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Market Overview: Online Recipe Subscription Service
This report collects data points on the size of the online food-related content subscription market. The market appears to be robust based on the recent success of SideChef's premium app (reaching into the top 10 for downloads) and Food Network's Kitchen app, as well as established subscription services such as America's Test Kitchen. There are a number of services that have converted to paid models in the past year, which also indicates that this is a good time to do so. Additional findings indicate that interest in food-related content in general is quite high and has been since at least 2013.
Market Size for Food-Related Content Subscription Services
- When SideChef launched its premium app (with a $4.99 a month subscription fee) in July 2020, it quickly reached in the top 10 for paid food and drink apps.
- Of the 243 cooking or recipe apps reviewed by Appgrooves, 6 of the top 10 apps had 1 million or more downloads, indicating that recipes and cooking methods are in high demand. Among the top 10 is Yummly, which recently launched a paid version called Yummly Pro in 2019 for $4.99 a month.
- America's Test Kitchen subscription service had 420,000 paid digital subscribers as of October 2019.
- Recipe app BigOven reached 8 million downloads in 2013; today it has been downloaded more than 13 million times. BigOven has a pro-level subscription service but the popularity of the paid service is not known.
- Food Network Kitchen's app, which was launched as a paid service for $4.99 a month in October 2019, has been downloaded 5 million times since its launch.
Related Findings Showing Interest in Food-Related Content
- As of January 2020, 20 percent of all pins on Pinterest are food-related, indicating that consumers are very interested in food recipes and related content.
- As of 2017, "how to cook that" is one of the top-10 most-searched phrases on YouTube. In a study from OneSpot, viewers consider content that informs as most valuable (40 percent), followed by content that educates (28 percent), indicating a high preference for instructive content such as recipes and how-to videos.
- Interest in food-related content has been undergoing a long-term growth. In 2015, food videos were viewed 23 billion times, representing a 170 percent increase over 2014.
- Between 2013-2014, Millennials in particular helped contribute to a 280 percent growth in subscriptions to cooking-related YouTube channels.