Yummly Expands Its Palate, Launches in the UK

We previously covered food and recipe app Yummly after meeting with company founder and CEO Dave Feller to discuss his super popular (and useful) app.  The app, which is accompanied by the Yummly website helps you find food and recipes based on your tastes (and even dietary restrictions), is currently reaching more than 15 million unique visitors in the U.S. alone — but that audience is about to get bigger.  Today, Yummly is announcing that it will now be available in the U.K, via the website and iOS app.

This new launch marks the first step in Yummly’s path to create a global index for food and ingredients.  But don’t think launching in the U.K. is as easy as putting the app in the U.K. app store, a lot more work went into this launch.  It’s interesting because you would think an app or website would be able to cater to a global audience right out of the gate, but that really isn’t the case when you’re dealing with recipes and food.  For starters, measurement metrics are different in the U.S. than they are in the U.K.  There’s also the language differences — foods can have different names in different parts of the world.  And of course there are cultural differences — including types of food eaten, choice of spices, and other preferences.

In order to address those things, Yummly created new browse categories, enhanced search filters, like ‘Mexican’ and ‘Sunday Lunch’, and tailored recipe sources, based on U.K. users affinity for spicy foods and group dinners on the weekends.  Additionally, Yummly users in the U.K. will have access to more than one million unique and U.K.-specific recipes that can be filtered by nutrition, season, and taste preference from the top food sites as well as niche blogs.

“Our goal is to be the essential kitchen tool for everyone, and that means truly understanding and speaking local food languages,” said Dave Feller, CEO of Yummly. “Our technology is becoming increasingly powerful as we expand our global presence and launching in U.K. is just the first step to creating a globally accessible platform for recipes, food and taste.”

Eat your heart out, U.K.