Thirdly, Cookpad satisfies not only a functional need, but also a deeply social one. Tapping into human emotion – fulfilling the desire for self-validation and achivement (Far from being the type of highly manicured photos you see on Instagram, but this amateur feel is parts of its appeal!) The instructions feel personal and less intimidating than a cook book, and thus makes the platform easily accessible to a large audience. The photos that are uploaded are amateur, but that is indeed part of its appeal. While they now offer recipes by famous cooking personalities, it is meant to be a no-frills recipe platform that offers very personal tips and tricks to help people make delicious meals and enjoy themselves in the process. Secondly, Cookpad is a platform by normal people, for normal people. Roughly 65% of their revenue now comes from subscriptions, 25% from advertising and 10% from other services. With a smart marketing message, “ Unlimited access for the price of a cup of coffee”, they have grown the number of paid subscribers to 2 million (as of Dec 2019). ‘Premium members’ pay a mere 280 yen ($2.50 USD) per month to access a host of value-added services such as rankings of the most popular recipes, advanced search functions, and storage of recipes on their app.

There are 11,000 recipes just to make French toast!Ĭookpad now boasts about a total of 52 million monthly users. Cookpad users can now access up to 3.24 million recipes. It is free for cooking aficionados to post their recipes, which helped Cookpad to quickly build the country’s largest repository of recipes, and in turn build a huge user base of people looking for them. Pathways to a Just Digital Future Watch this tech inequality series featuring scholars, practitioners, & activistsĥ0+ million monthly users and 3 million recipes through a freemium modelįirstly, Cookpad has successfully leveraged cross-sided network effects to amass a huge following of devoted users.

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