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From the Web to the Kitchen- Allrecipes Background

Trading recipes with friends and neighbors is a tradition that is ingrained in American culture. Whether it’s the perfect apple pie or a secret ingredient to give chili that extra zip, people are always seeking helpful hints and new ideas.

Allrecipes was launched in 1997 when a group of web developers and anthropology grad students at the University of Washington, who also happened to be frustrated foodies, created Cookierecipes.com as a way to share their favorite cookie recipes. Realizing the potential of the Internet to connect home cooks across the country, a new way to share recipes was born. As the site gained popularity it expanded to include recipes of every kind. Allrecipes is now one of the most heavily trafficked food sites on the Internet, averaging more than 6 million unique visitors each month and boasting the largest community of active, engaged home cooks in the world. Today, the site is a thriving world-wide, food-based community and dynamic social network where millions of passionate home cooks search and share food ideas through recipes, photos, reviews, live exchanges, and by posting their cook’s profiles.

State of Cooking in America
Fueled in part by the popularity of cable television’s hugely popular entertainment cooking shows, plus the growth of neighborhood farmers markets and artisanal food companies in the United States, interest in food and cooking has skyrocketed in recent years. Much of this growth focuses on serving an audience that skews to the gourmet sector, leaving both seasoned and inexperienced home cooks looking for an easy-to-use resource for trusted recipes, meal planning tools, cooking tips and food advice. This renewed interest in cooking has also come at a time when more families are depending on income from two working parents and food costs have risen dramatically. Time spent together as a family is tough to come by, placing a growing emphasis on the dinner hour, while budget-conscious recipes and cooking ideas are more valuable than ever.

In addition to living increasingly busy lifestyles, Americans have become more tech savvy and are accustom to the instant gratification the Internet provides. Many home cooks are strapped for time and are turning to the Internet to help them with planning weekly meals.

Allrecipes recognized that home cooks needed a partner in the struggle to create great tasting, satisfying meals and provides one of the largest collections of recipes on the Internet as well as practical advice, meal ideas and recipe photos from home cooks across the country. As a result, Allrecipes has become an indispensable resource for cooks and helped transform what for many was a stressful, complicated, time consuming task into a simple, enjoyable and rewarding process. A testament to the influence of Allrecipes, more than 77 percent of users visit the grocery store the same day they visit the site to plan meals, according to a 2008 Allrecipes visitor survey. The same survey also showed that 86 percent of Allrecipes home cooks visit the site weekly.

Fifty Million Cooks Can’t Be Wrong
With more than 40,000 recipes created, tested, rated and enjoyed by Allrecipes’ loyal audience of over 50 million home cooks, users get an authentic idea of what recipes real, time pressed people cook everyday. In fact, Allrecipes can be considered the largest, ongoing focus group in the world centering on the behaviors and food choices of home cooks. The fact that recipes are created and rated by their peers, not chefs, lets users know they can trust Allrecipes to find a fast, mid-week family dinner idea or a recipe to experiment with on the weekend when preparing dinner for friends. Recipe reviews posted by Allrecipes members confirm that the recipes are trusted and allow users to share their personal experiences, photographs, cooking tips, and recipe twists with other home cooks.

Allrecipes also provides users with tools and advice to teach everything from how to stock their pantry and what to substitute in a recipe that calls for cake flour to how to safely use marinades. Rather than seeking advice from a gourmet chef who speaks a a foodservice-oriented language, Allrecipes provides home cooks with resources they can use. Tools like a nutritional analysis, scaling and metric conversion, automated shopping lists, spice advice and an ingredient-based search engine help users to quickly find what they are looking for and make the most of their time.

The Allrecipes mission has always been to provide an easy, efficient, and reliable everyday resource for recipes and cooking advice that busy home cooks can trust. The site has established itself as a familiar and reliable friend for home cooks who are looking to save time and money and still prepare satisfying meals. Allrecipes has become a trusted part of everyday life for millions of home cooks around the world and every day millions more food enthusiasts will discover the rewarding benefits of belonging to the Allrecipes community.