Best Served Hot: December 7-13, 2025

the countdown is on!

I know inboxes are overflowing this time of year, so thank you for taking a moment to open this issue of Best Served Hot. This issue is free for everyone!

I’m Rachel Cunliffe, a food blog designer and data scientist at cre8d design. This is your weekly, actionable look behind the scenes of the world’s top food blogs.

Every Sunday, you get exclusive trend analysis and clear-cut insights. This week, you’ll see the first of our newly improved and more in-depth charts.

Have a question about the food blog industry? Let me know, and I’ll look into analyzing the data for a future issue.

If you find this analysis valuable, please help keep this project sustainable by sharing this Substack with your food blogging friends.

Methodology Note: Top food blogs are defined as those running Raptive ads with 100K+ combined followers on Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and Facebook. Lifestyle, cocktail-only, and aggregator sites are excluded. This week we’re tracking 984 sites.