The world’s largest maker of home appliances like fridges, ovens — and yes, washing machines — just acquired recipe search engine, Yummly.
With 20m users, Yummly also lets you create shopping lists, and even order food and cooking equipment for delivery in select areas.
On the surface, they couldn’t be more opposite
Whirlpool is a publicly-traded, 100+ year-old, non-tech business, with annual revenue of over $20B.
Yummly is an 8-year-old internet company, last valued at about $100m (which is pretty darn good for a recipe search engine).
That said, Whirlpool’s been making moves to stay relevant among tech-savvy home chefs with its “connected kitchen,” which is developing futuristic features like sensors that can detect food on your counter and tell you how to cook it.
Logically, Yummly could fit in with this new initiative by suggesting recipes for food in your fridge and alternatively act as a sales channel for Whirlpool’s cookware.
But what’s in it for Yummly?
Well, for one, Pinterest, has about 8x more monthly active users, many of which use it primarily for recipe recommendations.
They’ve also been expanding their technology, with their new visual search engine, Lens. Whirlpool’s deep pockets could give Yummly a little more freedom to upgrade their services as well.