Amazon Offers Free Year of Food Network Kitchen App with Live Cooking Classes
Amazon Fire TV and tablet owners can now get a free year of Food Network Kitchen thanks to an expansion of Amazon’s partnership with Food Network parent company Discovery. The year’s subscription includes live and on-demand cooking classes, and is accessible across Amazon devices,
Fire Food
Food Network Kitchen premiered last year on Amazon Echo Show smart displays but is now available on Fire TV and through iOS and Android devices. The free year of Food Network Kitchen is specifically for owners of Fire TV and Fire tablets. Along with the more than 2,300 cooking classes, the subscription includes step-by-step guides for making meals, more than 80,000 recipes, and ad-free episodes of several Food Network shows. All of the features can be pulled up using the Alexa voice assistant via a Fire TV Cube or by pairing an Amazon Echo to the television.
“When Food Network Kitchen came to Fire TV and Alexa last year, we saw how much customers love cooking with, and learning from, their favorite chefs,” Amazon entertainment devices and services vice president Marc Whitten said in a statement. “Many of us are spending more time cooking at home during these challenging times and are in need of a little inspiration. That’s why we are excited to offer all of our new and existing Fire TV and Fire Tablet customers a free year of access to Food Network Kitchen.”
Home Cooking
As Whitten obliquely addressed, the current COVID-19 pandemic means a lot of restaurants are closed and a lot of people are staying home and cooking more, turning to voice assistants skills for help. Meredith Corp’s Allrecipes Alexa skill seeing a 67% increase in use over the last month, with first-time users rising 45%. People are looking up recipes by ingredient more as well. People have more time to experiment with recipes and attempt new dishes.
That makes the live cooking shows an especially attractive feature. Real-time cooking helps people feel connected to their favorite celebrity chefs and they can even ask questions during certain parts of the show like a more immediate call-in show. Making it free for a year seems like a long time, but it could convert a lot of users toward being willing to pay the $5 a month or $40 a year price for the service. It also gives Amazon a better shot at competing with Google when it comes to videos. Google smart displays integrate YouTube, including its many cooking tutorials, directly into their features with Google Assistant voice controls. Free Food Network Kitchen for a year might entice someone to buy Amazon over a rival smart device.
“We were thrilled with the success of our initial collaboration with Amazon to launch Food Network Kitchen, and we couldn’t be more excited to introduce tens of millions of Fire TV and Fire Tablet customers to Food Network Kitchen,” said Discovery Global DTC CEO in a statement. “With families and individuals preparing meals at home now more than ever, this offer will help provide ideas and encouragement to even more customers during this unprecedented time.”
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