Kitchen Stories

Kitchen Stories is a digital, cross-media cooking platform founded in 2013 by Mengting Gao and Verena Hubertz in Berlin. The founders, who met as business students, combined their different perspectives on cooking—Gao as an experienced hobby chef and Hubertz as a novice—to create a user-friendly, video-based cooking app with the mission that "anyone can cook". Their goal was to address the gap in the market for a platform that paired emotional video content with easy-to-follow, step-by-step photo instructions.

The company launched its iOS app in 2014, followed by an Android version in 2015, and quickly gained international traction, topping the food category in over 150 countries. A significant milestone occurred in 2017 when BSH Hausgeräte, a subsidiary of the Bosch Group, acquired a 65% majority stake, which later became full ownership in 2023. This partnership aimed to integrate Kitchen Stories into BSH's Home Connect ecosystem, allowing users to send recipe instructions, like temperature settings, directly to connected home appliances. Co-founder Verena Hubertz eventually left the company's operations to pursue a career in politics, with Alexander Bauer joining as COO in 2020.

The platform operates on a multi-faceted business model. The core app, which features thousands of recipes, HD video tutorials, and articles, is free to users. Revenue is generated through several streams. A primary channel is content marketing and native advertising, where Kitchen Stories partners with over 300 brands to create sponsored recipes and branded content, integrating products authentically into their high-quality food content. The company also introduced a premium subscription model, "Kitchen Stories Plus," which offers advanced features like a personalized recipe feed, an ingredient-based search, and the ability to save recipes from other websites, creating a recurring revenue source to support the platform. Additionally, the brand has expanded into e-commerce with an online shop selling its own line of organic spice mixes and a published cookbook titled "Anyone can cook".

Keywords: digital cooking platform, recipe app, video tutorials, content marketing, FoodTech, home cooking, native advertising, step-by-step recipes, smart kitchen, Home Connect, Mengting Gao, Verena Hubertz, BSH Hausgeräte, meal planning, food content, community recipes, cooking inspiration, Berlin startup, subscription service, kitchen advertising