Jake Aronskind realized that every time he went on a social media platform, most of what he was seeing was food. After the pandemic began, this was amplified. Seeing people he never thought would be cooking and baking made him realize that there needed to be a more specialized platform for sharing food and recipes. This resulted in him and several cofounders developing the Pepper app.
Specialized social media platforms exist for activities like running (Strava), reading (Goodreads), and hiking (AllTrails). Still, most foodies share their culinary creations on the most popular platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, TikTok, and Pinterest. I recently spoke with Aronskind prior to Pepper’s Labor Day weekend launch, and he said, “It’s this idea of building a platform for a specific niche in your life. At the end of the day, Instagram, Facebook, all these other platforms, are simply not made for niche activities.”
Pepper most closely follows the format of Instagram. The app features a newsfeed where you can see the posts from friends and the people you follow. Instead of just adding a caption to go along with a photo, the poster can add a full recipe or list of ingredients. Similar to hashtags, there are options to categorize the recipe with different tags, including different diets (i.e., vegan, keto, gluten-free), difficulty level, and meal type.
From the app’s explore page, trending recipes can be seen from other users. If you find a recipe you want to make on the explore page or newsfeed, you can click the “save” button on the photo. The “saved” section on your personal profile hosts these posts, acting almost like a digital cookbook.
Social media is how many of us stayed connected with others during the pandemic, and in 2020, Americans spent an average of 82 minutes per day on social media platforms. Cooking and “stress-baking” became coping mechanisms for dealing with the negative psychological effects of the pandemic, so it’s no surprise that food posts have dominated social media platforms in the past year and a half.
Recon, a food social media app that launched at the beginning of summer (founded by former Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff), connects users through photos of homemade dishes and restaurant reviews. Whisk, a recipe-sharing app, partnered with TikTok at the beginning of the year to trial run the integration of its recipe saving and grocery list features. Foodqu!rk is an online platform where users find their food personality and connect with others through dietary preferences.
The Pepper app launched this week, and it is available for free in the iOS App Store. It will likely be available for Android phones by the end of the month.
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