One of Whirlpool Corporation’s marketing efforts over recent years has been to embrace the ‘cooking experience’ especially with its higher-end brands, led by KitchenAid. Those efforts have been highlighted by the sponsorship of the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship, making its final appearance at Harbor Shores in May 2024.
It’s not clear how the ‘cooking experience’ will be symbolized going forward, but likely it will still be an important element of Whirlpool/KitchenAid marketing. However, one ingredient that is apparently being de-emphasized is a recipe app called Yummly, acquired by Whirlpool in 2017.
Doing our appliance industry homework, MoodyOnTheMarket.com learned recently that Whirlpool Corporation has eliminated the California-based team responsible for creating and maintaining the Yummly app.
Technology newsletter ‘TheSpoon.tech’ reported it this way:
Appliance giant Whirlpool has let its entire Yummly team go. According to industry sources, the company recently laid off all the employees for the recipe and cooking app and website. These sources tell the Spoon that it’s unclear what the company plans to do with the property it acquired in 2017.
The editors at TheSpoon.tech believe Whirlpool and KitchenAid are pulling back on the experiential cooking concept:
The news of the layoffs marks a significant de-emphasis on creating a connected cooking experience tailored around custom-designed recipes with step-by-step cooking.
It’s a different view than the one put forth when Yummly was acquired:
“Every day, millions of consumers around the world use Whirlpool Corporation appliances to prepare meals for their families. The Yummly acquisition will allow these consumers to dramatically reduce the stress from meal planning by helping answer the age-old question, ‘What’s for dinner tonight?’” the company said at the time of the acquisition.
After Whirlpool acquired Yummly, it beefed up the content team and hired content creators to build a recipe catalog with cooking guidance.
We asked Whirlpool’s corporate communications department for a reaction to the Yummly article in TheSpoon.tech:
Whirlpool Corporation is adjusting its operating model for Yummly as we adapt our product and business strategies to meet the needs of our consumers. The new operating model has resulted in a permanent reduction in Yummly employees, and Whirlpool Corp. is committed to providing support to these employees over the coming months, including a robust severance package and other services to assist in their transition.
Whirlpool declined to reveal how many employees were affected by the Yummly cut, nor to give an effective date. Recent estimates put the number of Yummly employees near 100. It’s not clear if the move was part of the much talked-about round of belt-tightening moves in recent weeks. In March, the company issued a statement to employees that another series of cuts would take place by early May, though they could come as early as mid to late April.
The editors at TheSpoon.tech introduced another factor into speculation about the cuts. They concluded that the former staffers at Yummly will likely be replaced, later if not now, by Artificial Intelligence (AI):
“The move to let the Yummly team ego is indicative of appliance brands de-emphasizing apps with human-powered editorial-driven content, especially as some start to investigate how they can leverage generative AI to power new features and content.”
“The Spoon has heard rumblings that other appliance brands are starting to build generative AI-powered content libraries and consumer-facing UI with mixed results. Our guess is this trend will only continue, even as appliances begin to revisit their smart appliance strategies after lessons from the first wave of product build-out.”
