eMeals Acquires RecipeBox App
Digital meal-planning and grocery shopping platform eMeals acquired RecipeBox, an app enabling consumers to save and organize online and offline recipes in a central location for easy access. eMeals will maintain RecipeBox as a separate brand with extensive enhancements designed to ramp up growth while using the app as a new promotional channel for retailers and food and beverage companies.
Three related services will now operate as part of the eMeals platform: eMeals, the subscription-based digital meal-planning service offering 15 food styles and seamless online shoppability; RecipeBox, a free app with more than 200,000 users, a 4.8 rating and a searchable database of more than 2 million user-imported recipes from across the web; and eMeals Grocery Connect, a software development kit allowing other apps and websites to add integrated online grocery shopping functionality.
The addition of RecipeBox to the eMeals portfolio will permit the company to grow its footprint, further its goal of helping home cooks get dinner prepared quickly and with greater variety, and offer new brand exposure opportunities for its CPG partners.
“Recipe collection on the web is fragmented, so consumers have no way to digitally store all the recipes they find in one place,” noted Forrest Collier, CEO of Birmingham, Ala.-based eMeals. “RecipeBox solves that problem, allowing users to centrally save recipes from across the web along with their personal family recipes, those they’ve discovered in cookbooks and magazines, and the new meal inspiration they find within the huge RecipeBox database. It’s going to change the way people search, store and shop all of their favorite recipes.”
Among the first RecipeBox enhancements since the eMeals acquisition are the recent launch of an Android version and the new ability to order groceries for pickup or delivery directly through the app from companies such as Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, Albertsons and Instacart. Other planned RecipeBox upgrades include enhanced recipe discovery, browser extensions providing a new way to clip recipes from anywhere on the web, and an updated website offering synced access to users’ personal recipes boxes from both mobile and desktop devices.
“The eMeals team shares our vision of helping home cooks streamline the process of feeding their families,” said Andrew Kozlik, a software consultant who launched Orlando, Fla.-based RecipeBox four years ago with app developer Tom Marks. “By combining our recipe aggregation abilities with the capabilities of the eMeals team and platform, we are going to deliver a much stronger product that we believe will become an essential tool for anyone who spends time in the kitchen.”
Kozlik and Marks have joined the eMeals team as head of product and head of development, respectively, for the RecipeBox app.
“Our goal is to be the No. 1 place for home cooks to store all of their favorite recipes,” added Marks. “We were well on our way before this acquisition and joining forces with eMeals is allowing us to fast-track and expand our product road map by taking advantage of their technology and experience to take our app to the next level.”
