Start the video. Half a cup of achiote, pepper, chiles and orange juice fall into a molcajete; then vinegar, garlic, oregano and salt. Hands stir the mixture. Close up to the consistency of the sauce and how it bathes some pieces of pork ready to be prepared. Twenty minutes of marinating and start the assembly. fast-forward 1 hour, at 190°C and the shepherd’s top of Kiwilimon ready. close-up end to the plating on tortillas, onion, cilantro, pineapple and sauce to crave. And you think: “yum!”, “I can do it too!”, “It looks so easy”, “I’ll save it for the next dinner with the family”.
What has been described may seem like something everyday because it happens every day on social networks. There are even video recipes that have as many or more views than some YouTubers, although this was not the case before. the mexican platform Kiwilimon has witnessed the boom of this format.
Lorenza Avila and Deborah Dana They were working in the marketing area of Procter & Gamble when they noticed that the profitable niche of housewives was underserved and underexploited on the Internet. This is how, at the end of 2009, they launched the Kiwilimón.com site. At first, the co-founders dedicated part-time to their business but little by little – as it grew and required more attention – they devoted all their efforts and a good part of their capital to the development of their page, which they achieved with the help of resources from your family and friends.
The challenges of growing Kiwilimón
“Everything has changed in this decade. At the consumer level, people are already consuming much more of these video platforms and feel like a chef at home. We are seen by men and women, those who want to learn to cook, those who never cook, the experts and those who seek inspiration”, says Lorenza Ávila, co-founder and Chief Content Officer of Kiwilimón.
“As for the company, we stopped being a startup to become a very professional company. Before, I made the videos and today we already have a complete team of expert chefs and professionals in kitchen production, which has improved the quality of the videos and the recipes.”
Today, Kiwilimón is a platform that simplifies people’s lives in the kitchen field, offering virtual recipe books with more than 17,000 options and 5,000 video recipes.
In addition, it has more than 30 million followers on all its social networks, 50% of them are Mexicans (7% from CDMX), 12% from the United States, and 6% from Colombia. 17% of their community are young people between 17 and 24 years old; 29% are between 25 and 34 years old and 54% between 35 and 45 years old. And the platform is in the Top Five of the global Food & Drinks sites.
Lorenza shares that in the first 10 years of the platform the biggest challenge has been to “let go” of part of the business. “When you grow up, the hard part is ‘losing’ control. Before, there were days when I did everything, but today this doesn’t happen anymore and my role went from being a scavenger to a manager and strategist. I had to teach what they should do and learn to delegate. It is very critical because you can lose what you had advanced, ”she points out.
Another challenge has been finding that talent and translating the vision to the team. “I have to make sure that my entire team executes their work with quality and empower others for them to take the baton. It is difficult but today we have achieved it and it is incredible to see how the collaborators have been infected with this taste for the kitchen and the platform”, assures the entrepreneur.
Kiwilimón employs 40 people, 65% are women, and its strongest arm is content generation and social networks. And it is that 65% of its content is internal, the rest is made for brands such as Samsung (which has an app for its refrigerators), Philadephia, La Moderna or Del Valle.
Lorenza Ávila, co-founder and Chief Content Officer of Kiwilimón / Image: Courtesy Kiwilimón. what’s coming
Kiwilimón is ready to take the next step. Lorenza, its co-founder, anticipates that they will begin to ‘play’ more in e-commerce things and will explore more artificial intelligence opportunities to achieve dictated recipes. “We are going to keep reinventing ourselves and changing. The only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain, and we have to adapt to what is coming, ”he comments.
On the other hand, they will not neglect social networks as they are a more important part of their traffic: 60% comes from Facebook, 33% from Pinterest and 8% from Instagram. “In 2016 we had to change our business model because everything started to go viral,” he recalls. “We thought we shouldn’t put full videos to attract them to our website but we changed this, we took a risk without knowing how to do it or earn money and it started to go amazing for us.”
That is why he recommends: “if you are in the digital world you must be willing to adapt and be flexible because things move very fast and if you do not change, you die.”