Decline as video recipes rise, and the turn to a smaller equilibrium (2019)

A late start on video, and the smaller equilibrium it forced

The heart of this decision was to stop chasing scale and, by trimming costs to fit the core cooking business, halt a chain of losses. As the pioneer of posted-recipe services, Cookpad had held an overwhelming domestic user base, but it was late to adapt to the new format of short smartphone video, and free video took users’ time and attention away. The archive of posted recipes built over many years became hard to convert into competitive strength once the format shifted. Paid membership thinned after peaking in 2018, and the company sank from a net loss in 2019 into three straight years of operating losses from 2021. Voluntary redundancies and the closure of six businesses cut headcount by more than half, and it was this smaller equilibrium — matching costs to revenue — that set the precondition for returning to profit.

That said, the turn to profit did not mean the business grew again. By the time it returned to the black in 2024, revenue had shrunk to $38.3M (¥6bn), and the decline in paid members from the end of 2023 to the end of 2024 continued. Meanwhile dely, which had moved early on video, listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Growth market in December 2024 at a market capitalisation of about $316.8M (¥48bn). A latecomer only a few years old had grown large enough to surpass the first mover, Cookpad, in scale. By early 2026 Kurashiru’s revenue was said to top three times Cookpad’s, reversing the scale positions in the recipe market. A late start on a new technological current flipped the competitive standing, and the smaller equilibrium worked not as a road to recovering lost scale but as a choice to defend the core that remained.