Opportunities › Human-curated recipe platform for cooking › Proposed app
Hearth Ledger
Human-written, kitchen-tested recipes with named authors and a visible test record
- Score
- 52
- confidence 62
- Evidence
- 8
- items on the page
- Rivals
- 1
- named in sources
- First version
- 35 d
- estimate
- Type
- Desktop and mobile
- PWA: on computers and phones alike
- Market since
- 2017
- Established market · Verified
ScreensConcept
Desktop and mobile: Users browse and plan recipes on desktop, then rely on the app in the kitchen on mobile while actively cooking with hands occupied and quick reference needed. Sample screens on a computer and a phone, in the proposed brand. Their numbers are sample data.
Braised Chicken Thighs
Expert recipe7 tests
About this appAI proposal
Hearth Ledger is a recipe app for home cooks who want recipes written by people. Every recipe shows its author, who tested it, how many times it was cooked and what was changed along the way. There are no generated recipes in the app.
Recipes from professional chefs and food writers sit on a separate shelf from community notes and cook-submitted recipes. The two are never mixed in search, so you know which kind you are looking at before you start cooking.
Save recipes, plan the week, build a shopping list and cook from a clear step view. The aim is a smaller library you can trust, not a bigger one.
- Tagline
- Recipes written by people, tested in real kitchens.
- Voice
- HonestWarmPlain
- Why this name
- A hearth is where cooking happens; a ledger is a record. Together: a trusted written record of recipes that were really cooked.
In the first version
Members say which features they would use. It tells PWAS what people want; it changes no score.
Named author on every recipe
Each recipe shows who wrote it, their background and where it was first published. No anonymous or machine-written entries.
No member yet
Visible test record
See how many times a recipe was cooked in a test kitchen, by whom, and the notes from each round, including fixes.
No member yet
Expert and community kept apart
Professional and user-submitted recipes live on separate, clearly labelled shelves. Search can be limited to experts.
No member yet
A plain no-AI policy
A published policy: no generated recipes, photos or summaries. Any change is announced to subscribers well in advance.
No member yet
Brand identityAI proposal
Check the name against trademark registers before using it.
Palette
#A2432BTerracotta · primary#FBF6ECFlour · surface#2B2118Espresso · text#3F6B4FHerb · accent#D9A441Saffron · data
Typography
Aa
Hearth Ledger
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789
Recipes written by people, tested in real kitchens.
PricingAI proposal
The material gives no competitor prices. These tiers are a starting point to test against a paid subscription recipe app, not a verified benchmark.
Browse
Free
- Limited free recipes each month
- Author and test record on every recipe
- Save up to 20 recipes
Cook
$5 a month
- Full expert library
- Meal planner and shopping lists
- Advanced filters
- Offline cookbook
- Ad-free
Cook yearly
$48 a year
- Everything in Cook
- Early access to new chef series
Would you pay Cook yearly · $48 a year?
Your answer tells PWAS which prices people accept. It changes no score.
No answers yet.
What it could be worthEstimate
What a software business making this much sells for today, from real deals. Pick a monthly revenue.
If it makes
Worth about
$190,000
Sale range $132,000 to $263,000
$120,000 a year in revenue
From 87 software businesses listed and sold on Empire Flippers in the last year, revenue vetted by the broker: they sell for about 19× their monthly revenue, most between 13× and 26×.
Measured on profit, the middle deal is 32× monthly net profit: about 2.7 years of profit.
An estimate, not an offer or financial advice. A real price depends on profit, growth, churn, how much of the work is the owner's, and the buyer.
How it would growAI proposal
How the product would reach new customers through its own use, and how the first ones would be found. A plan to test, not a result.
- Built-in loop
- Shared outputs. Subscribers share recipe pages with the author, test record and a no-AI badge. Non-members open a preview of the recipe and see the test notes.
- Do they become customers?
- Recipients can become paying customers if the preview is useful, but a link opened once brings no customer. Test the share-to-trial rate and the free-recipe limit.
- First customers
- Home cooks who cook dinner at least four times a week and now pay for a recipe app, reached through communities that complain about AI in cooking apps.
- Where to reach them
- Food communities and forums: Join discussions about AI recipes in cooking apps and offer a free trial of the expert shelf.
- Independent food writers: Invite 10 recipe developers to publish with credit and a share of subscription revenue.
- Newsletter and content: Publish weekly test-record posts showing the fixes made to a recipe.
- First milestone
- 100 paying subscribers from one community within 90 days, with 10 recipe authors signed up.
Why people already pay for this
- Public claimPaying customers of recipe apps are angry about AI-generated recipes replacing human expertise
- Public claimUsers value human-developed, tested, and curated recipes in cooking apps
- Public claimApp store is filled with complaints about AI features in cooking apps
- Public claimApp changes motivated users to complain and voice negative stance
- Public claimNYT Cooking: $6/month or $50/year standalone; bundle $25/month (March 2025)
Tech stack
Every proposal builds on the same PWA base, installable from the browser on any phone or computer. Dashed boxes are what this app adds.
- AppNext.js and TypeScript
- PWAManifest and service worker
- UITailwind CSS
- Data and authSupabase Postgres
- PaymentsStripe
- EmailResend
- HostingVercel
- This app · Content managementEditorial CMS with author and test-round fieldsRecipes need structured authors, sources and test notes, plus an approval step before publishing.
- This app · SearchHosted full-text search with filtersFast filtering by time, diet, author and test count across the expert and community shelves.
RisksAI inference
- CommercialContent is the product. A small library with few chefs may not feel worth paying for against established subscription apps. Commissioning and testing recipes costs money before revenue.
- CommercialWhether the anger about AI features in the evidence (public claims only) turns into switching and paying is unproven.
- Intellectual propertyRecipe text and photos need clear contracts with authors, and community submissions need rules to avoid copied content.
- CommercialA no-AI promise is hard to keep and verify over time, and can limit tools such as ingredient scaling if overdone.
Everything marked AI proposal or AI inference was written by a model from the evidence on the opportunity page. The proposed name must be checked against trademark registers before it is used.