The Guardian says its new recipes app Feast has achieved more than 100,000 downloads since it soft-launched in April.
The publisher is hoping readers will pay £2.99 per month to access its archive of 30,000 recipes. The app is available as a stand-alone product and is being offered as a free extra to readers paying for certain subscription packages.
The Guardian has shifted from describing those who voluntarily pay toward it from “members” to “supporters”, and Liz Wynn was recruited to the role of “chief supporter officer” last year. She told Press Gazette “we know that there’s a real following” for The Guardian’s food output.
“We take loads of inspiration from the readers who tell us: ‘I’ve got seven ring binders full of all my favourite recipes’.”
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The Guardian has been publishing recipes since at least October 1913 when it published instructions for a savoury nut pie. (Its first-ever front page in 1821 also carried an advert for Vegetable Cookery, the first ever vegetarian cookbook.)
Wynn said that in the time since, The Guardian and Observer had developed “this incredible archive of 30,000 tried and tested, high-quality recipes”. The company is still in the process of uploading these to the app, using generative AI and human editors to parse the writing into an app-ready form.
Guardian Feast ‘allows us to access new audiences’
Wynn said the app plays “two important roles for us”.
“One is giving more to our high-value supporters — we’ve gifted Feast to our subscribers on the classic subscription packages. And we have also made it available with an extended free trial to other supporters as well…
“We know that the more people read, the more they engage, the happier they are, and the better their retention is.”
Although The Guardian website is free, users of The Guardian’s main news app are subject to a 20-article-a-month cap unless they’re on a £12 monthly digital subscription. Asked whether these subscribers get free access to Feast, a Guardian spokesperson said “new subscribers to the Guardian get a 14-day free trial of the Feast app, while those who currently are Guardian supporters either get an extended free trial or free access based on their package”.
The second role of Feast, Wynn said, was that it “allows us to access new audiences… people who might not otherwise have wanted to buy into our supporter proposition or our existing subscriptions.
“They’re more engaged by food content specifically — it’s a lower-cost way of accessing that audience.”
Feast is being marketed to Guardian readers, but Wynn said “we are also reaching newer audiences and outside the Guardian ecosystem”.
The publisher hopes that its big-name celebrity chef recipes — and features like a hands-free “cook mode” that can progress through recipes at the tap of a knuckle and the ability to search for recipes based on the ingredients you have on hand — will help usher in regular consumers who are simply looking for a good cooking app.
Is Feast part of a New York Times-style bundle, or just a new product?
The launch of Guardian Feast comes two years after The New York Times began pursuing its “bundle” strategy, which also aims to improve audience acquisition and retention by adding products besides news — namely games, product reviews, sports and, most aptly, recipes.
“There’s some obvious similarities between The Guardian and The New York Times but there’s some important differences as well,” Wynn said.
“The similarities, I think, are pretty self evident — prominent news publications, shared passion for our readers and developing great experiences for them.”
But she said: “We are more global — 70% of our readers are outside of the UK.” (Wynn noted that Feast, designed for this global audience, not only boasts a cups-to-grams measurement converter but would also recommend recipes depending on whether it was summer or winter in the user’s hemisphere.)
But The Guardian, unlike The New York Times, does not have a paywall around its website content, and most significantly for the strategy comparison, the London-based publisher is not marketing a single subscription that unlocks access to multiple products.
Wynn did still see Feast as a form of bundling, however. She said bundling “works really effectively, like with Feast, where you have a distinctive proposition — something that really is interesting.
“Yes, it appeals to your broader audience, it’s relevant to them, so you want to use it to drive engagement in the core audience, but it’s got deep interest for other audiences.
“That’s a great strategy to follow, and that’s why we created Feast as a standalone app so we could address both of those opportunities.
“The New York Times have looked at their landscape, I’m sure, and come to the same conclusion about those different aspects to their bundle.
“I think The Guardian perspective on this is always to start with our readers and think about what they need, and we will adapt our offering to meet that.”
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