How to Build a Cooking or Recipe app?

In today’s article we’re going to share with you our insights on how to make own recipe app MVP and then enhance it with a bunch of cool features. Read on, it’s going to be yummy!

📱 Basic Features: a Must-Have for Your MVP

When surfing the Web, you could find articles about all different types and modes of recipe apps, as well as other really sophisticated stuff. Frankly speaking, they don’t help a lot when it comes to building a recipe app.

On the contrary, they just leave readers even more confused. We at Stormotion decided to choose a more straightforward way and supply you with everything you need to create a recipe app: features, tech tips & estimations.

In fact, our first stop today is the list of essential features; just like an apple pie can’t be made without apples, your cooking application can’t be developed without these features. Let’s discuss them!

List of Recipes and Ingredients: Where to Get One?

Since you’re building a recipe app, these sacred pieces of information on how to turn separate ingredients into something tasty should mean the world to you. Without them, your application doesn’t make sense.

Of course, you’re free to add any other categories that, in your opinion, will improve the UX.

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So, this was our review of the top features that are needed to create a recipe app. Let’s briefly summarize them:

1. A list of ingredients and recipes.
2. Step-by-step cooking instructions.
3. A block of personalization features ( recipes, the option to add comments, and bookmarks).
4. Searching and filtering features.

However, what technologies do you need to implement these features? Let’s find out!

🛠️ Tech Tips: How to Make a Recipe App From the Development Perspective

As usual, our Stormotion team prepared a list of helpful technologies that you may use during cooking app development:

• Yummly, Spoonacular Recipes, BigOven, Edamam Recipe Search, Pearson, Food2Fork APIs — to integrate and manage lists of ingredients.
• Spoonacular Food Products, Spoonacular Ingredient and Nutrition, Edamam Nutrition Analysis, Foodpairing — to integrate and manage the list of ingredients.
• Qloo API — to enrich the search feature with autosuggestion.
• Facebook SDK — to implement a quick Facebook sign-in option.
• Google Places API — to get the list of nearby grocery stores and supermarkets.
• Barcode API Overview — to scan ingredients' barcodes.
• Firebase SDK or Apple Push Notifications Service — to integrate push notifications into your app.

Finally, let’s find out what the average cost to create a recipe app is.

Note: we took an average rate of $45/hour but it depends on many different factors so don't think of it as the final price.

Thus, it will take about 8-10 weeks to create such an app. The costs to build it start from $19,800.

However, we at Stormotion came up with another 7 cool ideas on how to make the recipe app even cooler during the post-MVP stage.

👌 Top 7 Advanced Ideas to Improve Your Cooking App

# 1: The Discovery Screen

In many cooking apps this feature is also known as “home screen”. However, it doesn’t really matter what you call it. Its main goal is to keep people engaged with your app as much as possible. How does it work?

On this screen, the most relevant recipes for a specific user are usually shown. For example:

• If the app is opened in the morning, you can suggest a few breakfast ideas.
• Or you can share special holiday recipes during the week before the holiday itself.
• It’s also a good idea to post a “recipe of the day” in different categories (like dessert, healthy, kid-friendly, and so on).

💡 Takeaways

These were Stormotion’s insights on how to make a recipe app. We hope this article was interesting and useful. Let’s briefly remember the key points.

The must-have features for your application include:

1. A list of recipes and ingredients (integrated or manually compiled).
2. Step-by-step cooking instructions.
3. Searching & Filtering features.
4. Bookmarks, comments and a private cookbook.

Gradually, you can improve your app with the following features:

1. A discovery screen.
2. Video guides.
3. A built-in shopping list.
4. A grocery store locator with a price-comparing feature.
5. An advanced ingredient info screen.
6. A hands-free mode.
7. A barcode scanner.

Have a great idea for a cooking app? Challenge us and we’ll help you to bring it to the market.