Sorted Food


Sorted Food is a British YouTube cooking channel and food website created by old school friends from Hertfordshire - Benjamin 'Ben' Ebbrell, Michael 'Mike' Huttlestone, Jamie Spafford and Barry Taylor. Around 2014 James Currie, who met Ebbrell in culinary school, joined the team first as a developmental chef and then as an on camera personality. The YouTube channel was created on March 10, 2010 and has grown to attract an audience so large that in January 2019 Google described SORTEDfood as "one of the world's largest food and cooking communities" They have also created the Sorted Club, which is a subscription based collection of apps to "learn, explore and change your routine for the better".

History

The Sorted Food YouTube channel was launched in March 2010 by Jamie Spafford, Ben Ebbrell, Barry Taylor and Mike Huttlestone. It now also features a secondary development chef, James Currie. The basis for the channel's accessible recipes came when Ebbrell, the only original member with any culinary training, started suggesting simple and cheap recipes for the others to try instead of eating only ready meals.
In 2015, the four Sorted Food members went on a three-month USA tour for NBC's Today Show

Current Content

As of January 2018 the company has 14 employees based in East London and now provide regular video content for their YouTube audience with a skew towards entertainment, inspiration and education in food and cooking content. The 5 members are designated as "chefs" who have been professionally trained, and "normals" who are home cooks.
Sorted works with a number of brand partners on large scale sponsored content. Recent examples include Visit The USA, Kenwood Kitchen Appliances, Ford, Android and Blizzard. A proportion of their video content centres around travel and destination marketing, using that to unlock new food adventures from locations, cuisines and cultures less familiar to them.
Their regular content includes ‘Pass It On- Recipe Relay’ whereby the team attempt to create a collaborative dish by working on it individually for 10 minutes each without communication with the others, ‘Ultimate Battles’, where two or three of the group compete against each other to create a dish under certain guidelines, and the self explanatory ‘Testing Kitchen Gadgets’. All of the above, plus many more are usually themed to fit the time of release or just themed to add extra ‘flavour’. Finally, sometimes they have a chef and a normal tasting 'pretentious' ingredients like caviar crisps, or rose petal jelly.

Publishing

The first two Sorted cookbooks, A Recipe for Student Survival and A Rookies Guide to Crackin' Cooking, were self-published in 2008 and 2012 respectively through "Co-Incidence Ventures" and released in both paperback and hardback editions. In 2012 they signed with Penguin Books and have so far released a beginners cookbook, Beginners Get... Sorted and an eBook, Food with Friends, which is also available in individual chapters. In 2017, the friends created "Desserts in Duvets" with the aid of a KickStarter campaign, funded by their ever-growing online community. They also have an app, called Sorted Books, available on iOS and Android devices.
Between 2018 and April 2020, Sorted released 7 new cookbooks. Early 2018 saw the limited release of You are Sorted a semi-cookbook, semi-autobiographical book exclusively for Sorted Book Club members, detailing recipes that inspired friendships and stories of the boys' journey to where they are today. The first to be released publicly was titled CBA2C: The Can't Be Arsed To Cook Book focused on simple recipes that needed little effort.
Bucket List, released in November 2018 collates the Sorted community's ultimate/favourite recipes from around the world. In the spring of 2019 Sorted released A.M Menu, a cookbook containing solely breakfast recipes. 'Hero Veg', a cookbook promoting the many qualities and uses of vegetables followed in the summer of 2019 and to finish the year 'The Smart Kitchen Guide' was completed to accompany the launch of their Sorted Packs App. Predictably, the book includes a huge variety of vegetarian and vegan recipes.
2020 saw a creative cookbook combining music and food with recipes inspired by genres of music in the form of Cooking To The Beat. Each recipe had a curated music playlist to listen to whilst cooking/eating.
In July 2020 their latest book, Can't be Arsed 2, was released.

Reach and awards

the YouTube channel has over 2.37 million subscribers and more than half a billion video views. Sorted Food is influential in social media, with over 184,000 followers on , over 265,000 followers on and over 240,000 followers on . They were listed 4th in The Guardians "30 Under 30: The Top Young People in Digital Media" in 2014.
"Best Online Program - Entertainment Award" 2011 Banff World Media Festival.
"New Media Award" 2014 Guild of Food Writers awards.
Ebbrell won the Good Food Channel's Market Kitchen search for the "next celebrity chef".
"Best Online Content" 2017 UK Blog Awards and were nominated for "Best Series of Videos" for their Game Changers work with the US Tourism Board at the CMAs.
Recent press, TV and radio coverage includes: Observer Magazine, Good Morning Britain, Blue Peter, Heat, The Sun, Delicious Magazine, Russell Howard's Christmas special, Radio 2, BBC 5Live, Shortlist, TES, New Business Magazine and Sky News in the UK. Plus have had regular appearances on America's The TODAY Show.

Books

In 2017, they started a book club and publish books every 3 months exclusively to book club members .
Edition No.Book TitleDate PublishedRemarks
1Desserts In DuvetsNovember 2017Started as a Kickstarter campaign that has raised more than £40,845 which exceeded the initial target of £20,000 . The book can be bought online on their website
SE 1You Are SortedApril 2018A special edition book that is exclusively for book and digital club members.
2CBA 2 CookJuly 2018Simple but delicious recipes that can be made quickly and easily.
3Bucket ListNovember 2018Contains ultimate/favourite recipes sent in by fellow chefs and community members.
4A.M. MenuApril 2019Contains breakfast recipes from around the world.
5Hero VegSeptember 2019Vegetarian and Vegan recipes that showcase the amazing potential of fruit and vegetables.
6Smart Kitchen GuideNovember 2019Cleverly created meal packs that combine recipe developed to save money, time and reduce food waste.
7Cooking To The BeatApril 2020Recipes inspired by the characteristics of 15 different genres of music; each paired with a bespoke
playlist that you can access online.
8Cant Be Arsed 2July 2020Different hacks to speed up cooking when you can't be bothered to cook.