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Foody

Raised $1.5M

Foody is a US-based recipe marketplace that provides an opportunity for global chefs and popular culinary influencers to sell their recipes and for foodies to buy them. Nowadays everyone who likes cooking and desires to recreate the dishes of worldwide cooking talent can simply join the platform and get inspired.

 

The product vision came to the founders during the COVID-19 pandemic when they tried to cook at home. It became clear that there was no ad-free platform that was entirely dedicated to discovering and storing recipes of culinary creatives. That’s how an idea for the recipe platform, Foody, was born. 

 

Product: Online recipe marketplace 

The scope of our work: full-cycle custom web app development

Website: https://joinfoody.com/

Location: USA
Industry: Food and Beverages
Client Goal:

Our client needed to create a custom software platform from scratch that will be a digital helper in the kitchen for home cooks and help influencers and chefs directly monetize their unique content.

Custom Functionality
Registration

We helped create two types of registration accounts: for foodies (home chefs) and creators (chefs).

Foody Foody Registration Page

 

Users can choose whether they are home chefs or creators. Also, they can sign up manually or using Facebook or Google.

foody registration

Sign Up: Step 1

foody step 2Sign Up: Step 2

Home Page

We assisted with the home page creation, which remains visually the same for both users. Only managers can edit the title, post, and picture according to future celebrations, like Halloween, Christmas, Easter, etc.

Foody’s main page also consists of thirteen blocks which managers can edit, including:

  • Featured recipes

featured recipes

Home Page: Recipes

  • Featured creators and collections

foody creators and collections

Home Page: Collections

 

  • Creator spotlight (info about a creator) 

foody creators

Home Page: Creator Spotlight

 

  • Thematic recipe collections
Profiles

There are two types of profiles: home chefs and creators. As for the profiles, our team added sections for better navigation such as:

  • Liked – where foodies and creators can find the recipes and collections they liked
  • Purchased – bought recipes and collections
  • Recipe manager –  here a foody can search their recipes and collections, whereas creators can look through their finished and drafted recipes. 

 

Our devs also made user profiles with custom URLs, which allows users to create their URL using personal data such as name and surname, or a nickname.

Furthermore, users can connect their accounts to social media such as Google and Facebook, change passwords, add payments, or become a creator.

foody settings

User Profile: Settings

 

Buyers can become a creator by clicking on the section “become a creator” in their profiles.

foody settings

User Profile: Settings

Recipes

Sloboda Studio assisted with a recipe creation feature. Creators can add a recipe using step-by-step instructions.

foody recipes

User Profile: Recipe Creation

The authors of the recipes describe the portions, the cooking time, all the necessary elements for the dish, and equipment accompanying the recipe with step-by-step photos with high resolution and a complete video.

foody recipes

User Profile: Recipe Creation- Step 1

foody recipes

User Profile: Recipe Creation – Step 2

 

There are three types of recipes available on the platform: free, paid, and private. Home chefs and creators can add free recipes to their collections.

Video and Image Uploading

Our team developed an ability to add pictures and videos on the platform. 

Creators can add only high-quality photos that will be displayed the same way without distortion on different devices.

foody recipes

User Profile: Recipe Listing

 

A video can be added in two variants to suit the creators’ preferences:

  • each cooking step – small video parts
  • entire cooking process – long video

 

The users have an opportunity to view a video presentation (full videos for free recipes and 10-seconds video presentation for paid ones) before making a buying decision.

Autoscaling

To provide seamless access for a large number of users on the Foody platform, Sloboda Studio involved the software development team with DevOps, who made an autoscaling script. An autoscaling system is a tool for automatic horizontal scaling of resources. In our case, this is a set of python scripts that: 

 

  • diagnose the platform’s loading
  • provide additional servers with copies of our application
  • distribute the platform load if it reaches a certain threshold
Image Loading Time

In order to improve image loading time, we have connected CDN Cloudfront (Content Delivery Network) by Amazon, a global network that accelerates the delivery of traffic from suppliers to recipients. 

For example, when users watch a video or view an image on the Foody platform, the CDN helps to cache the content on the nearest server in this region and display this content with minimal latency.

As a result, the platform’s image loading time is 2 times faster than before.

Payments

We helped integrate Stripe’s custom account with the Foody platform to allow users to make payments. Users can’t interact with Stripe directly; they use only the Foody platform.

Our team has enabled Stripe Account Link Integration, which automatically allows users to fill in the Stripe form if the user entered incorrect or incomplete information. This action helps to reduce the number of rejected Stripe accounts that did not pass Stripe validation.

The payment function is valid only for the USA now. However, our client is planning to expand the platform’s coverage for countries where the Stripe system is also supported.

Admin Panel

Our devs helped build an admin panel that manages banners, and analytics.

  • Analytics

Now our client can search how many users the platform has, what they bought on the platform, what they added, etc. All vital information is pulled from the database. 

 

  • Editing

Our experts built a clickable banner function that will allow managers to change the specific data. 

Now managers can change a picture on the banner and advertise popular creators or collections using a clickable link available to users.

 

  • Management 

Our team helped to create a version of custom management systems that allow managers to control content and monitor the addition and modification of existing information on the home page.

Ratings and Reviews

Sloboda Studio developed a rate and review function to provide users with estimates of recipes. Users can also write their comments under recipes and collections.

foody reviews

User Profile: Welcome Page

Challenges
Challenge 1. High-Quality Performance Testing

At the client’s request, our team had to find a solution for high-volume performance testing within a strict timeline.

 

Our solution:

Our team engaged a performance testing specialist who made scripts for load testing the application in the shortest possible time to understand how many users the site can withstand. 

As a result, the Foody platform can simultaneously provide continuous access to 1 million users per hour.

Challenge 2. Video Uploading

The problem was that the creators were making videos in different formats and uploading them to the platform. Some users received a playback error due to the unsupported format while for others the video quality was unsatisfactory.

 

Our solution:

Our team has created a video conversion that turns all formats into a single MR4 and allows uploading videos up to 5GB to the site, automatically compressed without losing quality. 

Now, all video loading times have decreased significantly. Our team has developed a separate technical service that doesn’t use the power of the main platform but instead processes videos on another server, so as not to create an additional load on the central server and then send the processed video to production. 

Results:

As a result of our cooperation with Foody, a custom platform with unique visual and text content was created for everyone who likes to cook delicious meals at home. 

We have implemented the following features:

  • Registration
  • Home page
  • Profiles
  • Recipes and collections
  • Video and image uploading
  • Payments
  • Admin panel
  • Rates and reviews
  • Clickable banner
  •  Autoscaling 

 

After the official release, the Foody platform increased its new functionality by 1.5 times.

Right before the product release, Foody raised $1.5M in the pre-seed round in November 2021. 

Our team still continues to cooperate with Foody by scaling its platform with numerous features. 

Our process
Timeline:

August 2020 — July 2022

Team:
3 front-end devs/ 2 back-end dev/ 1 full-stack dev/ 2QA/ 1 designer/1 BA/ 1 Project Manager
Technologies we used
Server-side
PostgreSQL
Python
Client-side
Django
React
Tools (hosting, monitoring etc.)
AWS
Integrations

Amazon CloudFront

Stripe

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    Alex, VP of Client Engagement
    alex@sloboda-studio.com