Sharing a meal is a universal social experience and as the co-founder of Foodily puts it: "There couldn't be a more frequently asked question than 'What do you want to eat today?'".
Foodily aims to bring this social experience online by not only providing a recipe search engine but also connecting its users via Facebook connect.
Foodily is a startup from California, co-founded by two former Yahoo employees, Andrea Cutright and Hillary Mickell who raised $5 million funded by Index Ventures and claim that "Foodily is the most advanced recipe search engine in the world, offering most delightful and intuitive way to find and share recipes."
Foodily is an eye-appealing website that pulls recipes not only from small food blogs but also well established commercial sites like AllRecipes.com, Epicurious or BBC Good Food. Although it offers several interesting features, but one basic feature that brings an extra edge (apart from Facebook Connect) is the ability to eliminate certain ingredient(s) while searching for a recipe which can turn out to be very handy for vegetarians, vegans or those with certain food allergies.
Features
- When you search for a recipe on this search engine, it produces results with an image and ingredients displayed like a magazine.
- And here is where the social networking comes in, once you connect with Facebook it will allow you to "Like" a particular recipe that is shared on your Facebook profile; if your friends are on Facebook and Foodily, you will be able to see the recipes they like in your Facebook feed.
- You can also create a Facebook event inviting your friends to join you for a meal. You can share the menu allowing your friends to see what you are cooking. Your friends can comment, give feedback, suggestions or add additional dishes that they can bring.
- You can create and save menus within the website.
- You can save your favorite recipes and ingredients within the website.
- When Foodily presents recipe results, it displays the list of entire ingredients and clicking on 'details' link will show a sneak peak of preparation along with the original link for the recipe. It will also display reviews and comments for the recipe within the same page.
According to Cutright a survey conducted by AllRecipes.com in 2010 highlights that fact that 100% of AllRecipes users rely on user ratings while 80% of them choose recipes recommended by their friends. "It's a level of knowledge and context and comprehension that helps people make a real decision. And on top of that, it helps them to have a conversation. If you are coming to my Super Bowl party and I see that you like chilli, I am going to make that for you." says Andrea Cutright. Furthermore, Foodily does not plan to include advertisements any time soon, rather they plan to make money by including coupons in collaboration with food distributors in their search results. "The money isn't in ads, it's in food." says the co-founder, who shares an interesting statistic that "foods purchased using online coupons added up to $56 billion in the U.S. in 2009.
According to Foodily blog:
"The reality is, very few of us want to cook online. We want our friends and family in the kitchen with us to make cooking more enjoyable and memorable. Face it, architects the world over have designed our homes around this idea - putting the kitchen at the center of the house.
Foodily is the first to bring this social experience to online recipes. It's the one place where you can see what your friends like in every search. This is the way we really make decision about what we eat - with the advice and ideas of those in our social network. Foodily even helps you plan meals with friends."
There is no doubt that there are many other food related websites that encourages interaction between users and help create online communities for food lovers, but what might take Foodily a step further is the fact that rather than participating in a new community of unknown people, it allows you to interact with people you know...within your network.
Have a look at this latest social recipe search engine and let us know if you think that they will be able to reach their goal of being "Google" for food & recipes and "Facebook" for social networking for foodies.
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