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The independent food publisher Tastemade launched its first recipe app, Tastemade Cooking, in mid-November to deepen engagement among Tastemade+ subscribers and capitalize on the culinary fervor surrounding Thanksgiving.
The app is technically the second in the Tastemade universe—the first, called Tastemade, is designed for streaming Tastemade video—and it aims to add value to a Tastemade+ subscription, which costs $5.99 per month or $49.99 annually.
Since its relaunch in 2023, Tastemade+ has racked up more than 100,000 paying subscribers, according to Evan Bregman, its general manager of streaming and direct-to-consumer. The publisher points to its product-market fit and series of strategic partnerships as key to its rapid growth.
With the new app, these subscribers can now sift through a library of more than 12,000 Tastemade recipes, all of which have an accompanying video.
The decision to launch the recipe app came as a result of two factors. First, Tastemade consumers had been clamoring for one. Previously, at-home cooks could only access Tastemade recipes through the web.
But the company also noticed a strong connection between its membership and its recipes. According to Bregman, the No. 1 way to drive viewers from its free, ad-supported television channels back to the app was an on-screen call to action encouraging the viewer to cook the recipe they had just watched.
“Tastemade+ was serving our members in a way that we weren’t geared for yet,” Bregman said. “The product was oriented mostly around video, but we know a mobile app drives more engagement than a mobile website. We wanted people to be able to watch us for free and then extend their experience.”
The release of Tastemade Cooking is the latest in a series of product launches from publishers that aim to act as utilities for their audiences. In recent months, Outside Interactive acquired the MapMyFitness family of apps, Apartment Therapy redesigned its website to help home renovators, and Eater debuted a restaurant-finding app.
The pivot toward utility reflects the growing challenge of acquiring customers as traffic referrals from search and social continue to dwindle. Publishers are increasingly looking to maximize the value of individual visitors by deepening their on-site engagement, and building them useful tools can be an effective way of doing so.