeguru.com to find out how we can curate the recipes you're seeking from our 200,000+ recipe database.