Distant Kitchens
Private Family Vault & Recipe Preservation

Don’t Let Grandma’s Handwritten Recipes Fade Away.

Distant Kitchens is your family’s private, permanent recipe vault—built to preserve your heritage, protect your food traditions, and bring long-distance relatives together around the dishes that shaped you.

Start your free trial See how it works

14-day free trial, cancel anytime. $6 a month or $60 a year for up to 6 people.

Distant Kitchens is a paid web app: a family admin starts a subscription and invites relatives, who can sign in with a password or with Google. Google sign-in shares only your name and email address with us. See our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

The problem

The recipe card is fading in one drawer. The family is in six states.

Fading index cards

Grandma’s stained, handwritten index cards get a little harder to read every year. The ink fades, the corners tear, and the one copy is the only copy.

Locked in one home

The family binder sits on a single shelf in a single house. Everyone else is hundreds of miles away and has to call just to ask what goes in the gravy.

Lost in group texts

The rest of the recipes are buried in endless group text threads and screenshots nobody can ever find again.

The group text isn't a cookbook.

The solution

One permanent home for the recipes your family loves.

One private server per family

Your vault runs in its own isolated environment on Fly.io. It is never a shared database with anyone else’s family, and there are no ads or ad tracking.

Zero tech friction

Relatives just open a link in their phone’s browser. Nothing to install, and they can sign in with a password or Google, so it works for the least tech-savvy people at the table.

Original and transcript, side by side

Keep an HD photo of the handwritten original right next to a clean, typed version you can cook from. Type it in yourself, or screenshot a printed recipe and we read the words for you.

Where this came from

It started as one family's cookbook.

"I built Distant Kitchens for my own family. We're spread out all over the country, and our recipes were scattered the same way. Some were in Mom's recipe box, some in texts, and some were only in someone's head."

"So I made us a shared family cookbook where everyone could add what they knew and cook it anywhere."

It worked so well that other people started asking for one. Now any family can have it. Our own family's cookbook is still called Coast to Coast Cookbook — Distant Kitchens is that same idea, built for any family that's spread out but still wants to cook together.

— Matt, founder

Pricing

One price for the whole family.

No per-person fees for your first six people — about a dollar each. No ads, ever.

Monthly Annual 2 months free

Family Plan

$ 60 /year

Up to 6 people. 14 days free. Need more room? Add another block of 6 for +$60/year, any time.

  • ✓ Unlimited recipes and photos*
  • ✓ Cook Mode, meal plans, and party plans
  • ✓ Smart shopping lists
  • ✓ Your own separate, private family space
Start your free trial

* Fair-use limits may apply for extremely large libraries. 14 days free; cancel any time.

Give as a gift

One year of the Family Plan for $60, up to 6 people. It starts when they're ready, any time within 24 months of buying.

Give a year

See all pricing and how we compare · How it works

Your family's next Thanksgiving deserves a better place than a group text.

Get everyone's recipes in one place before the holidays. Start your 14-day free trial: card required, but you won't be charged until the trial ends. Cancel anytime.

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