Want to Partner With Tasty? Read On.

Who doesn’t love Tasty, BuzzFeed's buzzy online cooking video channel? Apparently, not many people. The go-to destination for recipe inspiration is now the world’s largest social food network with 73 billion lifetime video views. Currently, Tasty reaches 540 million people globally via social platforms including Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat; its website and app; and through its New York Times-best-selling cookbooks.

Due to this impressive reach, retailers and brands regularly reach out to Tasty seeking out partnership opportunities. But what's Tasty looking for in potential partners? What are the qualities that brands and retailers should have if they want to enter into a relationship with Tasty? According to Talia Halperin, general manager of commerce at BuzzFeed Media Brands, it’s hard to describe.

“We’re looking for a sort of magical chemistry,” Halperin told the audience at Shop.org in Las Vegas, where she spoke on a panel about cross-industry collaborations. “The right partner for us understands our vision, shares it, and has best-in-class resources [to enable the partnership] to happen.”

Brands and retailers also have to be willing to experiment with Tasty, be able to move quickly, and possibly encounter a few challenges along the way. After all, most of what Tasty is doing has never been done before, so “there's no rulebook or example to follow,” Halperin said.

“Sometimes, with our partnerships, we start out in one direction and end up end up in another later on,” noted Halperin. “Other times, we've had challenges where certain things didn’t resonate. People have to be willing to take that chance with us and get gritty with us.”

A successful partnership Tasty has embarked upon is a smart induction cooktop it created with GE called the Tasty One Top. It's an induction cooktop that connects to Tasty's smartphone app. Users can go to the app and select from Tasty's 2,700 video recipes to date, sync their desired recipe to the One Top, and it will heat and cook according to the temperatures and times specified in the recipe.

Another successful partnership for Tasty is its collaboration with Walmart.

This year, for example, the two companies unveiled an exclusive line of Tasty-branded cookware that includes more than 90 products ranging from nonstick cookware to high-quality bakeware to kitchen gadgets, accessories and more. The Tasty cookware is available at Walmart stores and on Walmart.com.

Tasty's cookware line, however, is just part of a broader strategic partnership with Walmart. In December, for example, Walmart and Tasty partnered to include links in Tasty videos to buy kitchen tools, groceries and other accessories on Walmart.com and Jet.com, a subsidiary of Walmart.

As for why the partnership with Walmart works, Halperin said the retail giant's focus on saving customers money so they can live better aligns perfectly with Tasty’s mission of making cooking fun and accessible for all.

“Our goal is to democratize cooking, and [partnering with Walmart] helps us do that by making it even easier for [consumers] to prepare our recipes in their own homes," Halperin said.