Is it hard to be successful at food blogging? Seeing as how it is one of the go-to “work from home” job types – I’d say it can be fairly challenging to get going. But, at the same time, your level of success is also going to depend on the type of food niche that you choose.

At the moment, there’s quite a lot of opportunity for people who are able to travel the world and document their food findings for others to enjoy. In particular, being able to go places less traveled is where you can make the biggest impact. But, even if you decide to go the more traditional route – success will be largely determined by the effort that you put in.

Reading: Best wordpress themes for food blogs

When all is said and done, food recipes will never go out in style. It’s one of those topics where people will see a certain recipe on the TV and then quickly try to find it online. The only question is, is it going to be your recipe site they land on?

Table of Contents

Things to consider when choosing a recipe theme

First of all, as a publishing platform – WordPress provides a seamless experience to organize your content by categories, tags, and more. If you look at some of the top food and recipe blogs online, most of them are running WordPress. The only real difference is that they all use a specific theme since basic themes don’t provide the means to share recipes.

So, here are the features to consider the most:

Recipe Sharing. The most important feature of a recipe theme is the ability to share recipes in a custom format. While you could use a plugin for this, having this feature in-built is extremely practical.
SEO. The second thing is SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Which, in the long run, is going to be your main source of organic traffic. As such, it’s important that the theme provides good optimization for it.
Branding. Another thing to consider is the ability to brand yourself. If you’re an expert in a specific cuisine – it goes a long way if you can build a brand around yourself.

I’ve put a large emphasis on these features, so expect the majority of themes to provide all 3 unequivocally. Among other things, we’re looking for themes with a nice style, and in some cases – a more simplistic design if minimalism is your penchant.

Let’s get started.

TinySalt

One of the things I have recently been thinking about (in terms of design) is how a website looks when it is presented from afar. And what I mean by that is – does the design of your site look presentable if looked at as a whole picture. It’s quite easy to go hit & miss with website design because one specific feature can overwhelm the entire page design.

As for food & recipe blogs, the thing that’s going to be looked at the most is the recipe presentation itself. In fact, it will probably stay on your readers’ screens for the entire duration of the cooking process. So, having a presentable recipe widget is practically mandatory.

And with TinySalt – I think you’re going to leave a lasting impression on your readers. The in-built recipe sharing widget is not only extremely presentable but includes functionality like adding images of the cooking process and letting you explain the cooking process in great detail.

You’ll notice in the right-hand side corner, there are buttons for sharing the recipe on Pinterest, but also for printing it out directly. These kinds of features can make all the difference in how visitors perceive your recipe site. And, it goes without saying that this is only a fraction of what the TinySalt theme provides in terms of features. Check out the demo below to get a more in-depth feel not only for recipe pages, but also for categories, and the homepage also.

HealthFirst

Another aspect of food blogging is that not all food blogs are made for recipes alone. In other words, many nutritionists and food experts choose to use their websites as the bridge between sharing recipes, but also promoting books and other educational content.

The HealthFirst theme has 5 distinct layouts pre-made for this specific use case. You get a traditional recipe-sharing layout, but also layouts to present yourself as an expert. And this in turn will help you build a community around yourself.

In fact, you could probably adapt this theme to a food delivery service if you felt inclined. The integrated eCommerce features should make this an absolute breeze. I also love the fact that blog posts (recipes) can be tailored to be centered around a recipe and how to prepare a certain dish, but also to talk about your food experience and everything else going on in your life.

The above screenshot showcases the presentation for each recipe, and you’ll notice that this also enables for your readers to adjust serving size.

From your recipe editing dashboard, you’ll be able to adjust ingredients based on how many servings a reader wishes to prepare. Again, little features like this go a long way towards making sure readers bookmark your site and keep coming back for more detailed recipes.

EasyMeals

In all honesty, maintaining a recipe site by yourself is a lot of work. The first 50 recipes might come easy, but as time goes on – it gets increasingly harder to constantly publish high-quality and relevant content on your food blog. And that’s me talking from experience.

But, what if you turned your food blog into a community site? With the EasyMeals theme, you can invite your readers and subscribers to become published members of the community. And that means that readers can themselves submit their favorite and unique recipes. It’s food for thought (sorry for the pun!) if you plan on dedicating yourself to this niche long-term.

As for the design, it’s impressive, to say the least. Here’s a sample from the homepage:

Immediately upon landing on your homepage, readers are able to quickly navigate to the categories that are most relevant to their search query. Each category has a unique grid-style layout that includes all the recipes shared in that category so far. This is not only great for user experience but also makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index your pages.

Basil

Basil is a WordPress recipe theme optimized specifically for writing out detailed explanations of how to make a certain dish possible. You have the ability to create a multi-layered rundown of the steps required for each recipe. And, for the sake of user experience – readers can use the checkbox functionality to tick off each step they’ve already completed on a specific recipe.

Alongside recipe instructions, you can include nutritional information – so as long as you know the specifics of what each recipe contains. Overall, this is a very traditional (albeit popular) design that would best serve food blogs that plan on publishing a lot of recipes at once.

Foodhub

One of the best features of the Foodhub theme is the way in which you can present your entire recipe catalog. Much like browsing an eCommerce store – readers are able to apply several filters and other data points to narrow down the list of recipes that best suit their needs.

You have the ability to set the filters yourself, and then upon writing out the recipe – assign those filters individually. In other words, it works in the same way as if adding a category or tags to your recipes. But, the best part is that you can add filters like Vegan-friendly, Allergen-free, different Cuisine types, and so forth.

So, even if a reader landed on your page from a search engine, they might feel inclined to see what other recipes you’ve published. And, thanks to the intricate filter – they’ll have the ability to narrow down the precise style or type of food that they’re interested in.

Cuisine

I think it’s a fair assessment to say that the themes we’ve seen so far have been heavily focused either on large-scale branding or built around community aspects. So, for a little bit of change of pace – here’s the Cuisine theme; a more practical food-related design that’s perfect for independent publishers looking to build a personal recipe-sharing blog.

The minimalistic design together with various widgets makes this an ideal candidate for anyone looking to publish blog-style recipes on a frequent basis. You get all the familiar widgets like an About Me card, social links, a real-time Instagram feed, and other notable elements such as a featured slider, and a newsletter signup form. One of the best ways to stay in touch with your readers is through newsletters – so having this functionality in-built is a huge bonus.

Being a theme built specifically for foodies – you do get a custom recipe-sharing card design. And this will be accessible directly from your WordPress post-sharing dashboard. As you can see from the screenshot above, it’s neat and tidy. And provides plenty of room to explain the dish, but also includes visual elements, and of course – the rundown of ingredients.

Ranna

The Ranna theme will do wonders for your project if you plan on publishing a large number of recipes. It is specifically optimized for having a category-style browsing experience. And, you can pick and choose from up to 5 different display options for your posts, recipes, and tutorials.

In fact, this customization flexibility also extends to displaying sections of your site. For example, you can change up the display of sidebars, but also remove them entirely. Additionally, you have numerous display options for showcasing your recipe list. Lists, grids, boxes, and sliders are all included in the theme and have been pre-added to each of the demo layouts.

And last but not least, the Ranna theme does support community submissions. Users can create their own accounts and then submit their recipes through a custom form.

Sprout & Spoon

SoloPine has been working on the Sprout & Spoon theme for over 6 years, and in this time – more than 2,300 food bloggers have chosen this exact theme for their food site. So, what is it about Sprout & Spoon that makes it so special? From a design perspective – it’s the combination of minimal (boxed) design combined with a clean navigation structure. And, a custom-made recipe-sharing widget to make sure you can provide extensive details of the cooking process.

I also found that the overall structure is oriented around a community-driven approach. In other words, this theme is ideal for any of you looking to build an online presence. Subscription forms will help you collect email subscribers, and the form itself can be showcased in various sections of your site. Whether it’s below each recipe, or on the sidebar.

Furthermore, this theme includes a unique Recipe Index design, which actually has 3 different styles you can pick from. And through this index, you can organize your blog so that readers can quickly navigate through the various categories in which you publish recipes.

Succulents

I think I could write an entire blog post around the reasons to choose the Succulents themes, but to break it down into a few paragraphs – it’s a multi-purpose theme for lifestyle/wellness blogs. As it happens, the theme does include a separate layout for food-related blogs/websites also.

The design is very much modern, and optimized through custom typography, effects like parallax, and a fluid navigation experience. By putting all these elements together in one big package – not only does your site look good, but it also portrays a professional feel for the reader.

And yes, Succulents does have its own widget for displaying recipe information. Ultimately, you have the choice to use this as a traditional blogging theme, but if you ever need to – you’ll have the option to switch things up and make a more brandable layout specific to your goals and ideals.

Braise

If you ever feel like you’re indecisive about your design choices, a theme like Braise is going to help take the edge off thanks to its many layout variations. Out of the box, you get access to 8 different layouts, which go from a practical blog design to professional layouts for selling books, courses, or simply presenting yourself as a food expert.

To further build upon that flexibility, Braise is built on the back-end of Elementor’s page builder, so anything you see in one of the demos will be possible to further customize by you. One feature in particular of this theme is the shortcode approach to section design. In other words, it’s possible to mix and match all of the design elements through the use of shortcodes.

So, if you see a specific element in one of the pre-made layouts, you can in fact take that specific element’s shortcode, and then apply it to the design that you felt meets your needs the most.

Pivoo

Interestingly, very few theme developers invest their time to provide the means to share video recipes – though that functionality can be achieved through third-party plugins. And, another lacking feature is a native dark mode. So, as you might already guess – the Pivoo theme does provide both features out of the box. It has a separate layout for video recipe sharing, and the entire theme has a custom dark mode design.

One thing that might be on your mind is, “Can you still share the recipe process even if you publish a video?”. And the answer is yes. You can still provide recipe details to a full extent through the custom-designed recipe card. The only difference is that your readers will also be able to follow along through your video. For reference, the video itself can be shared either from YouTube or uploaded directly onto your WordPress website.

TeconceTheme released the Pivoo theme quite recently, so you have a solid opportunity to grab this theme and utilize its unique design before anyone else. You’ll want to take a deep dive into the demo because there’s a great variety in design across the multiple pre-made layouts.

Cook&Meal

In this new era of WordPress – everything is about Blocks and reusable components. Which, as it happens, is the centerpiece for theme Cook&Meal theme. With more than 45 reusable Block elements, you can reach up to 400 unique layout variations. And that’s just from the default configuration, with more variety possible if you do custom styling.

This approach to reusable Blocks also means that you have the ability to make extensive customizations to core sections of your blog.

In particular, you can modify blog layouts (presentation), post layouts (recipes or otherwise), and choose one of the 10+ header/footer layouts. It’s an enormous amount of customization options that will put you in the driver’s seat of what you want your final design to look like.

Becipe

As soon as I saw the Becipe theme I knew it’d be on this list. It’s a design that’s in a league of its own if we consider the traditional approach to WordPress theme design. And, despite having a unique look – the functionality of this theme is kept to a bare minimum. That might sound like a bad thing, but if your goal is to share recipes and only that – having a theme that doesn’t overwhelm you with complex features is often the better choice.

Not to mention that it’s also much faster than some of its counterparts. Everyone knows that site performance is critical for succeeding in both Google Search, but also to provide a great user experience whenever someone does come to your site to check out your content.

It’s heavily focused on shelling out in-depth recipe information, and there are plenty of tiny widgets and elements to make your site feel reputable.

Thatix

I’d say Thatix strives to be a professionally-oriented theme that will go together well for publishers who plan on having multiple writers publishing recipes. A design this rich (design & functionality) might be a bit overkill for small-scale projects.

Some of the interesting features of this theme include a registration-based review system, so ultimately – you can foster a community around your blog. This can be further amplified by adding forum functionality, either through a custom system or by using bbPress.

For me, the most important feature of any recipe site is that the recipe information itself is presented neatly and in easy to read manner. And I feel like the Thatix theme does a good job at this, it even has a separate widget for displaying the nutritional data of each meal. And I do believe that little details like that go a long way toward attracting returning visitors.

My advice for aspiring food bloggers

Having reached the end of this massive collection – I’d like to conclude with a bit of advice for anyone looking to start a food blog.

In this timeline, your number one source of organic visitors is still going to be Google Search and similar search engines. As such, choosing a theme that’s both fast but also SEO-optimized is crucial. Which was also a factor for this entire theme collection.

But more than that, I’d recommend digging deep into understanding concepts like long-tail keywords and building a brand. Food is one of those niches where it’s very easy to get discouraged by lack of results, and I think to greatly improve your chances – you have to be willing to make some creative choices that will separate you from the fierce competition.

― Featured image illustration by Storyset

For more information please see the list of Best wordpress themes for food blogs

Source: https://stackdiary.com/wordpress-food-recipe-themes/