Do you miss when most of social media was just a catalogue
of what your friends ate in a day? Are you eager to post that perfect loaf of
sourdough you baked in a place where it will be truly appreciated? Then you
might want to check out Pepper, a foodie social media paradise.
Pepper is made for food lovers and no one else. Just
like TikTok, you can scroll through friends' posts on the aptly named Feed and check
out the larger community under Explore. Just as you do on Instagram, you can like, comment and post.
What sets Pepper apart from other apps is that instead of scrolling through flat photos
of food, Pepper adds another element in which posts also include a recipe, an
ingredient list, prep time and instructions, as well as a section for other
users to share their results with the same recipe. This brings the experience to another level. So instead of just liking a pretty photo, you can make it, too, and keep the discussion going.
On Pepper, when you see a food post and think, “Wow, I wish I
could figure out how to make that, too,” part of the experience is getting the
pic and the how-to. Rather than dividing people with political posts or
painfully unattainable lifestyles, Pepper unites with the great common denominator:
cooking.
When was the last time social media has felt truly like a
community to you? And helpful, at that? Pepper provides something to bond over,
discuss and inspire. Is this the social media we need right now? Absolutely.
Maybe Pepper won’t save the world, but at the very least, it aims
to be an interactive, digital cookbook to organize recipes instead of random
notes on your phone, or worse, a stained binder with loose papers. On the app,
you can tag your recipes and search others’ tags to find a killer cookie recipe
or the exact bowl of noodles you’ve been craving.
Pepper, which launched less than a year ago, is already
seeing over 100 thousand users and is growing every day. There are professional
chefs, aesthetically astute food bloggers, but also a lot of everyday cooks
just posting what they are eating. You certainly don’t have to worry about
boring your friends with your food pics, because everyone is there for the same
reason --for the food.
Competitors to Pepper, like Whisk, Recon Food, and Foodqu!rk exist, but none are quite as robust a social food experience. If you're hungry to share in the experience of food, Pepper seems to be the place to be. Our friends are going to have to put up with our annoying habits of snapping food pics, but maybe with this app, they'll join us there, too.