A recipe for chocolate chip pancakes was the start of it all.
Findlay native Ian Hoyt said he wanted to make his mom's "famous" pancakes for breakfast one morning. But just like always, the recipe was nowhere to be found.
"And of course, I have to text mom again, which is not a bad thing," he said. "But you never know, at some point it gets a little annoying when you're asking for it all the time."
So Hoyt and Caroline Lloyd, his life partner and business partner, decided to launch family recipe sharing software called Morsel.
"Morsel is great for all the important groups in your life, so think your family, your extended family, your extended, extended family, your best friend group, and your co-work group or maybe even your school group," said Hoyt, 28. "This is the place where anytime you need to bring recipes together among people, Morsel is the place to do that."
A 2012 Liberty-Benton High School graduate, Hoyt attended Ohio University for a year before ultimately dropping out to concentrate on a company he'd started in his dorm room.
He said the idea for the recipe software first came up in 2019 when, after a long week at work, the couple headed to a New York City bar to let off steam.
"I was like, 'You know what, let's make my mom's famous chocolate chip pancakes tomorrow morning as a reward for a tough week,'" Hoyt recalled. "And then I ultimately did what I always do, which is try to find my mom's pancake recipe for like the 1,000th time."
That's when the couple decided there had to be a way to bring family recipes together in one central place, while over time also recording the family's generational history connected to the recipes.
The idea didn't go any further until 2021. By this time, the couple had settled in the mountains of western North Carolina after living full time in an RV for a year. They bought their first home, which ultimately led them to host Thanksgiving and Christmas for their families last year.
"I was tasked with hosting her family at Thanksgiving with all my family recipes, of which I had none," said Hoyt. "That's when we realized, 'We have to figure out a better solution for this.'"
Hoyt is familiar with digital space and marketing, and Lloyd is a sales force implementation consultant. However, they partnered with a strategic development agency to bring the first generation of Morsel to life, he said.
The platform features a way to easily catalog family recipes, according to Hoyt. It allows for unlimited groups of people so everyone can collectively share recipes together, as well as private groups to keep secret family recipes secure. Any amount of recipes can be uploaded, he noted, and the software can be used on both a computer and a mobile device.
"Say you have a famous lemon poppy seed cake recipe. You can add that to Morsel, and then you can choose what groups you add that to so you don't have to recreate it every time," he said.
It's kind of like a social platform for recipes, he added. "But it's only social in the sense that it's private to the people you want to see your recipes, who understand how coveted family recipes are."
There's also an activity feed where members can comment and leave photos when they try someone's recipe.
"I know for my mom's sake she gets a lot of pride and enjoyment when I try a recipe of hers. And I want to make sure she's notified and knows when I'm doing something that she's added to the Morsel group," said Hoyt.
They're now preparing to launch the ability to create a physical version of group recipes, he said. Hoyt's mom, Brenda Hoyt-Brackman of Findlay, has let him hold onto some of her recipe cards for purposes of the project.
"You quickly realize through no fault of anyone's that beautiful handwriting is also really challenging to read," he said. "We see that a lot of people when they add recipes to Morsel, they add that photo of the recipe card to document it. But then they're transcribing that into an easier read recipe."
Throughout the process, Hoyt said he's learned that food is all about community.
"Caroline and I love doing things that bring people together," he said. "I think that's what Morsel is really focused on."
To learn more about Morsel, visit the company's website at getmorsel.com
Wolf: 419-427-8419