Happy birthday to us! Kitchen Stories is 10 years old. On the occasion of our birthday, we look back on 10 successful years in which things went up and down and yet passion for our mission was always our biggest driver.
Our mission: We believe that anyone can cook! We want to inspire, empower and inspire and fill the world's kitchens with self-confident amateur chefs. We want to encourage people to enjoy cooking for themselves and others every day.
Our claim: With this claim, we have managed to position ourselves as a leading cooking platform on the German and international market over the last ten years. At the same time, we have always provided brands that are looking for new target groups and native campaigns with our reach and thus unique access to our food enthusiast community and help them bring their brand into the kitchens of millions of amateur chefs.
From review to outlook: There is no better time to look back on recent years and celebrate our milestones. But a fruitful past is never a guarantee of future success. In this way, we also want to use the opportunity to pause and reflect on how things will continue for the brand and the company Kitchen Stories. Are we still on the right track? Do our goals reflect who and where we want to be in 10 years? The world is constantly changing and the future problems and wishes of our users may not be the same as before. How can we prepare ourselves to continue to meet the needs of our target group in the future? How do we build a future-proof brand?
Here are our methods for the next 10—100 years:
Our mission has always been to simplify the everyday life of our target group. Inspiring, empowering and inspiring aspiring and ambitious cooking enthusiasts in their everyday cooking so that they can always cook with confidence, simplicity and joy — that is the idea on which our brand is based — and continues to drive us forward. We want to bring joy and good food into the lives of millions of people and become an indispensable assistant in the lives of our users.
We want to make sure that over the years, as we continue to evolve, we keep looking back on our core values and ensure that our mission remains the cornerstone for all of our future projects and products.
The topic of cooking has once again gained in importance. What started with the trend of pictures of your own food on Instagram has become an absolute recipe for success on social media in recent years. Countless talented (or at least passionate) creators share their experiences, their own recipes and the best cooking tips and tricks on social media.
Since we all had to sit at home in lockdown for months at the latest, we have given ourselves more time to cook again and even as Corona has slowly but surely disappeared from our lives again, the trend of homemade dinners has remained obvious. We are convinced that “sharing is caring” and that is why we work time and again with different creators and influential voices from the cooking sector. These collaborations enable us to reach even more people and increase the reach of our cooking platform. After previous very successful collaborations with creators such as Jamie Oliver, Max LaManna and Janina Uhse, but also with organizations such as the UN or Über den Tellerrand, we are looking forward to expanding them even further in the next few years.
Over the years, we've managed to create a platform that inspires millions of monthly users. We share our platform and reach with brands from a wide range of industries and help them bring their products to the kitchens of numerous amateur chefs. We have specialized in native advertising; to date, more than 300 brands have been impressed by the particular advertising effectiveness and sales performance of the Kitchen Stories platform.
Numerous successful collaborations in the past have shown us that working with brands means not only them, but also continuous development and continuous learning for us. Our goal is to become the largest and most successful marketing platform for native advertising in the cooking industry over the next few years.
We not only share our platform and reach, but also our experience and expertise. We ourselves can learn time and again from numerous role models in the cooking industry and marketing world and regard inspiration “from outside” as one of our most important pillars. For this reason, it is important for us to share our knowledge as well. In the past, we used various platforms, appeared on podcasts and radio stations, gave interviews, used our own blog and took part in numerous events, such as OMR, where we were able to talk about user retaining in front of 7000 trade fair visitors. Always with the aim of helping other brands find their own path. We want to expand this even further over the next few years and work to share our learnings, successes, but also failures and mistakes with you.
We want to spark a passion for cooking. At Kitchen Stories, we can offer talents who are passionate about food and cooking themselves a workplace where they can express themselves and find like-minded people. With us, they can give their passion a place. We firmly believe that anyone can move mountains when he or she works on something that inspires him or her.
Seeing how much our team enjoys working at Kitchen Stories fulfills us every day and we want to use the next few years to continue creating an appreciative and collaborative working environment that promotes individual development and in which transparency and trust within the company play a central role.
In order to persist, our world must constantly change; standing still was never an option. This development is also having an impact on all areas of our industry and brands must actively work to develop with the spirit of the times in order to remain relevant.
Thanks to digitalization, our industry has also been changing for years and is continuing to develop at a high speed. Ten years ago, we were innovative and at the forefront with our app and video-based recipe content, today we have evolved — because we had to — and have grown into a complex cooking platform with online and offline products.
Digital expansion:
From the initial videos, which are still an essential part of our platform, over 25 million unique users on social media, to digital use cases with BSH (such as Home Connect) and, since this year, our own online shop and our first own food product. We are constantly working on how our brand can expand and develop.
Analog expansion:
Last year, we proudly launched our first own products. The start of a project for which we still have big plans. For example, our second cookbook will also be published this fall. But it shouldn't end there, numerous more projects of our own will make it to our shop in the next decade, so stay tuned.
Our goal is not to let new developments pass us by and to always be at the forefront. To do this, we want to continue to conquer new platforms, as we have already done successfully in recent years with Instagram, Pinterest and Co. We also see great potential in the area of AI and digitization in the culinary journey, and we are already working on expanding this.
In the age of social media, trends arise just as quickly as they disappear again. In the next decade, it will be more important than ever to stay up to date, follow trends and set new ones yourself.
The key here is to be open to changes in people's needs and wishes, to let your own content be influenced and thus help shape trends.
By being attentive and always looking for ways to optimize our content, we get to know our target group again and again and can also develop our culinary skills. To do this, we also look beyond Germany's borders at trends from other countries, such as the USA, and always keep a close eye on our own data. We always follow the 80/20 principle, meaning that 80% rely on the data and 20% listen to our gut feeling and personal expertise.
In this way, we always manage to find exactly what our community wants. In recent years, for example, there has been an increasing demand for meatless dishes.
While researching this article, we realized one thing: We had 10 successful years in which so much has happened and we are grateful for everyone who has accompanied us on our journey so far! We also look forward to continuing to grow, to continue to inspire and to continue to enjoy our work so much, always having people and brands around us who want to accompany us on our journey and mission.
Are you inspired by our plans and want to be part of our next 10 years?
Whether through digital brand campaigns, content sponsorship, product placement or as an exclusive partner for specific categories, we will find the perfect place for you and your brand in our future.
We are pleased to be able to advise you free of charge in a non-binding meeting: Make an appointment.
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