Cooking Capsules est une startup de la Silicon Valley

Maybe you could describe your project in 4 steps, to describe shortly Cooking Capsules story : the idea, and why developing a mobile application on Android ?

The idea of Cooking Capsules is to take everything you need to cook a great meal, or meals for a day, and "encapsulate" it, providing an entertaining how-to cooking show for each dish, alongside a shopping list, and step-by-step directions for when you get home from the market.

We chose mobile because you can find a recipe and watch a two to three minute episode after work (while you wait for the bus, for example), stop by the market and check off your list, then go home and set your phone on the counter to guide you through each step you saw in the episodes. This could only work with mobile since it is used in multiple locations.

Android was chosen because it was the only open platform at the time. It hadn’t launched yet, but we knew that once it did, distribution wouldn’t be the hurdle it once was. As it turns out, Google and the OHA’s approach with Android was then copied throughout the US market, and the Apple App Store then rushed to open to indie developers before the Android Market did. Now the whole industry has opened considerably, finally removing the barriers to distribution once imposed by the carriers, enabling new innovation and smaller players like us to compete.

Can you tell us more how you made this project : development, resources, financing…

There were two of us working on it for phase 1 of the Android Challenge. I’m a developer in a sense, but not a programmer, so I designed the architecture and visual elements and found a programmer online (in India) with whom to enter the Android Challenge. After we won Phase 1, we split the $25,000 and went on to Phase 2, where we brought on four more guys who had entered their own apps but didn’t win. They were in China, The UK, The Netherlands, and Bulgaria. We worked around the clock, using Skype as our base for communication. Together we won $100,000 from Google for landing in the Top 20 for Phase 2.

I then took some of my portion of the prize money to hire the UK developer, Tom Gibara, who helped me take a pared back but more solid version to the Android Market, where we were invited by Google to be among the first apps available. We then further polished the interface and included a series of screens that allowed each recipe to contain a series of screens with deeper information. Our first release is called the Cooking Capsules Taster and it is comprised of four Indian dishes, and four that are French-inspired.

We are thus far self-financed and looking at the best method of continuing to move forward financially until we start making money from the sale of the collections, advertising, and sponsorship. Bootstrapping seems ideal, if possible, but we are assessing that now. The vision for Cooking Capsules is big, and the goal is to figure out if our objectives are best reached with some infusions of Angel or VC money (and expertise), and also how possible that is with the cutbacks in investments.

Because we have created a nice platform for food related companies to share their recipes, we are very keen on those types of partnerships. We are not merely interested in a recipe to sell a product, but instead, in an outlet for companies we are in alignment with to provide their recipes and cooking tips and engage people in learning how to cook, by sponsoring collections.

The nature of the Cooking Capsules concept spawns a multitude of ideas and possibilities. We allow time for those brainstorms and listen to user feedback, and then review one feature at a time, and if we decide to implement it, we make sure we do it right. I’d rather have fewer features and a quality experience for each recipe than tons of features, volumes of recipes, with an app built merely to show off a new technology or advertise at every opportunity. That said, we have created a considerable demand for more content, and are looking at ways to get more out within a realistic time frame. The best business model, as I see it now, is to work with like-minded partners to release small, high quality, well-integrated collections and look at doing a larger scale app in the future with the ability to organize and share the recipes along with a growing variety of other rich features we would add along the way. Deeply analyzing each interesting feature and the resulting interface implications (primarily maintaining the desirable simplicity of navigation) are considerations of quality, efficiency and economy for our business. As an interface designer, I’ve notice that too often overlooked is usability. Ours is a very simple to use application and that is much of the reason for it’s popularity. We want to continue to lead the way there. Usability is not just nice. It is very, very important. And the more simple, attractive and satisfying our applications are to users, the larger the user base, the more potential sponsors and investors will understand the enormous potential. The same holds true for our shows : simple, attractive and satisfying. Any more would be too much.

What about Android ?

I’ve covered Android a bit here, but if you want more of my thoughts on it (I have a lot), you may read the rather passionate blog post I wrote about it after being on the panel of the Techcrunch Mobile Web Wars Event : Android is a Volcano

What is the situation now, and your conclusion

The past year has granted us awards, media coverage and the ability to bring our unique app to the Market. As of today, Valentine’s Day, we have over 40,000 downloads (since the launch of the Market in late November), over 600 ratings (most asking for more recipes), and have received hundreds of e-mail messages. There is obviously a huge demand for what we are offering. So now comes the difficult work of matching supply with demand. We want to continue to produce high quality shows, because that is part of what people appreciate about Cooking Capsules. The challenge is that people are used to large quantities. They are accustomed to Google searches or giant recipe sites where they can find hundreds of thousands of recipes.

Our offering isn’t a search engine, it is an outlet for our integrated cooking media and that of our partners. And while we are considering some user generated elements, we don’t aspire to be the mobile "YouTube of recipes". We are creating something new. This comes with it new challenges, particularly in this economy. But I believe the time is right for quality of experience over quantity of selection.

In fact, since this is for a French audience, let me say that I believe this to fit into the French culture. My cousin lived in France most of his life and I recall years ago, walking in Paris in the morning with his girlfriend to the bread shop to buy bread, the meat shop to buy meat, and the produce market to buy produce. She wasn’t buying for the next week or month- she was buying for the day. While France may have changed since then, I like to think that ethic of quality and resourcefulness remains. Instead of buying masses of food because it’s on sale, the French buy what is fresh and seasonal. They may spend more on some fresh-off-the-boat fish, but they will buy just the amount they need and eat it, not freeze it for a month or let it go bad because they waited a week to make something with it. They buy quality food and use it to their best advantage.

Times are changing and I think Americans have much to learn from the French approach to food. Recipes are like a wardrobe. You don’t need closets full of clothes and shoes, just a small, high quality collection that you love and can creatively interchange and rely on. You might layer some of the same items a bit differently one day from the next and add a different scarf and shoes for a new look. Because they are all quality items, each look is unique and elegant. The same with cooking. We want to provide people with an arsenal of methods so they begin to feel comfortable experimenting. We want them to have convenience, but not at the expense of the true joy of cooking and sharing food. And what better time for it than now ? So that is a taste of our manifesto and our goals.

We may change the technicalities of our approach as we grow and learn what works and what doesn’t, but the main thing is that we stand by this basic ethos, and make partnerships with those with the same lifestyle approach. We are a small company with economic concerns like everyone else, but if we stay on task and continue to produce a quality experience, we believe a greater selection of content and any money needed to achieve that will come (and in the right way) and we will grow and thrive, all the while provided entertainment, fun and learning to those who seek to cook in a new way.