What Are Shoppable Recipes? How to Create Shoppable Recipes

You’ve likely found yourself in this situation—you’re ready to prepare dinner, and you realize you’re missing an ingredient. You’re left with two choices: You can wash your hands and go grocery shopping, or improvise a sauce-less dinner alternative. Neither option is ideal.

This happens every day, and putting together a homemade meal can be difficult, even if you love to cook. Shoppable recipes can help home cooks minimize effort and avoid missing ingredient disasters. This technology allows consumers to quickly order everything they need to get food on the table and gives recipe creators an additional source of income.

Shoppable recipe content can help you monetize your food blog or add another revenue stream to your ecommerce businesses.

What are shoppable recipes?

Shoppable recipes are digital recipes that include shoppable buttons linked to online grocery retailers. Instead of manually compiling a shopping list, home cooks can click on the links in the recipe (typically in the ingredients section), directing them to a choice of online grocery stores. They can select the ingredients they need from the recipe, add other items if they want, and choose between delivery and pickup options at checkout.

Why make recipes shoppable?

Shoppable recipes don’t just benefit the reader. If a recipe links to products on your site, it can help boost sales. Customers may be inspired to add more items to their cart, increasing the average basket value.

Shoppable content can also generate income for the recipe creators. Food bloggers can use affiliate links or form retail partnerships to earn a percentage of each successful retail transaction. This content can also help content creators build strong reader relationships. Simplifying the shopping experience may increase site visitors, who will be more likely to return to try new dishes once they’ve had a positive experience.

Finally, if you operate a food product brand, you can use shoppable links and benefit as both creator and seller. Say you’re an online store selling specialty hot sauces. You may have a section on your website with recipes that pair well with your condiments. From there, you can link to your product pages, boosting your sales. You can also link to grocery stores for other ingredients and earn an affiliate commission when readers buy from them.

How to create and use shoppable recipes

1. Select a platform
2. Build recipe content
3. Pick retail partners
4. Integrate links
5. Monetize content
6. Track performance

There’s no substitute for culinary expertise if you want to create a great recipe, but monetizing that content is much easier than before with website plug-ins and apps that specialize in creating affiliate recipe links. Here’s what you need to do: 

1. Select a platform 

Websites have plug-ins or apps that you can use to createshoppable recipes. You can integrate these tools with online grocery retailers to create shoppable recipe buttons for your page. Research platforms and look for an option that works with a variety of popular retailers. Review the recipe experience from both publisher and shopper perspectives. Select a tool with a simple creation process and an intuitive user experience.

You can also use an app like Recipe Stack to add shoppable recipes directly to your ecommerce store. Other popular tools include Chicory, Raptive, and MikMak. You can also use Instacart’s Tastemakers program to create shoppable recipes and paste them into your site using Javascript.

2. Build recipe content

Create new recipes or add shoppable features to your existing content. Make sure that each recipe has a clear and complete list of ingredients. Use conventional ingredient names that align with grocery store naming conventions.

Follow best practices for recipe content by including images, videos, and user-friendly instructions. Writing an accurate description and using relevant SEO keywords can help your content appear in more search results.

3. Pick retail partners

Pick your preferred retail partner or partners. Offering a selection of grocery providers can increase conversions because shoppers are more likely to purchase products if they see a familiar option on the list. Some consumers may prefer to buy from stores with a nearby location offering grocery pickup. Including a variety of retailers can help your content appeal to a wider geographic demographic.

Popular choices include Instacart, Walmart, Target, and grocery store chains like Acme or Albertsons.

4. Integrate links

Use your shoppable recipe tool to add a link to each ingredient. You might need to select an exact brand rather than the generic ingredient, so choose high-quality ingredients that your customers are likely familiar with. If a retailer is out of the brand that you select, they may swap the item for a similar product. Following standard naming conventions for ingredients will allow for accurate swaps.

5. Monetize content

Look into monetization opportunities with your connected retailers. Content publishers can sign up for affiliate marketing programs to earn a percentage of each successful transaction attributed to their content.

Depending on the shoppable recipe platform you choose, you may need to add affiliate tracking tags to each product link. Some platforms use link monetizing technology to add tracking to each link automatically.

6. Track performance

Monitoring performance data can help publishers optimize their content for success. Use the analytics feature on your shoppable recipe platform to track clicks and link revenue. Reviewing this information might help you spot behavioral trends you can use to spark new recipe ideas.

For example, if your top three bestselling recipes all include artichoke hearts, you could decide to add new artichoke content to your page.