Distaste for Mustard Leads to Yummly

I know we probably need another social networking site like we need a punch to the stomach.

So perhaps a better use for our midsection is to eat food and, related to that, swap recipes and hang out with other foodies online. That’s something you can do thanks to Yummly, a Redwood City, Calif.-based startup that I’ve been tracking since its beta launch in April.

It is one of a number of food-related sites you can follow online, which is of interest to me since I like to post pics of my food and drink on Facebook. And I know others do, too, which no doubt explains the rise of such sites as Foodspotting.

Yummly, which to date has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding, formally launched this week, debuting all its bells and whistles.

At its heart, Yummly is a food search site that currently has more than 500,000 recipes on file. One great feature that I like about Yummly is that I can input my food preferences (I’m a vegetarian), and the database will remember my likes and dislikes when I do a search. I can also input other dietary and allergy filters, as well as a full cabinet of likes and dislikes, in addition to budgetary restraints. The site also calculates the nutritional value of recipes, displaying the breakdown of calories, fats, proteins and carbs.

The customization features are what CEO Dave Feller likes, too. Feller, who loves Italian cuisine, doesn’t like mustard. He says he was always annoyed every time he went to a food site and came across recipes with mustard in them.

“What sets us apart is that we understand food,” says Feller, who adds that he expects to go out soon and raise venture funding, although he doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to do so.

He wouldn’t disclose how much the startup has raised since it was founded in 2009, but Yummly’s founding angel investors and advisory board includes Michael Dearing, Harrison Metal Capital; Jeff Jordan, CEO of OpenTable; Bruce Shaw, president of The Harvard Common Press; Bill Cobb, former President of eBay, and a former executive of PepsiCo and Yum! Brands; Brad O’Neill, CEO of TechValidate and founding investor of StumbleUpon; and Justin LaFrance and Geoff Smith, co-Founders of StumbleUpon.