Starting a food blog is a great way to share your passion for cooking and baking. Whether you’re a professional chef or a home cook, a well-designed WordPress website can help you reach a wider audience and showcase your recipes in an attractive and organized manner.
With so many food blog themes available on WordPress, finding the right one for your unique needs and branding can be challenging.
In this article, we’ve curated a list of the top 12 free WordPress food blog themes of our choice. Each theme has features designed to make your content shine, engage visitors, and make your site stand out.
What to Look For When Choosing a Theme?
Choosing a food theme that lets you build a food blog quickly and with style is imperative. This means your theme should have plenty of pre-designed templates for essential pages, from your About Me page to blog page layouts, which will be especially important when displaying recipes on your blog.
Additionally, you’ll want a theme with plenty of space for displaying ads, as this is a common monetization method for food bloggers. If the theme is WooCommerce-compatible and has pre-designed store templates, this is even better, as you may choose to sell branded merch or your own cookbooks in your web store.
Your theme should be aesthetically pleasing but not full of too many functionalities that can slow down your site. A few in-built blocks or block patterns can be helpful for website design, but you would want something other than a theme that has in-built recipe displays, as these will be limited compared to what you’d get with a dedicated plugin. On the other hand, a theme should display recipes well when you integrate a plugin like WP Recipe Maker.
1. Kale
Kale is an aesthetic, uncluttered theme designed primarily for food bloggers. Its free version is highly mobile responsive and integrates well with WooCommerce, enabling you to convert your food blogging into a full-fledged business.
Some advantages of the free version of Kale are:
- Minimalist design: Clean, beautifully designed layouts with two blog archive page templates (grid and mixed format).
- User-friendliness: Kale’s easy setup allows bloggers of all skill levels to quickly create a professional-looking site without needing to delve into code.
- Responsive and mobile-friendly: The theme’s layouts are compatible with desktop and mobile devices.
- Basic WooCommerce integration: You can sell affiliate/branded products, such as food equipment, ingredients, cookbooks, and other merchandise.
- MailPoet integration: You can send regular emails to subscribers about new recipes, offers, or tips on your blog.
- Social Media icons: Setting up social media sharing icons on all pages is quick and easy.
Users of this theme point out its clean structure, ease of use, and solid customer support from its developers. One such user is the owner of a vegan food blog, who commented: “This theme is fantastic. It looks how I want it to look, and with the help of a top-notch support team, I’m able to make it do everything I want it to.”
Kale also has a paid version, which can be unlocked for a one-time payment of $39 and an additional $7.99 monthly. This premium version unlocks additional customization options, more layout choices, extra widgets, and premium support from the developer team.
2. GuCherry Blog
GuCherry Blog is a modern, interactive food blog theme that has clean layouts and a fully responsive design. Developed by Everest Themes, GuCherry emphasizes visual storytelling, making it an excellent choice for those who love to share their food experiences through photography and engaging narratives.
Some of the best features of the free version of GuCherry Blog are:
- Engaging visual layouts: GuCherry Blog strongly emphasizes visual engagement, providing layouts that beautifully frame your food photography and blog content.
- Easy customization: You can customize your blog in real time, offering various banner options, layout designs, and color palettes to create a solid first impression.
- Responsive and retina-ready: Responsive and retina-ready means your content will look appealing on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone.
- Built-in social media icons: These icons direct readers to your social media to make it easy for them to follow you on other platforms.
- SEO Optimized: GuCherry is built with search engines in mind and will help you rank higher and be more visible.
GuCherry has a 4.7 score out of 5 in WordPress. Most of the reviewers expressed their contentment with the theme’s ease of use, rich customization options, and support from the technical team. For example, one of the reviews states: “This theme is great to work on, and the support is second to none. The pro is better with more add-ons, but overall, it’s simply a great theme. Would highly recommend it to anyone looking to write a blog.”
GuCherry Blog’s paid version, GuCherry Blog Pro, costs $57 annually. The theme’s pro version offers additional font, color, layout, header, and footer options and access to live chat technical support.
3. Elara
Elara is technically a multi-purpose blogging theme, but its free version also has great layouts for food bloggers. Its best feature is a unique Home page with multiple sidebar placement options.
Some other key features of the theme are:
- Elegant featured slider: Elara’s featured slider is a standout tool for highlighting your most enticing recipes or posts on your landing page.
- Video posts: Fully responsive to any video content you might want to publish.
- Social media icons: Ability to easily add your social media icons, enabling readers to follow your profiles and share your content on their networks.
- Plugin support: Allowing easy integration with recipe plugins as well as Contact Form 7 and WP Forms Lite.
Reviews of Elara highlight its ease of use and clean outlook. A new blogger who chose Elara gave a five-star review and said, “We are fairly new to blogging and use this wonderful theme for our blog Heritage Roots Homestead. We love the simple and clean look and feel of the theme. Unlike some of the other themes we have tried, Elara is extremely easy to navigate and offers a wide range of customization choices.”
The paid version of Elara Blog, known as Elara Pro, costs $39 one-time and $7.99 monthly for ongoing support and features. This premium version unlocks additional features and customization options to give your food blog an even more polished and unique look and priority access to support.
4. OceanWP
OceanWP is a lightweight, highly customizable, multi-purpose theme with powerful features and compatibility with the most popular WordPress plugins. Its free options boast flexibility, ease of use, and high responsiveness. Ocean WP lists several pre-set theme options for you to pick and use. Here is a brief overview of some of its best features:
- Rich template library: 12+ ready-to-use templates explicitly focusing on food and restaurant niches.
- High customization: There is an extensive range of customization options for templates, headings, footers, fonts, and colors.
- WooCommerce support: You can sell merchandise or digital products directly from your blog.
- Responsive and retina-ready: The theme is device-responsive and can work flawlessly on any device.
- Performance-oriented: OceanWP is optimized for speed, providing a fast-loading experience that keeps visitors engaged and reduces bounce rates.
Plugin compatibility: The plugin is compatible with major page builders, such as Elementor, Brizy, Beaver Builder, Divi, Visual Composer, and SiteOrigin.
Users of OceanWP left over 5,000 five-star reviews, mainly mentioning the flexibility, versatility, and ease of use. One such user said: “It is customization capabilities are incredible and the learning curve for using the theme is so friendly” in their review of the theme.
OceanWP offers a core theme that’s free to use, with the option to extend its functionality through premium extensions. The premium packages start at $31 for a single site license, with the option of paying monthly or annually. The premium options grant access to premium extensions and demos, advanced portfolio and gallery options, and priority support.
5. Foodielicious Blog
Foodielicious Blog is designed by SuperbThemes to help food bloggers easily monetize their websites with a lot of advertising space for running affiliate programs. For example, you could set up an affiliate marketing program with your local grocery stores, which have an online presence, and display their products on your recipe pages.
Some of the other critical features of the free version of the Foodielicious Blog theme are:
- Visual design: Offering a visually appealing layout for displaying high-quality food photography.
- Translation-ready: The free version of the theme has built-in features to support more than one language.
- High customization: Customization is easy to apply and allows you to set up custom logos and favicons.
- Mobile optimized: Ensures smooth operation in mobile devices.
- WooCommerce integration: Offers full-scale integration, even for the free version of the theme.
The Foodielicious theme doesn’t have any reviews on the WordPress theme store. The premium version of Foodielicious Blog starts with a payment of $29. Other packages include more features, which can go up to $129. The premium version of the theme offers a richer array of features and customization options designed to enhance the blogging experience and provide more ways to engage with your audience.
It is important to note that Foodielicious Blog is a child theme of the Customizable Blogily theme, so it may not be as frequently updated as the main theme.
6. Bakery Cafe
While Bakery Cafe is technically designed for bakery shops, it displays recipe posts beautifully and can be an excellent fit for any food blogger.
Here are some reasons why Bakery Cafe can be a good free food blog theme option:
- Warm design: Bakery Cafe exudes a cozy, inviting atmosphere that mirrors the comfort of a favorite local bakery.
- Translation-ready: The theme offers templates to support more than one language easily.
- Customization flexibility: Live customizer allows you to change colors, logos, headers, blog layouts, and more. It also offers standard and custom shortcodes that you can use to create dedicated sections showcasing your food expertise and business value.
- WooCommerce integration: Even the free version of the theme offers full WooCommerce support for food bloggers looking to monetize their sites.
- Responsive and fast: The theme is fully responsive with mobile-friendly layouts and is optimized for speed and performance.
There are no online reviews for the Bakery Cafe theme.
The paid version of the theme costs $39 and offers a richer recipe of features, more advanced customization options, and priority access to technical support.
7. Bakes and Cakes
Bakes and Cakes stands out as a free food blog theme that caters specifically to the sweet segment of the food blogging world. Offering a blend of aesthetic appeal and functionality, this theme is perfect for professional pastry chefs, baking enthusiasts, and cake decorators looking to share their creations online.
Some highlights from the features of the Bakes and Cakes theme are:
- Theme-specific design: The design resembles a well-decorated cake, perfectly fitting to all the baking and pastry-related posts.
- SEO friendly: The free version of the theme is fully SEO-optimized to help you rank higher in search engine results.
- Responsive: Fully responsive to mobile devices and translation-ready.
According to user reviews, mobile compatibility, technical support, and ease of use are the best parts of this theme. One example of such a review states: “It perfectly suits my needs and is very easy to use, even for somebody like me who is a total beginner! The theme works perfectly on mobile, and I even think it looks better on the phone than on PC! Most importantly, the support team is very good, they reply within a very short delay and have helped me solve some difficulties that I was facing.”
The premium version of the Bakes and Cakes theme is available for $59 per year. Other options include more features, which can increase the price to hundreds of dollars. The paid version enriches your blogging experience with additional features and customization options, giving you more control and flexibility over your site’s design and functionality.
8. Foodie
Foodie by StudioPress offers a clean, minimalist design that focuses squarely on your dishes. It’s the ultimate free theme for those who want their food to do the talking, with ample space for high-quality photographs and beautifully formatted recipes.
Some of the rich features that make it a top pick for food bloggers are:
- Customization flexibility: This feature offers a high level of customization capabilities, from layout configurations to typography and color choices, without compromising speed or performance.
- Mobile-responsive and HTML5 markup: Foodie is designed to be fully responsive, ensuring your site looks and performs well on all devices. Additionally, its HTML5 markup guarantees the latest web standards are met.
- Security: Foodie is built on the Genesis Framework, which offers an enhanced level of security as well.
A review article on the Foodie theme examines all aspects of the theme in detail and states, “It helps you build a highly functional website that is clean, bright and elegant, with content that is beautifully displayed and easy to navigate to. There are a huge number of customisation options (the only problem may be when to stop playing with them!), so you can really make your blog your own)…”
The premium version of Foodie starts at a one-time $75 payment, which grants you access to more enhanced widgets and tools while benefitting from the perks of the Genesis Framework, such as robust performance, security, and SEO capabilities.
9. Cookely
Cookely is designed to reflect a dynamic and bustling kitchen environment in mind. It embraces the essence of versatility, making it an excellent choice for culinary bloggers who juggle various food-related topics. The main benefits of Cookely are:
- Flexible layout options and color customization: There is a range of layout options, from traditional blog layouts to more modern grid styles and the ability to adjust the whole color palette.
- SEO-friendly: The theme code is SEO-optimized to help you rank higher in search results.
- Speed: The theme is optimized for fast loading times.
A Cookely theme user shared his experience with the theme by stating: “Fully responsive and minimalistic themes are not easy to find. Compass is a perfect match for us, as it is designed with a no-frills mentality. Because of the clean layout, our content will get all the attention, and it will be readable on any device.”
The premium version of Cookely costs $79 annually or a $199 one-time purchase. The pro version gives access to detailed documentation and support, enhanced customization options, and regular updates.
10. Foodica Lite
Foodica by WPZOOM boasts a light, airy design aesthetic ideally suited for showcasing high-quality food photography and detailed recipes. The version is called Foodica Lite and is a top choice for elevating their online culinary presence. Foodica Lite’s key features are:
- Post slider: Slider functionality allows you to highlight your selected posts.
- Customization options: The theme offers various customization options, including color schemes, font choices, and layout settings.
- Responsive and retina-ready: Foodica Lite automatically adapts to mobile and desktop screens for optimum user experience.
Foodica theme has five out of five stars in WordPress’ review section. Most users highlighted the theme’s clean layout and effective customer support. For example, one user commented: “It took some learning to figure everything out but really didn’t take me more than a couple of days. Any time I hit a snag in the road (I couldn’t figure out how to turn on my comments, lol), Their support staff was super helpful! They were very friendly and quick to help! Definitely recommend them.”
The pro version of Foodica is available for purchase at $79 annually for a single site license, offering a rich suite of features and dedicated support to ensure your food blogging journey is both successful and enjoyable.
11. Veganos
Veganos offers a refreshing platform for food bloggers passionate about healthy, sustainable eating. Whether you’re sharing vegan recipes, nutritional advice, or your journey toward a plant-based lifestyle, Veganos provides the perfect backdrop to highlight your green content. Let’s explore the wholesome features that make Veganos a nourishing pick for modern food bloggers.
- Clean design: Veganos boasts a clean, minimalist aesthetic highlighting your plant-based dishes.
- Free: Veganos doesn’t have a premium feature. The theme is free to download.
- Customization options: Veganos offers various customization options, allowing you to tweak the theme’s colors, layout, and more to match your personal or brand style.
- Mobile-friendly: Veganos ensures a smooth and responsive user experience across all platforms, making your content look good on all platforms.
The Veganos theme has no reviews on the WordPress theme store.
12. Neve
Neve by Themeisle is a lightweight, versatile WordPress theme designed to offer a fast, fresh start for any website, including food blogs. Its emphasis on speed and mobile-first design ensures that your culinary site performs beautifully across all devices, providing an optimal viewing experience for your audience.
Here are some of the highlights of the free version of the theme:
- Speed and performance: Neve is built with speed at its core, ensuring that your food blog loads quickly and efficiently. This is crucial for keeping visitors engaged and improving your site’s SEO ranking, as search engines favor fast-loading sites.
- Customization Flexibility: Even in its free version, Neve offers a high level of customization. Users can easily adjust the layout, header, and footer settings to match their personal or brand style.
- Basic WooCommerce: The free version also includes a basic WooCommerce integration for food bloggers looking to expand into selling merchandise, cookbooks, or cooking classes.
Customer reviews of Neve mainly talk about its ease of use and clear outline. An example of such a review states: ”Having used the Neve theme for a considerable period now, I’ve found myself consistently returning to it after experimenting with various other WordPress themes. This recurring preference speaks volumes about Neve’s exceptional qualities. Its flexibility and ease of customization stand out, making it a superior choice for both newcomers and seasoned developers alike.”
The paid version of Neve starts from €69 per year and unlocks advanced features, extensions, and dedicated support to enhance your food blogging experience.
Take the next step to perfect your food blog’s flavor
Starting a food blog with WordPress is easier with a good food blog theme. The theme provides the foundation for your website’s aesthetic and design, making it look professional and well-suited for your purpose.
Bear in mind that free themes are generally quite minimalist, focusing on aesthetics more so than added functionality. This is often a good thing! When you purchase the paid version of a theme to access additional tools, you may end up with bulky themes that offer too many things you don’t need or functionality that would be better implemented with dedicated plugins. Therefore, bloggers often prefer to stick with a free version of a theme of their choice and expand its capabilities through individual plugins.
There are countless plugins across all niches that perform various tasks. One of the core plugins for food blogs is WP Recipe Maker. This plugin allows you to create attractive recipes and find one that fits your brand and style. You can also customize your template using the Template Editor.
Remember, the art of food blogging is not just about sharing recipes; it’s about telling stories, inspiring adventures, and fostering a community of food lovers. Complemented by powerful tools like the WP Recipe Maker, your chosen theme provides your chosen theme s the foundation for building a memorable and engaging food blog. You can try WP Recipe Maker today to take the next step to broaden the reach of your recipes.
