Why we created Pepper, the social cooking and food app of the future

“Food may not be the answer to world peace, but it’s a start.” — Anthony Bourdain

There are few things in the world that every human can understand. No matter who you are, where you’re from, or what your circumstances are, food is the universal language.

While food unites us, social media connects us. If you mix those two ingredients together, you get something special: Pepper. Pepper empowers chefs to seamlessly create, share, and discover food from around the world. Our mission is to help people expand their culinary horizons through painless food discovery and meaningful interaction.

What is Pepper?

Pepper is a community focused on engaging around cooking and food. Our app gives users the ability to post their favorite meals, search for specific dishes based on ingredients and dietary restrictions, create personal digital cookbooks, and cleanly view recipe steps and details.

Why did we create Pepper?

I (Matt Schkolnick, COO & Co-founder of Pepper) consider myself an amateur chef, like most people would. I like to share what I eat with my family and friends, and I love seeing what those around me are cooking and eating to serve as inspiration for my meals. We built Pepper because there’s no app designed to do this in an interactive way, while at the same time creating a community to actually help you cook and eat better. We were tired of seeing ‘link to recipe in bio,’ tired of seeing enormous captions trying to detail recipe steps, and tired of asking our friends and family for recipes through five different apps or text messages.

People love sharing food pictures on social media, and every chef I know is always looking to discover new recipes. Pepper sits at the intersection of food sharing and food discovery, and there’s no better way to do this than through seeing what those around you are cooking or eating.

Our vision

Similar to Strava with exercise and Goodreads with books, people around the world now seek to digitally interact around hobbies we previously participated in individually. Everything is more enjoyable when you do it with friends, and there’s also more opportunity to learn about whatever it is you’re interested in. The game has changed forever, and Pepper will be at the forefront of the social cooking and food revolution.

Pepper is built to celebrate the everyday chef making familiar dishes. To celebrate the seasoned chef sharing new creations. To celebrate friends & family sharing special recipes. To celebrate food photographers, creators, consumers, and everyone in between. To celebrate you. And maybe, just maybe, change the way you think about sharing food.

Check out our website and request an invite to our beta community. We’re excited to see you on the app soon!