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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Food Network Kitchen

SideChef Launches Paid App With SideChef Premium

SideChef has gone premium.

The recipe app and smart kitchen platform startup announced last week they were launching a new premium subscription tier to go along with the company’s free app.

The new subscription offering is $49.99/year or $4.99/month. SideChef Premium includes 750 enhanced recipes that feature instructional guidance from the partner chefs, cooking techniques and tips, and voice-guided cooking.

The voice guidance appears to be one of the primary differentiators with the free SideChef app. While SideChef has been working to integrate with voice assistants like Alexa and Bixby for some time, much of the focus of these efforts have been centered around their smart kitchen integrations with bigger appliance brands.

In some ways, SideChef Premium is reminiscent of the Food Network Kitchen app, which made a big splash back when it launched last fall. At the time, the Food Network Kitchen app was positioned as something of a Peloton for the kitchen, but since launch it appears the company has dialed back the ambitions a bit on the live cooking classes and today primarily feature lots of archived video recipes and cooking how-to’s with Food Network cooking personalities.

For SideChef’s part, the company has assembled a group of partner chefs such as Chris Cosentino (a Bravo Top Chef Masters winner), Manon Lagrève (Great British Bake Off) and Logan Guleff, the wunderkid winner of the 2014 MasterChef Jr.

The company had previously worked with popular budget-focused chef Beth Moncel in creating a dedicated paid-app and, as of today, the app is still ranked in the top 10 for paid food and drink apps. Moncel is also one of the 11 launch chefs with the SideChef Premium app.

SideChef’s success at getting paid subscribers will likely depend heavily on prospective consumers wanting access to the more immersive content from collective of chefs the company has put together for the app. The success of the Budget Bytes app with Moncel could be an indication of how SideChef Premium could perform, especially if it gets its partner chefs to evangelize the app.

Today SideChef Premium is available through an app, but the company has indicated that this fall subscribers will be able to access through a browser on any computer at Sidechef.com.

The Food Tech Show: Why is Amazon Giving Away Food Network Kitchen Access?

The Spoon editor team got together this week to talk about some of the top food tech stories, including Gavin Newsom’s move to start working with restaurants to deliver food to seniors and asking why Amazon’s decided to give away the Food Network Kitchen service for free in coming months.

Other stories discuss include Cheetah’s funding round and the recent spate of chickpea protein investments.

As always, you can listen to the Food Tech Show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download it direct to your device or just click play below to listen to it right now.

If you’d like to watch the video of our podcast recording, you can check it out on Crowdcast.

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Amazon to Make Food Network Kitchen’s Video Cooking Classes Free on Fire Devices

If you’ve been stuck in a quarantine meal rut and want to learn how to cook something fresh and exciting, Amazon has some good news for you. Variety reports Amazon announced today that it is giving Food Network Kitchen to all Fire TV and Fire Tablet users in the U.S..

Launched last fall, Food Network Kitchen features live and on-demand cooking classes from its roster of celebrity chefs including Bobby Flay, Rachel Ray and Guy Fieri. A subscription to the service normally runs $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year.

If you’re among the more than 40 million active Fire TV or Tablet users however, Amazon is footing that bill — for a year, anyway. The e-commerce behemoth is paying Discovery, which owns Food Network, for all the subscriptions.

Food Network Kitchen has more than 2,300 on-demand cooking classes, but had to halt production of its live offerings because of the COVID-19 outbreak. Variety writes that the live shows will return at the beginning of May, though they will be shot in the home kitchens of its celebrity chefs, rather than in a studio.

In addition to cooking content, Food Network Kitchen also has shoppable recipes for an e-commerce component and will be launching a meal planning feature soon. Ingredients for meals can be purchased directly through the app via Amazon Fresh, Peapod or Instacart. Though given how sheltering in place has caused a national surge in grocery e-commerce (Amazon now waitlists new Fresh customers and Instacart is adding another 250,000 of its shoppers to keep up with demand), this feature may not be useful to consumers until things settle out.

One curious bit about today’s news is that reports only mention that the deal covers Fire TV and Fire Tablet users. Food Network Kitchen is also available on Amazon’s Alexa devices that feature a screen, like the Echo Show. Are those devices not included? We reached out to Discover to find out more. UPDATE: A Discovery rep told us that the offer will be extended to Echo Show customers later this year.

A Food Network exec told Variety that its app has been downloaded more than 5 million times since launch, and that both viewtime and subscriptions are up 50 percent each during this coronavirus lockdown. Free access to Food Network’s celebrity chefs combined with Amazon’s massive promotional capabilities should be a huge shot in the arm for the service.

If Discovery wanted to make even more of an impact, it would fast track a show about making bread.

Food Network Kitchen Isn’t the Peloton for Cooking, It’s Much Much Bigger Than That

The Food Network today announced the launch of its Food Network Kitchen video streaming service, which the network described as the “Peloton for Food.” I understand why they chose the Peloton analogy since it’s a combination of live and on-demand video classes delivered directly to your home.

But after speaking with Peter Faricy, CEO Global Direct-to-Consumer and Tyler Whitworth, SVP and GM Global Directo-to-Consumer at Food Network parent company Discovery today at an Amazon event, the Peloton comparison seems woefully insufficient. Food Network Kitchen isn’t just about video classes, it’s also about shoppable recipes, guided cooking and potentially creating an entirely new type of Food Network star.

If you missed this morning’s announcement, here’s the gist. Food Network Kitchen will offer 25 weekly live interactive cooking classes starring Food Network chefs, as well as more than 800 cooking classes and 3,000 instructional videos on-demand. Kitchen will launch at the end of next month in select cities for $7 a month via Amazon Echo devices with a screen as well as iOS and Android.

But you immediately begin to see the bigger ambitions at play here. Unlike a Peloton spin class, where you only need to bring yourself, to make a meal, you need ingredients and utensils, which are required before the class begins. As such, with Food Network Kitchen when you see a class you want to take, you’ll also be able to purchase all the food in a shoppable recipe and eventually the equipment you’ll need in order to follow along. And of course, with Amazon being a Food Network partner, getting those to you next-day won’t be a problem.

Another benefit of partnering with Amazon is the ability to tie in directly with Alexa, which has been integrated into a number of kitchen appliances. So in addition to an instructor telling you what to do, there is also an opportunity for the class to control your devices. When Bobby Flay says it’s time to pre-heat the oven, you can just have Alexa do it while you finish chopping onions (or whatever). When asked if this was on the product roadmap, Faricy told me with a big smile “It’s not available for launch. We love our partnership with Amazon.” So that’s definitely happening.

As such, this is a shot across the bow to startups like Innit and SideChef, which are also built around combining easy to follow video cooking instruction and guided cooking. Actually, it’s more like a direct blast as Food Network is able to leverage its huge brand, vast archive of content, and roster of celebrity chefs. Will this partnership with Amazon push out those existing startups?

Which brings me to the last way I think Food Network Kitchen is actually a much bigger deal than Peloton. With Kitchen, The Food Network migrates its dominance from the living room into the kitchen. Through its celebrities, it elevates instructional videos into must-see TV (Bobby Flay will show you how to cook ribs live!). In addition, just like Peloton has its own set of spin instructors stars, Food Network can create an entirely new generation of cooking show stars around specific demographics or cuisine. These shows will be cheaper to make and there will be much more data about what foods, instructors, and styles people like to make even more targeted programming.

Now, the question remains whether or not people will pay $7 a month (on top of all their other video subscriptions to Hulu, Netflix, etc.) for Food Network Kitchen. But given the ecosystem that Food Network is building around it, there’s also a good chance that people won’t classify this subscription as “TV” and more like a cooking add-on to bring some more excitement to their meals.

Regardless, Food Network has definitely not been spinning its wheels, and its Kitchen could be a game changer in the kitchen.