ckbk

ckbk is a London-based digital subscription service that licenses complete cookbooks from publishers, agents and authors and makes them available online and through a mobile app. Rather than offering extracts, subscribers get cover-to-cover access to every title in the collection, which the company describes as curated on the basis of recommendations from hundreds of chefs and food writers. The catalogue spans contemporary bestsellers, out-of-print classics and culinary-school textbooks, including titles from Le Cordon Bleu, the French Culinary Institute and the Culinary Institute of America, and covers over 100 national and regional cuisines.

The product layer adds search and discovery features to print content: filters by cuisine, dietary requirement, dish type and difficulty; automatic conversion between US and metric measurements; saved "recipe playlists" that can be shared; private notes; and community ratings, reviews and questions. ckbk also integrates with the connected kitchen and commerce ecosystem, sending cooking times and temperatures to smart ovens via Home Connect and supporting same-day ingredient delivery through Amazon Fresh and Instacart.

Alongside the consumer service, ckbk positions itself as a data channel for publishers, providing metrics and behavioural analytics on how cookbook recipes are actually used in the kitchen, and as a content supplier for IoT-enabled appliance brands. It also sells gift subscriptions and corporate offerings including client gifts, staff perks and bundled membership vouchers aimed at consumer electronics, kitchenware, appliance and specialist food companies.

Founding story

Co-founder Matt Cockerill trained as a scientist, studying Natural Sciences at Clare College, Cambridge and conducting PhD research on the cell cycle in Tim Hunt's laboratory. He began his digital publishing career at BioMedNet, sold to Elsevier in 1997, and in 1999 co-founded open-access publisher BioMed Central with Vitek Tracz; BioMed Central was acquired by Springer Science+Business Media in 2008 and he ran it as an independent unit within Springer from 2008 to 2013, serving on Springer's management board. He has described ckbk as applying a similar digital transition to cookbooks. Co-founder Nadia Arumugam is a cookbook author, food writer and editor and trained chef, born in Malaysia, raised in London and based in New York, and leads editorial and creative work.

Business model

Consumer subscription (freemium). A free tier allows access to a limited number of recipes per month, while Premium Membership unlocks the complete collection. ckbk also licenses content for connected appliances and sells corporate gift, staff-perk and bundled voucher packages; publishing partners receive a digital revenue stream plus usage analytics.

Recurring membership fees, quoted at $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year, with gift subscriptions at $24.99 for six months and $39.99 for twelve months; UK pricing has been listed at £8.99 per month reduced to £5.99. At the 2019 launch Premium Membership was priced at $8.99/£8.99 per month. Additional revenue comes from corporate bundles and appliance/brand partnerships.

Traction

The service launched out of beta in September 2019 with more than 350 cookbooks and over 80,000 recipes and dozens of publisher partners. The company site now cites more than 160,000 recipes and over 900 cookbooks, with join pages referencing a collection of over 1,000 cookbooks and more than 100 licensing partners including authors, agents and publishers.

Latest developments

The current site advertises a collection of more than 900 cookbooks and over 160,000 recipes with new titles added monthly, monthly membership at $4.99, gift and corporate subscription options, and integrations for same-day ingredient delivery via Amazon Fresh and Instacart and smart-oven control via Home Connect.