Cooking up a storm: Recipe biz Mob will be ‘smart about revenue’ amid recessionary hit on digital ads
Recipe social media firm Mob has said it will move away from third-party revenue streams this year as digital advertisers’ budgets shrink.
Ben Lebus, founder of the food-focused platform and recipe book business, told CityA.M. the firm needed “to be really smart about where we’re getting revenue from” amid the economic crunch.
Mob, which has 1m Instagram followers, is launching new media platforms, following its launch of a new app called Peckish, in order to diversify its revenue streams.
The brand currently works with partners including Spotify and Aldi.
It is building a members’ only section of its website to help “safeguard revenues,” Lebus explained.
Lebus, who launched Mob in 2016 when he was working as a Deliveroo driver, said he was wary of becoming “reliant” on third parties. “The market forces that are going to determine whether or not they have the budgets to spend on digital ads are going to impact your cash flow.”
The business, which operates out of a test kitchen in Hackney, has an annual turnover of £2.5m and has a pre-money valuation of £12m.
With the brand’s core demographic of young professionals in the throes of a cost of living crisis, Mob has been upping its focus on budget-friendly recipes, with fewer ingredients and cooking requirements.
Brits will also spend more time cooking at home and worrying about the cost of their weekly shop in the months to come, Lebus said. Helping Mob followers with the cost of living was “a really big focus for us.”
While there is now a deluge of TikTok and Instagram cooking content, “the space was nowhere near as saturated” when Lebus launched Mob while at uni.
“We grew and made our presence in the time where it wasn’t so saturated, now we have that presence it is easier for our voice and messaging to cut through,” he said.
Lebus admitted it is a daunting time for tech firms at the minute but said he was confident Mob could continue to grow, especially as the firm was not “entirely reliant on big capital raise after big capital raise.”