Cooking.com stirs up $13 million

Bon appetit for Cooking.com: The kitchen appliance retailer announced Wednesday that it has pulled in $13 million in venture funding in a round led by Azure Capital Partners. ORIX Venture Finance also contributed venture debt to the round, and Azure partner Michael Kwatinetz is now on the company's board of directors.

The new cash will be used toward a variety of goals at Cooking.com: expand editorial and social-networking operations on the site (a sound decision when it seems like everyone can't stop talking about Bobby Flay and Mario Batali), opening a new distribution center in Ohio, and allowing more Web sites to offer "Powered by Cooking.com" stores. That's something that some food-related brands already do, like Starbucks, Pillsbury, and the Food Network.

The Santa Monica, Calif.-based Cooking.com has been around since 1998, still alive and kicking despite the fact that retail leviathan Amazon.com has been selling cooking appliances for years now.

"We are excited to have new investment partners and funding, which will allow us to enrich the Cooking.com experience and brand," founder and CEO Tracy Randall said in a release, "and also further our goal to increasingly become a driving e-commerce force for some of the world's most visited culinary sites." In other words, just as many media companies are pushing their content out to multiple video-sharing sites, niche commerce sites are hoping to hook up with more retailers.

[someguy999]

a true sign of the times... 9 years ago, 10M in funding wouldn't have even made the headlines regardless of the company. a major bummer for the economy. In addition at that same time, they would have probably gotten 50M

[Digitalelife]

Good to here that some of the old school sites are still up and kicking. Not include worth $13 million of investment of someones money