Our Story

Kitchen Stories founders Mengting and Verena first met as business students. And while they discovered a shared passion for great food, they approached cooking from completely different angles. One, an experienced hobby chef, the other, a cooking novice, they took inspiration from their differing food experiences and moved to Berlin with an idea. From there, they brought the world of cooking to a new platform and generated the first video-based, user-friendly, and design-oriented cooking app.

At the beginning of 2014, Mengting and Verena launched Kitchen Stories in Apple’s App Store. The emotional videos and high-quality step-by-step photos struck a chord with their growing user base, who soon realized that the app’s slogan, “anyone can cook,” isn’t just rhetoric. Apple recognized the app for its high-end design, delicious content, and its usability, and Kitchen Stories soon topped its food category in over 150 countries.

Their success story continued with prestigious awards, such as the Apple App Store’s Best of 2015 and the Google Play Design Award 2016, and a growing team in a new office in Berlin’s vibrant center. Today, Kitchen Stories is available on a number of supported platforms. It offers a rich variety of beautiful recipes, practical kitchen tips, and informative food articles. Kitchen Stories enables food lovers all over the world to connect. It is a brand for everyone and for everyday life.

The Founders

As a seasoned hobby chef, Mengting found inspiration for Kitchen Stories from her enjoyment of fast-paced cooking videos. Video-based recipes seemed to be the perfect entry point into a modern, digital cooking experience. Yet, Mengting felt that usability was lacking when it came to combining emotional video content with easy-to-follow instructions. Moreover, it was difficult to find superior recipes on a good platform that fostered the exchange of ideas with other foodies around the globe.

Verena’s motivation to found Kitchen Stories came from a love for food and an appetite to try out new recipes. But, as a cooking novice, she found that most available recipes were too complicated to cook, had overwhelmingly lengthy instructions, and didn’t look anything like the accompanying photos in the end. Her idea for a more visual approach to cooking with step-by-step photos and video instructions would make beginners feel more comfortable about cooking.

Approaching cooking from different ends of the spectrum, Mengting and Verena decided to build the best cooking app that would enable anyone to cook.