About CookBuddy
CookBuddy: A Better Way to Keep the Recipes You Love
CookBuddy started with a simple problem: I wanted to get better at cooking.
While living on my own, I found myself constantly coming across recipes I wanted to try. Some were on Instagram. Others were on TikTok, YouTube, or recipe websites. I would save them, bookmark them, take screenshots, or tell myself I would come back to them later.
But the more recipes I found, the more difficult it became to actually keep track of them.
A recipe might live in a video on one platform, a post on another, a website somewhere else, or in a cookbook sitting on a shelf. Even when I found something I wanted to make, cooking from a video or trying to relocate a recipe I had saved weeks earlier wasn't always easy.
And then there were the recipes that weren't online at all.
Handwritten recipes passed down through a family. A recipe printed from a website years ago. A favorite recipe sitting in an old binder. A photo of a recipe card tucked away in a drawer.
It became clear that the problem wasn't just finding recipes online. Our recipes were scattered everywhere.
So I decided to build something that would solve the problem for me.
That idea eventually became CookBuddy.
Your recipes shouldn't be scattered everywhere
We believe the way people find recipes has changed, but the way we store them hasn't really kept up.
Recipes have traditionally lived in cookbooks, handwritten notes, recipe cards, folders on computers, screenshots on phones, and bookmarks in web browsers. Now, we discover incredible recipes everywhere online, but those recipes are often tied to the platform where we found them.
At the same time, some of the recipes that mean the most to us aren't online at all. They're the ones written by a parent or grandparent, scribbled on an index card, printed out and tucked into a binder, or saved as a photograph on a phone.
CookBuddy is meant to bring all of them together.
Whether you discover a recipe in a TikTok, Instagram post, YouTube video, or website, or you have a physical recipe card you've been holding onto for years, CookBuddy is designed to help turn that recipe into something you can keep, organize, and actually use.
Upload a photo of a handwritten recipe. Digitize an old family recipe card. Save a recipe you've discovered online. Bring together the recipes you've accumulated over the years.
Your recipes should have one home.
The modern cookbook
CookBuddy was built around a simple idea:
Your recipes should belong to you, not to the platform where you happened to find them.
We want CookBuddy to become the modern cookbook—a single place where you can keep the recipes you've discovered, the recipes you've created, the recipes you've inherited, and the recipes you want to try someday.
It's a cookbook that isn't limited to the recipes that came in a box or were printed in a book. It's one that can grow with you and bring together the recipes you've collected throughout your life.
A handwritten family recipe can sit alongside something you discovered on TikTok last night.
A recipe you've been making for twenty years can sit alongside something you're planning to try this weekend.
That's the cookbook we want to build.
Ideally, CookBuddy becomes the only cookbook you'll ever need.
Technology should make life simpler
CookBuddy is built by Brennan Technologies with a belief that technology should make everyday life a little easier—not make it more complicated.
Artificial intelligence can be incredibly powerful, but that doesn't mean people should have to understand how it works to benefit from it. We use AI behind the scenes to handle some of the tedious work involved in turning the recipe content people discover or upload into something they can actually use.
The technology is there to help.
The cooking is still yours.
That's an important distinction to us. CookBuddy isn't meant to replace the joy, creativity, or personal connection that comes with cooking. It's meant to take away some of the friction surrounding it.
- Less time searching for a recipe.
- Less time figuring out where you saved it.
- Less time trying to pause a video at exactly the right moment.
- Less time manually typing out an old recipe card.
- More time actually making the food.
Built for ourselves, our families, and anyone who loves good food
CookBuddy has always been a very personal project.
It was originally built as a tool for myself and my family, and we've been using it from the earliest versions all the way through what CookBuddy is today. The people closest to us have also played a part along the way, helping with everything from logistics to content and making the idea better as it has grown.
In fact, CookBuddy's earliest and most important users were the people around us.
That's still reflected in how we think about the product today.
CookBuddy isn't being built simply because AI and recipe technology happen to be interesting. It's being built because we believe a small piece of useful technology can make someone's everyday life a little easier.
Even if that means helping someone finally find the recipe they saved three months ago.
Or turning a cooking video into something they can actually cook from.
Or digitizing a handwritten recipe that has been sitting in a family recipe box for decades.
Or simply giving someone a place to save the recipe they want to make next weekend.
Those little things matter.
We're here to make cooking a little more fun
Ironically, CookBuddy wasn't created by someone who particularly loves cooking.
I love food. Cooking, on the other hand, has historically been more of a necessity than a passion. If I don't cook, I don't eat.
But I do love discovering recipes.
And as CookBuddy has grown, I've found myself looking forward to actually trying more of the recipes I've collected. That's ultimately what we want CookBuddy to do for everyone who uses it: turn recipe discovery into cooking.
We want you to open CookBuddy and feel excited about what you're going to make.
Maybe you're about to start cooking dinner.
Maybe you're saving something you can't wait to try next week.
Maybe you're digitizing a recipe that has been in your family for generations.
Maybe you're building a personal collection of recipes that will eventually become your own family cookbook.
Or maybe you're simply collecting recipes because you love discovering new food.
Whatever the reason, we want the experience to feel simple, useful, and a little bit fun.
Preserving recipes for what's next
There is something special about a recipe that has been passed from one person to another.
Sometimes it's written in someone's handwriting. Sometimes it's stained from years of use. Sometimes it contains a little note in the margin that only makes sense to your family.
We don't want technology to replace those recipes.
We want it to help preserve them.
Digitizing a physical recipe doesn't erase where it came from. It gives it another place to live—a place where it can be easier to find, easier to use, and easier to carry forward.
In that way, CookBuddy isn't just about collecting new recipes.
It's also about holding onto the recipes that already matter.
The future of CookBuddy
We don't think the future of cooking is about replacing the cookbook.
We think it's about building a better one.
A cookbook that can follow you wherever you find recipes. A cookbook that can grow with you. A cookbook that can hold the recipes you discover online alongside the recipes you've collected throughout your life.
Our vision for CookBuddy is to become that place.
The modern cookbook.
One home for your recipes—whether they came from a TikTok, a website, a photograph, a cookbook, a handwritten recipe card, or your own kitchen.
Because technology shouldn't get in the way of something as simple and human as deciding what to make for dinner.
It should help you get there.
CookBuddy — find something you love. Save it. And cook it.