Pave Your Way in the Food Industry: How to Sell a Recipe to a Company

Selling your recipes is an exciting path to success if you want to turn your passion for food into a way to make money. It’s one of the top ways home cooks and food bloggers monetize their hard work, and it offers some incredible opportunities. A lot of cooks and foodies want to sell their recipes to capitalize on their talent, but it can be difficult to know where to start. You might find the options online overwhelming or feel like you’re not yet experienced enough to start selling your recipes.

This guide is designed to make getting started with selling your recipes a lot easier. We’ll take a look at who you could sell them to, how to do it, and any legal considerations you might need to take into account before you get started. Plus, you’ll learn how to price your recipe to sell it for a fair price.

How to sell your recipe

The good news is that you have several options if you want to sell your recipes to someone else. The types of businesses you might look at as potential buyers include food magazines and websites, food companies, food equipment companies, and restaurants.

Each of these business types is often interested in buying recipes to help market their own products, services, or content. So there’s plenty of opportunity to find the right buyer.

One thing to keep in mind when you want to sell your recipes is that preparation is key. You need to follow the right steps to prepare your recipe for sale and choose the best buyers to approach. Your recipes need to be high-quality, so be sure to test them thoroughly. Ask family and friends for feedback to check that your recipe is easy to follow and delivers consistent results.

When selling your recipe, it’s also important to price your recipes reasonably and ensure that your portfolio appeals to buyers. Read on to discover how to do this!

Step 1: Price the recipe

Knowing how to properly value your culinary creations is essential when you’re looking to sell recipes online. Determining the right price point involves understanding both your costs and the market value of your work. Before approaching potential buyers, consider:

• Development costs: Calculate expenses for ingredients, testing, and your time spent perfecting the recipe.
• Market research: Investigate what similar recipes sell for in your target markets.
• Unique value: Premium pricing may be justified for highly specialized or trendy recipes.
• Flexibility: Be prepared to negotiate, especially when first building your reputation.

When negotiating with interested buyers, consider initially withholding your price – this gives you room to gauge their interest level and potentially secure a better deal. As you build relationships in the industry, you’ll develop a better sense of appropriate pricing for different types of buyers.

Step 2: Create a portfolio

A digital portfolio gives potential buyers somewhere to check out your work and learn a bit more about you.

Your portfolio should provide information on your culinary background and any relevant experience or credentials that you might have. If you focus on a specific type of cuisine, your portfolio is a great opportunity to highlight this – both through the work you share as well as in your personal bio. No matter whether you’re a professional chef or an enthusiastic home cook, sharing what you know and how you know it makes you more marketable.

An overview of the recipes you’re pitching and what makes them special will help give buyers an idea of what they can expect from you. You don’t need to provide a full recipe and method at this stage, though you should include good-quality photos of finished dishes as visual support.

If you have a food blog or social media related to your recipes, you should include relevant links in your portfolio. However, keep in mind that businesses often want to have exclusive rights to recipes, at least for a period, so you won’t be able to publish them yourself as well.

One of the easiest ways to set up your portfolio is using WordPress and WP Recipe Maker – an indispensable plugin that allows you to showcase your recipes. You can even showcase recipes you don’t plan on selling, which is a great strategy, as businesses interested in your work will see what you have to offer. From the backstory of your recipe to ingredient selection and final images of the final dishes, you can easily show what you’re capable of. This makes it even easier to pitch new recipes to publications or websites!

Having a solid portfolio is crucial when pitching your recipes to publications. Think of it as a chef’s resume – it demonstrates your range and capability in creating appealing dishes. A robust portfolio provides concrete evidence of your skills and increases the likelihood of your recipes getting noticed and published. It’s an essential tool to showcase your talent and make a compelling case for why your recipes deserve a spot in the publication.”

Birthe Vandermeeren

Cofounder of Bootstrapped Ventures

• WordPress
• Instagram
• Mail

Step 3: Make a list of potential buyers

Now you have an idea of how you can prepare to sell a recipe, how do you find people to sell to? Start by making a list of magazines, websites, and food companies you think could be suitable to pitch to. Food publications like TASTE, The Kitchn, and Food52 are good places to start. There are lots of options out there, but you should avoid indiscriminately pitching to all businesses. Try to focus on businesses that fit with your style of cooking. You can also target food businesses linked to branded products that you use in your recipe. If you use a particular piece of equipment in your recipes (such as an air fryer, food processor, mixer, etc.), that could be a way to find relevant brands, too.

Before sending a pitch, you should try to find the relevant person to contact. Instead of using a generic email, use resources like X (Twitter) and LinkedIn to find the commissioning editor and contact them directly.

Some businesses will also have established submission processes that they list on their websites. This is particularly the case with online magazines and blogs. Finding and following this will get you off on the right foot, showing that you’re able to do your own research and follow instructions.

Another type of business you might consider targeting is local restaurants. Smaller establishments might be looking for new inspiration and could be more interested in what you have to offer.

Step 4: Make contact

Once you’ve done all the preparation, write a short cover letter to include with your email and send it out with your portfolio to the people on your list. Tailor your cover letter so it’s more personalized, making sure to use individuals’ names.

You might find it useful to keep a spreadsheet of people you have contacted. You can keep track of when you got in touch and whether you have received responses or sent a follow-up email. This will help you stay organized and prevent multiple emails to the same companies.

Managing the legal aspects: Copyright considerations and protection

Naturally, you want to protect your recipes when you sell them. Copyright is a legal framework that helps you do this, but it’s also important in regard to other people’s work. While most recipes are not covered by copyright (although creative text and images can be), it’s still important to give credit if you have adapted a recipe from someone else’s work.

To protect your own recipe, it’s a good idea to withhold sharing it at first. Wait until a full agreement has been reached before sharing so that you can prevent theft from any of the businesses that might be interested.

Trade secrets: An alternative protection strategy

Think of your prized recipes like grandma’s secret sauce – too good to share and definitely not for the public domain. While copyright won’t do much to guard your culinary genius (recipes are a bit tricky that way), trade secret protection swoops in like your legal fairy godmother if you keep those ingredients under wraps:

• Non-disclosure agreements: Legally binding contracts that prevent potential buyers from sharing your recipe
• Limited access: Revealing only partial information until a deal is finalized
• Confidentiality clauses: Including specific terms in your sales agreements that protect your recipe details

This approach has helped many food businesses protect their signature recipes for decades. Famous examples include KFC’s chicken seasoning and Coca-Cola’s formula – recipes that derive their value precisely because they’re kept confidential.

Understanding recipe ownership in professional contexts

Before attempting to sell your recipes, it’s crucial to understand recipe ownership in a professional context. If you developed recipes while employed by a restaurant or food business, those recipes may legally belong to your employer, not you. As many professional chefs note, recipes created as part of your paid work responsibilities, using employer resources or during company time, are typically considered work product owned by the business.

Before marketing any recipes from previous employment, consider:

• Were these recipes developed on your own time, with your own resources?
• Does your employment contract specify ownership of creative work?
• Did you have explicit permission to retain ownership of recipes you created?

This distinction is important to avoid potential legal complications. If you’re unsure about the ownership status of your recipes, consulting with a legal professional before attempting to sell them is advisable.

For recipes you clearly own, protection options are limited since recipes themselves can’t be copyrighted (though creative descriptions and photos can be). To protect your original recipes when pitching them, consider withholding complete details until a formal agreement is in place.

Legal considerations for selling prepared food

If you’re planning to sell not just recipes but also prepared food items based on your recipes, you’ll need to understand cottage food laws and home-based food business licensing requirements. These regulations vary by location but typically include:

• Kitchen inspections and certifications.
• Food handler permits and safety training.
• Specific limitations on what types of food can be sold from home.
• Packaging and labeling requirements.

Check with your local health department to understand the requirements in your area before selling food prepared in your home kitchen. Many recipe sellers find that starting with digital recipe sales provides a simpler entry point before expanding into prepared food products.

Other avenues to consider

Selling your recipes directly to businesses isn’t the only way you can make money from them. There are multiple other options that you might find work.

If you have a food blog or you’re thinking of starting one, monetizing it is another potential way to turn your passion into income. You can monetize a blog in several different ways, from finding sponsors to running ads or joining affiliate marketing programs. If you have a good social media following, starting a food blog is a good way to offer more to your audience.

Another option is to self-publish a cookbook or create an eBook that you can sell yourself. You can sell your book on various platforms, such as Amazon or Etsy, or sell it through your own website. A lot of work is required to put a book together, but it could be worth it if you have an audience willing to buy it.

If you don’t want to deal with the long-haul grind of completing a whole book, there are plenty of other options to explore. Such as: 

• Recipe marketplaces: Sites like Etsy now feature digital recipe downloads, allowing direct sales to consumers.
• Subscription services: Platforms like Patreon or Substack enable you to offer exclusive recipes to paying subscribers, or you could use a plugin like Leaky Paywall for your WordPress website to gate content.
• Mobile apps: Some recipe app developers purchase content from independent creators.
• Meal planning services: Companies that provide meal planning subscriptions frequently purchase recipes to enhance their offerings.

When selling recipes online through these channels, WP Recipe Maker serves as an excellent foundation for organizing, showcasing, and promoting your work across multiple platforms simultaneously. You can expect:

• Professional presentation: The plugin’s customizable templates ensure your recipes look polished and professional
• Search engine visibility: Built-in SEO features help potential buyers find your recipes through organic search
• Recipe management: Organize your portfolio efficiently with categorization and tagging features
• Monetization tools: Integrated affiliate marketing capabilities provide additional revenue streams while building your recipe-selling business

Compared to other platforms like Squarespace or Wix, WordPress with WP Recipe Maker offers superior flexibility and ownership of your content, crucial advantages when developing a recipe-selling business that can scale with your success.

Turning passion into profit: Next steps with WP Recipe Maker

Following the right steps to sell your recipe will help you find the best buyer. Get ready by pricing your recipe and creating a portfolio that you can use to market your work. Make a list of potential buyers and find relevant people to contact before sending them your pitch. By following these steps, you could turn your recipes into profit.

Food blogs are a successful way of making money from recipes. If you’re a food blogger, WP Recipe Maker is an essential WordPress plugin. It has several features designed to help you monetize your work, including affiliate links for equipment and an enhanced system for Amazon affiliate links.

Start monetizing your blog today with WP Recipe Maker! Download the plugin to start making use of its many features for monetization and showcasing your talents as a recipe creator.