ZipList, the ultimate online recipe box launches a new share button

Cheers to the days of Food 2.0, as we watch startups like Yummly, Foodily, Gojee, and Punchfork served up healthy portions of venture capital and user acquisition in past months.

Perhaps the most technically focused of the food 2.0 startups, is the NYC and Virginia based startup ZipList. Ziplist is a lot of things. Over 1,200 sites have an embedded ZipList save button making it easy for you to keep your recipes all in one place. After you’ve done so, it’s an instant shopping list creator, categorically organizing what you need (see below). Furthermore, ZipList bills itself as ‘the Netflix for food’, the more you use it, the more it knows what kinds of foods and recipes you like and then can make tailored recommendations. For example, do you choose recipes that take 20 minutes to prepare or are you more of a Martha Stewart?

For sites that don’t yet offer the ZipList save recipe option, you can add recipes manually using a bookmark, called the Web Recipe Clipper. If you can get the ZipList plugin to work, it totally kills apps like KeepRecipes. I couldn’t get it to work in Chrome, but Firefox was fine.* ZipList is currently offering these manual installation instructions for Chrome while they work on a better fix. You can also add your own homemade recipes to your recipe box.

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It’s on the web and mobile. It’s a truly universal recipe box for the digital days. Today, ZipList is launching “ZipThis”, a sharing feature that enables recipes or checklists to be automatically saved or added to users’ grocery lists via short web links, QR codes or embed codes. Not only does clicking on a shared link or scanning a bar code simply display a recipe – it also automatically saves items to the recipient’s personal recipe box.

ZipList hopes foodies, chefs, cookbook creators, and ultimately CPG brands will add QR codes to their offline and online recipes, which (if the QR code trend survives) will drive users to add ingredients to their lists. ZipList also launched a newly designed website today including advanced recipe filtering and optimized support for mobile web browsers, providing a richer experience for smartphone owners not using ZipList’s iPhone and Android apps.

ZipList monetizes with advertising and ultimately hopes to make money connecting with brands to serve you targeted ads once it accrues enough information about user buying habits. The company launched in February 2010 and has raised 5 million from Softbank capital and Martha Stewart.

I currently use Evernote to save my favorite recipes, but if ZipList can first, get its Chrome bookmark working and second, demonstrate wide site adoption amongst food bloggers and recipe sites, I’m sold. From one foodie to another, what do you use for recipe clipping?

*ZipList has since fixed its Chrome bookmark. You may grab it here.

Featured image: Shutterstock/Nattika