BIA Digital Leads $13.5M Investment in Cooking.com

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Posted December 6, 2011

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Chantilly, Va – BIA Digital Partners II LP, a private investment firm focusing on growth companies, announced it has led a $13,500,000 growth capital financing for Marina del Ray, Calif.-based Cooking.com, Inc. The financing consisted of subordinated debt and a new round of preferred equity. Azure Capital Partners, the Company’s lead equity investor, provided a significant participation in the financing. Proceeds from the investment will be used to further the growth of the Company’s flagship site www.cooking.com and to accelerate the build-out of the Company’s “Powered By Cooking.com” enterprise-level ecommerce solution. In conjunction with the financing, Damien Dovi, Partner at BIA DP, has joined the Company’s board of directors as an observer.
Tracy Randall, co-founder and CEO of Cooking.com commented, “We have been rigorously focused on leveraging our position as the category-leader in the specialty food and kitchenware segment to bring scalable, low-to-no-risk ecommerce solutions to our channel partners. The investment from BIA Digital Partners allows us to continue to scale and grow our portfolio of partner sites while providing an excellent consumer experience.” Randall further said, “BIA Digital Partners was quick to understand our strategy, and with a deep understanding of the media and enthusiast content segment, was able to offer helpful insights during the due diligence process. Their financing solution was unique and unlike any other option the Company considered.”
Mike Kwatinetz, General Partner at Azure Capital Partners said, “We are very pleased to welcome BIA DP as a new investor. We have already seen their ability to add strategic value as Cooking.com executes on its plan to become a significant player in online commerce, by creating branded stores relevant to buyers of cooking products.”
“Cooking.com merges two of our investment focus areas, quality content and technology-enabled services,” stated BIA DP’s Scott Chappell. “Our investment will support Tracy and her team at Cooking.com to further cement and grow its connections with consumer enthusiasts and enterprise partners.”
“BIA Digital Partners is focused on investing in category leaders. For more than 10 years, Cooking.com has built its reputation on being a content and product-rich ecommerce destination for those seeking high quality kitchenwares and specialty foods. The ‘Powered By Cooking.com’ network is a testament to the Company’s reputation in the marketplace, as they currently power many of the most respected brands in the industry,” said BIA DP’s Dovi. “We are delighted to add Cooking.com, Inc. to our investment portfolio.”
About BIA Digital Partners
BIA Digital Partners is a private investment firm, managing approximately $280 million. Financing is available for acquisitions, organic growth, recapitalizations and leveraged/management buyouts among other purposes. BIA Digital Partners maintains a focus on expansion-stage companies operating in the media, telecommunications, consumer internet and technology-enabled business and consumer services segments. Investments range from $5 to $20 million and larger with co-investors and are typically in the form of subordinated debt with warrants or preferred equity. For more information, visit www.biadp.com.
About Cooking.com
Cooking.com is transforming online shopping in the food and cooking space by going to customers and building innovative, entertaining shopping experiences with trusted brands. Cooking.com operates several uniquely branded websites including: Rachael Ray Store, Paula Deen Store, Calphalon Store, Betty Crocker Store, Pillsbury Store, Steamy Kitchen Store, Good Bite Store, and Marley Coffee. ‘Powered By Cooking.com’ delivers high touch, branded e-commerce solutions and category expertise, enabling partners to attract consumers, drive membership and build new revenue opportunities.
Cooking.com offers its customers access to over 60,000 products for the kitchen as well as recipes, menus, collections and a growing library of member-submitted cooking content. The company is committed to providing its customers with an exceptional experience and is the recipient of numerous awards for customer satisfaction. Cooking.com was founded in 1998 and is based in Marina del Rey, Calif.
About Azure Capital Partners
Azure is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm with over $650 million under management. The firm invests in early stage technology companies that are at the forefront of a transformative opportunity for growth. Azure has invested in and served as trusted advisors to some of the most successful and important technology companies created in the last decade including VMWare (NYSE: VMW), Bill Me Later (acquired by eBay), Calix (NYSE: CALX), Top Tier (acquired by SAP) and World Wide Packets (acquired by Ciena). The Azure team is recognized for industry thought leadership, a broad network of powerful industry relationships and a unique professional investment approach to venture investing. For more information, visit www.azurecap.com.

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Travel the nontraditional way

“If you regret the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.”
- Historical novelist James Michener
A few years ago, we found an easy way to dodge the mistake so many travelers make of isolating themselves from the curious dishes, strange habits, mysterious beliefs, and assorted lifestyles of people in other countries.
We joined a nontraditional travel club, staying in members’ homes instead of hotels. Over time, we figure we’ve saved a ton of money, made new friends, and added some zing to our travels.
As travel budgets shrink, particularly for those of us trying to make it on IRAs, pensions, and Social Security, nontraditional travel looks better and better.
Inns and B&Bs have been around forever, apartments can be rented by the week or month, and the Internet is full of opportunities to trade houses all over the world – all part of a growing nontraditional travel-stay world.
We found the Affordable Travel Club a bit different.
It’s a simple concept:
For $65 a year, members get a list of other members who have agreed to host them for a few nights and give them breakfast and local travel tips. In return, each member agrees to host occasionally when other ATC members come to town.
Hosts are usually paid $20 a night for a double ($30 for housing outside the United States) – although we have found the price can vary, especially during peak travel times in hot tourist spots. But it’s always a bargain.
ATC was started in 1992 by John and Suzanne Miller, who had done home exchanges but who wanted, in Suzanne Miller’s words, “to start something where there was no expectation of reciprocity – where you had to host them and then they hosted you. We wanted something where you paid your fee and stayed and you didn’t have to have the same people in an exchange.”
ATC now lists 2,400 homes in 49 states and 50 countries and caters to people over 40. Over the years, it has added home exchanges and house-sitting opportunities to the mix.
We learned about the group through a friend we met in Puerto Vallarta. She calls herself “an adventuress” and can usually be found globe-trotting, crewing on oceangoing yachts, or visiting friends she’s met through ATC.
Our ATC lodgings have included a two-bedroom apartment in Prague whose owner stocked the fridge with yogurt and orange juice for our breakfast; a comfy, flower-bedecked guest room in Cardiff whose owners introduced us to Welsh food at a local pub; a room near London whose landlady took us to her favorite tourist sites and cooked dishes from her native Bangladesh; and, in July, a city lodging in Rome whose owners were chock full of valuable advice on seeing the sites.
Along the way, the Prague couple told us stories of their bland, gray life under the thumb of the Soviets; the Welsh gentleman talked of his career with the country’s sports federation and regaled us with stories of local soccer greats; and our London hostess has become a friend we look forward to staying with whenever we’re in town.
All said they particularly liked getting to know Americans outside of the images on movies and TV.
Most of our ATC experiences have been foreign. And we haven’t had many members in our home because our place is small and guests have had to share our one bath, a deal-breaker for some travelers. But we’d love to have more guests in our house.
Our longtime friends Dot and Dick Salogga recently returned from a 38-day trip to Australia and New Zealand during which they stayed in 10 ATC homes for a total of 22 nights.
It wasn’t perfect. After all, these are people’s homes, not the Ritz.
One place the Saloggas stayed had a “quirky outside stairway,” Dot said. “You had to walk through the house to get to the bathroom. It was a little funky.”
And Dick ended up being a handyman for an older woman in Sydney who asked him to change a light fixture that had gone on the blink. “But we thoroughly enjoyed every one of our stays,” Dot said.
You might be asked to end an exhausting day of nonstop sightseeing with a cup of cocoa in the living room with hosts who want to know what you think of their hometown and about your life much further into the evening than you might like.
Or, particularly in Europe, you might have limited heat in the bedroom at night and not as much hot water as you’re used to for a morning shower.
Hosts have their complaints too: Guests don’t always ask before using the computer or washing machine, or they leave the bedroom littered with snack wrappers and soft-drink bottles.
But for the most part, traveling the nontraditional route is an enlightening and worthwhile experience – one our friends and we will do often. After all, the hosts and guests of ATC travel this way because they want to know more about one another and the wider world we live in.
As that other writer, Mark Twain, famously said: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
We like to think Twain would have loved to occasionally ditch the hotels and resorts on his foreign travels for a cup of cocoa and a long talk about current events in the living room of everyday hosts like us before drifting off to the guest room for the night.

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