Here’s the scene (see if this sounds familiar): One time, you made the best meatballs of all time. They were tender, juicy, perfectly seasoned, just … perfect. The next time you want to make them, though, you can’t remember where the recipe came from. After combing through the indexes of all your favorite cookbooks, checking the recipe sites you frequent, and searching different phrases in Google, you just can’t find the recipe. Twenty minutes later it’s official: The recipe has evaporated into the ether.
There are so many — too many? — ways to access recipes these days, and even though some recipe sites offer ways to organize and file your favs, you can still end up with dozens of sites that you must log into to find the recipes you need.
A new app that’s being developed right here in Pennsylvania is about to change all this. Culineer, created by What’s for Dinner Technologies, is a new solution to digitizing, storing, organizing and sharing recipes from cookbooks and from websites.
This interactive platform allows users to aggregate and manage their personal recipe collections, whether that means recipes that have been passed down through generations, or just random gems that came from cooking blogs. You can use the app as just a digital recipe box, but the best part is that you can share recipes easily with friends and family, shop for the ingredients you need right from the app, or create collections of recipes called “Cookbooks.”
“Culineer takes the best parts of what’s out there with social content, shopable recipes and, eventually, a place for brands to connect with users,” says What’s for Dinner Technology’s founder, Jodi Frank.
Frank, a Pittsburgh native, comes from a professional background in safety and pharmaceuticals. The idea for Culineer came to her a decade ago. She was frustrated with making certain recipes and trying to find them in magazines, and recipe boxes, just like in the scene we set at the top of this post.
“I wanted to base an app on the idea of how you can take a picture of a business card and turn it into a digital file,” she remembers.
It was time for a career change anyway, and Frank began figuring out if the idea was viable and learning about how to take a digital brand to market.
“The feedback I was getting from the market was, this WAS a gap. There are so many recipes out there that companies use for marketing material, and everybody loves them, but they’re not really there when you need them,” she says.
The coding of Culineer started in 2018, and development continued throughout 2019 and 2020. The app is fully launched now (and free), though there are many features and plans still to come, including more social media integration, recipes and demos by chefs and a function to digitized handwritten recipes to make them searchable and shopable. This feature is especially important to Frank, as she sees it as a way to help preserve families’ heirloom recipes and culinary heritage.
“I wanted to make something that helps keep cultural connections we’re going to lose touch with,” she says. “People loved my grandmother’s fudge recipe, and when I was going through her recipe box, the paper was falling apart. That’s exactly the kind of thing the app can help save.”
Another one of Frank’s goals for Culineer is to help make cooking more enjoyable and convenient. Currently, recipes are linked to Amazon Fresh, where you can order whatever items you need, and soon, the app will be connected to regional groceries, like Wegman’s. Another feature on the way is sharable shopping lists that couples or friends can co-manage if they plan to cook together.
“We spent a lot of time thinking about how do people live in real life and creating something that could support that and be flexible, because not everyone does things the same way,” Frank says.
Becoming part of the Culineer community couldn’t be easier: Simply download the app through your phone’s app store and sign up with your Google or Facebook account. There is so much more to come from this PA-based tech company, so get in early so you can watch this awesome app evolve!
- Featured photo: Raw Pixel
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