Best Served Hot: May 31–June 6, 2026
Hello!
Thank you for all the helpful feedback about how to make these issues better! The first change you’ll see is that the News Roundup is now commentary about how to apply this to your blog. From next week, you’ll see more commentary on the weekly charts, too.
From inside this issue:
31% of the top food blogs posted this week
Easy, Creamy, and Best remained the top adjectives in recipe titles
Chicken, Strawberry, and Pasta were the top ingredients
Dinner, Summer, and Gluten-free were the top categories
Little Epicurean grew her Instagram following by over 5% this past week to 70K
Pinterest follower growth is pretty much non-existent across the board, week after week - even for those with millions of followers
This Week’s News Roundup
Add to Preferred Sources: Considering adding a button for this to your website. Google has now expanded its “Add to Preferred Google Sources” to all websites; previously, this was just for news sites.
Food podcasts: The WPRM blog has a list of food podcasts that focus on improving your cooking/baking skills, but I was surprised to not see any of the top food bloggers as I scrolled through. With podcasts exploding in popularity (an estimated 40% of American adults listened to podcasts weekly last year), perhaps this is a way to diversify your income streams by talking through the stories behind your recipes, how you meal plan, shop, and do life?
Tips for marketing a cookbook: This interview with book publishing insider Stephanie Moon is encouraging if you’re starting out. She says a small, highly engaged audience (even under 5K) is much more valuable to publishers and book sales than a massive audience of unengaged followers or bots.
Learning from Etsy’s new ad campaign: Their 1-minute-long “Celebrate being human” ad has me all teary as it leans into celebrating human moments over digital ones. Their CEO, Brad Minor, says story, craft, and human connection carry more value than convenience alone: “It’s never been more important to choose something human-made, original, and specific to the person buying it.” Food is at the heart of every human celebration, and a homemade meal or food gift is better than a store-bought one. Perhaps food bloggers can be inspired by this ad campaign and leverage it too. I wrote a little about the gift of food on my food blog, Friday’s Pizza.
I’m also working on two big analyses of how the top food bloggers organize all their recipes and how they do their email marketing.
If there are other big topics you’d like tackled in the future, do let me know!
If we haven’t yet met, I’m Rachel Cunliffe, food blog designer + statistician at cre8d design. Every Sunday, Best Served Hot provides exclusive trend analysis and clear-cut insights, and industry news you need to know.
If you find this analysis valuable, please consider sharing this Substack with your food blogging friends.
Methodology: Top food blogs are defined as those running Raptive ads with 100K+ followers, DA 40+, and have posted in the six months. Lifestyle, cocktail-only, and aggregator sites are excluded. This week we’re tracking 526 sites.
