The Best WordPress Themes for Food Blogs

Food blogging is a lot different then other niches out there. There is a lot involved from recipe testing and photographing your delicious food to typing and filling in recipe cards. In order for your blog to succeed, you need to have one of the best WordPress themes for food blogs.

Food blogging is a lot of fun and hard work too, don’t let me make you think it’s the easiest thing out there – sorry it’s not. But it is fun, rewarding and if you work hard you can make it a full time income.

But what happens when your theme doesn’t hold up to the changing needs of a food blog? You are left with a possibly broken or plain slow site.

Now I am not saying this is the only set of themes to choose from that will work. This is the best I have used and I absolutely love them! But there are other very successful food bloggers on other themes as well, many customize their themes.

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What are the Best WordPress Food Blog Themes?

From all the themes I have tried (free and paid), themes from Feast Design and Create by Restored 316 are the best! Yes I am affiliated with them, but I use them and absolutely love them or I wouldn’t recommend them. They are the themes we use.

But to get the full understanding of what the themes looks like live, we have Foodie Pro on The Kitchen and a Latte. This is our food blog so you can see how it is set up and functions live. On this site here we have Create by Restored 316.

I do highly recommend getting the Feast plugin to go with their theme as well if you choose one of theirs. The combination of their plugin and one of their themes makes them one of the best WordPress theme for food blogs! More on that below.

Feast themes are a child theme that runs on Genesis and Restored 316 themes are child themes that run on Kadence. Both are great themes built for speed and performance.

Why do I love Feast Themes?

First and most important is that they are designed specifically for food blogs. They are made by people who know a lot about food blogging and the best practices.

The blogging world and food blogging in particular is constantly changing. Over at Feast they keep up with the changes and let us know anything important. We get emails about important changes that happen or are about to happen.

They add some great features all the time that keep our sites functioning smooth and following best practices – you will need the plugin for best results. They understand that pagespeed is important and that we rely on them to offer us the best WordPress theme for food blogs!

I have tried a few other themes before switching over and I have been quite happy with the service and also the performance of my site since going to them. I switched over in the beginning of 2020.

Do I need the Feast Plugin?

I highly recommend it. Ok you don’t NEED it technically as in you can run their themes without it. But the Feast Plugin keeps you up to date without having to reinstall any themes. There are also customizations that are available through the plugin to keep your site running smooth.

They send updates through the plugin and also have amazing support that comes with the plugin. These updates and customizations are great for your SEO, pagespeed, accessibility and user experience.

What else is great? The plugin comes with access to all 5 of their themes and also the Genesis theme (parent company needed to run the Feast themes.) They used to be sold separately so it is nice that they are all part of the plugin. I can switch between their themes while keeping my settings store through the plugin if I wanted to (not that I am planning on doing that tho!)

Did you notice the “jump to” block that is like a table of contents on our food blog? That is part of using Feast. I use a table of contents here (through Kadence) and the jump to block (Feast) on my food blog for my readers. It makes it great for my readers to be able to jump to the sections they want or need to read. Seriously, don’t make users scroll just for ad revenue. That is poor user experience.

My bounce rate decreased and my time on page has actually increased with adding the jump to recipe links on my food blog (that is through WP recipe Maker) and the advanced jump to which is through Feast.

In combination with their plugin, their themes are one of the best WordPress themes for a food blog in my opinion. There are many others who agree and I think they are now one of the more popular ones among us food bloggers.

Why do I love Restored 316?

There is so much to love about Restored 316! It is very easy to customize, you will see when you go to Lauren’s site and look at the different themes. She makes it really simple to add any blocks to your site for a beautiful look while keeping your site fast.

It is a Kadence theme and Kadence is built for speed! It is absolutely amazing what you can customize between Restored 316 and Kadence. I only recently started on their themes and wow I am in love with them. They are definitely one of the best WordPress themes for food blogs.

While her themes are great for any niche, not just food blogging, Create is built with food blogging in mind. She also sells funnel and social media graphics so everything will match your site’s theme as well. I really cannot say enough great things about it.

Do you know what else is great? There is a built in WP Recipe Maker card so you can very easily have your recipe card match your site.

Do I need Kadence Pro?

You do not actually need Kadence pro to run any of Restored 316’s themes. They include what you need to make the site look like it does in the demo (or you can keep it more simple as well.) There is a free version of Kadence to use with the child themes.

We opted for Kadence pro, but we didn’t need it for our site to function well with the child themes. I am usually one who wants all the features that are available so I opted to get pro. I do love it but you can hold off for now if you need or prefer to.

Why does the right theme matter?

You need to have a great theme on your site no matter what niche you are in. The theme has to do with the functioning of your site as well as the design. In other words, the function of your site is only as good as the theme it is on.

Function and design should be created together. So when you design your site, you always want to design it around good user experience. If you are not using one of the best WordPress themes for food blogs, you may find it hard to succeed in this competitive niche.

Function should always be your top priority here over visual appearance. Sure you may want to have a huge logo with some really pretty words along with a super cool picture.

Sure all that stuff might look appealing to you, it’s what you wanted your site to look like. But is your site user friendly or does it just look pretty?

You don’t want a pretty site that will take 5 seconds to load because it isn’t optimized for speed, you won’t see much traffic. People don’t want to wait 5 seconds for a site to load. Ok, let me repeat that again – nobody wants to wait 5 seconds for a pretty site to load. They will bounce and go to the next blog.

No disrespect, but nobody cares what the font on your blog is. I had to tell myself that over and over because I wanted a cute font in the beginning. People come to you for one main reason – they want your recipe.