Food 52 Cookbook

Food 52 is the first crowd sourced cookbook.  A beautiful cookbook with 140 recipes.  I have a big place in my heart for this book.  This book is an idea that was hatched a few years ago.  The concept was to crowd source recipes from engaged home chefs around the globe that would submit their recipe based on the recipe concept of the week.  Each recipe would be tested out by Amanda and Merrill and a winner would be announced at the end of the week.  Each weekly winner would end up in the cookbook that would be produced year end.  This idea was sold to Harper Studio and they gave Amanda and Merrill money to do these two cookbooks and with that money they built the platform to create the cookbook, Food 52. 

A wonderful story…and a wonderful cookbook.  Food 52 has certainly evolved with over half a million page views a month, an engaged audience, a daily aggregation of the top food stories of the day, curated products to buy and an iPhone app.  And there is absolutely more to come. 

For me, as an investor in this company, it has been really gratifying to work with a group of women (women President too) as they have taken an idea and turned it into a business and community.  I am sure that for both Amanda and Merrill that holding that cookbook in their hands was an incredible feeling of pure joy.