I like this theme. There, I said it.
I wanted an awesome WordPress & Genesis Food theme for years. Then this baby was born. It was upgraded recently resulting in the new Foodie Pro.
I review and inspect a lot of food blog child themes and this is one of my favorites. So much in fact that I created an extensive guide on setting up this theme and how to customize it to your style.
Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links to the Foodie Pro related pages. We only recommend brands we use and trust and using our links helps support what we do. Thanks.
I setup a site from scratch and thoroughly examined what was inside of this one. Here’s what I found:
Pros:
- Visual Recipe Gallery Page Functionality is Built-in
- This theme now includes a way to style multiple recipe/category pages!
- Allows custom retina-ready logo upload
- Built-in Widget Features
- Built-in ad spaces
- Already includes styling for eNews widget and easy recipe (huge!)
- Allows Font Color Changes with a Visual Editor (no coding necessary!)
- Allows Font Typography Changes with the Visual Editor
- Simple, lean, fast, sexy
- Mobile responsive
- Styled Mobile Menu
- Shows an Email Sign-up At Top if desired
Cons:
- You will still need to work to make your site look styled differently from other Foodie sites
- The mobile styling on the recipe page can be tricky to alter
- It’s more expensive than other premium themes
- Pagination isn’t perfect on the home page (but, from a developer standpoint, makes sense)
Setup
To use this theme, you’ll need a self-hosted WordPress site. If you don’t have one, I’d recommend Bluehost (and I have a 5-minute setup guide here to make it a breeze).
Foodie Pro is child theme for Genesis. They are sold as a set here.
And I’ll gladly take you from a blank slate to a slick looking site with my video tutorials on the Master Setup and Customization Guide.
Conclusion:
I’m guessing by now, you want the nitty gritty. Here’s my simple advice:
If this style appeals to you (the simple, clean, streamlined design), I’d suggest that this theme is one of the best currently available. If somebody came to me with a freelance project to design a food blog, I would strongly consider this theme as a starting point.
Plus, give it a whirl and if it is a fit for you. If not, StudioPress has an awesome 30-day guarantee.
Lastly, if you do give it a try, checkout my extensive guide on using theme up and making it your own.
Colette says
John,
I have gone through the Blogger U easy customizations to try to figure out how to change the font size of my menu headings in Food Pro. I’m pretty lost. I understand the inspect the element function and have figured that out. I can’t seem to find the corresponding code in my CSS. Is there a more straightforward way to do this? I’m happy with the google font that came with Foodie Pro I just want to increase the size and/or bold the font.
The Table of Contents at the top of the Stylesheet can be helpful in finding certain areas of code. For the headings and font sizes, look for the areas of code under:
/* Headings
——————————————— */
I usually use the “find” function as well to try and zone in on where I need to be working in my stylesheet.
Hope that helps!
Katy | Her Cup of Joy says
I love Foodie Pro, all of your tips and tutorials were helpful to set up my website. I am still playing around with my formatting but I love how easy it was to use. I have never blogger before but this was a perfect way to start!
Brigid says
Hello again–
Can you give a brief pros/cons for upgrading from Foodie to Foodie Pro? The cost is not an issue, so is there really any reason not to? Anything that might not be evident from reading the literature?
Thank you so much!
It’s sort of like setting up a new site entirely. So, it’s mostly just an issue of time.
Some people don’t like the way the homepage pagination works, but it’s a pretty minor issue in my opinion.
The biggest reason to update would be that Foodie Pro will be given updates as needed whereas I’m guessing the original Foodie won’t be supported as quickly.
Brigid says
Oh so sorry, never mind. Went back in tutorials and realize it is a plugin…serves me right for skipping around….
Brigid says
Hello,
Wonderful tutorials, lifesaver for me, but only discovered them through a friend a few weeks ago.
I have been using the original Foodie theme since June 2014 but am only now setting up the Recipe page….crazy year….will upgrade to Pro but can’t get to it for another month at least. My issue: there is no Genesis Featured Widget Amplified, only Genesis Featured Page, Featured Posts, User Profile. I tried going through customize widgets but not there either.
Even though you closed comments for the original Foodie would so appreciate guidance!!
Thank you!
I will also mention that you can upgrade to FoodiePro for free if you have a license for the original Foodie.
Shanna says
I am going to be changing my theme from the old Foodie, to the new PRO version and am pretty excited about it. I like the differences a lot. The only main issue that I don’t know how to fix, or if I even can is – I would really like it to have my own name at the bottom of the page, instead of Shay’s name. Is that a really difficult thing to change? I understand it probably requires coding, but still?
Thank you!
Actually, it is possible to do without code!
The “Genesis Simple Edits” tutorial I created on the Customization Guide shows you exactly how!
Dominika says
Hi John, do you know, if it is possible for the Foodie pro site to have in 2 languages? My friend and I would like to have a blog in our native language, however as I have many friends abroad I would also like it in english. Thank you :-)
The languages available is really more of a WordPress question, which it is pretty good at supporting. In short, it shouldn’t be a problem, regardless of theme.
If you wanted to add some special functionality (like, allowing users to choose the language they’d like to use), there are plugins to help with that, but I don’t have any experience with that.
Kathryn says
Hi again John,
One more quick question. I’ve read that uploading your own YouTube videos to your wordpress site is not such a good idea, however your videos seem to work great. Have you ever had any issues? Would you recommend placing the videos directly on your site or providing a link for people to view your YouTube channel?
Thanks for your input,
Kathryn
I’ve never really heard that, but think you should do what’s best for your site and needs. Overall, youtube works great for us on these types of videos.
The problem with video hosting is that there are lots of encoding concerns and issues making your videos work on the large variety of devices. If you don’t have have another site or service do it, you’ll need to have those tools running from your site.
Kathryn says
Hi John,
Your resources have been so helpful! Thanks to your recommendation I purchased foodie pro and I chose bluehost as my domain host. I used your links so hopefully you will get some benefit from all your work. I have a quick question, how do you modify your fonts, text size and spacing in the body of your pages? When posting or creating a new page I don’t have any options to change font, text size or spacing. Is this a feature you added?
To use the font tools in your post edits, you can use the toolbar.
If you aren’t seeing your toolbar, you can toggle it on by going to the top of your visual editor on the line that starts “B” “I”, etc. At the end, there’s an option to toggle your toolbar, which will let you change some font settings within a post or page.
If you’re trying to change your font or styles site-wide, checkout the “Utilizing the Customization Function” video and instructions on this tutorial page.
For spacing, you’d actually need to make some CSS edits, which can be handled in your stylesheet. Thankfully, however, the other two solutions don’t require any coding.
Ashley Chew says
I recently got the Foodie Pro theme for my new food blog. I am VERY new to blogging. I am really confused on the whole Heading 1 thing. I have looked through your tips & tricks and haven’t found anything really relating to it. I was hoping you could help me to know what to do when it comes to the whole Heading 1 thing. Looking back through your posts I can t really see where your Heading 1 would be(if you even use it). Or did you just make it your post title? If that’s the case do I just add to my post title?
what do you do or recommend.
Also thank you so much for your resources. I am loving your photo school videos!
Heading 1 is an HTML style that’s automatically applied to your post titles.
If you’re wanting to use the H1 tag outside of this, you can use the font menu in your posts or pages to create text that will be defined by these presets.
So, really, there’s no need to worry about it unless you were trying to do something different with it.
Heather says
thank you so much for these videos! Quick questions, what size are you sizing your pictures and what “sharing” plugin are you using? Thank you!
The Genesis team created this plugin that we are using now.
Right now, we are testing with some larger images and different compression techniques, so I don’t have an exact answer.
I usually recommend sizing your photos to the exact width of your site. Assuming you haven’t changed anything with the content area styling, that’d be 680px.
Debbie says
If I make the switch to Genesis/Foodie Pro what will happen to the quality and/or size of the images currently on my site, if they are smaller (640 px) than the default image size on Foodie?
It depends a bit on where your photos are located. If you’re just talking about the photos within a post, they should stay the same size.
If you’re talking about automatically generated thumbnails, they will either be resized to fit or might look a bit off. Thankfully, there are plugins that can help you regenerate these thumbnails if necessary.
In any case, it’d be wise to backup your site before making the switch. Worst case, you can flip back to your old site.
Debbie says
Thanks for getting back to me, I have to say, all the tutorials you have on Foodie are extremely informative and helpful, so much so, you’ve got me kind of giddy about switching. However, before I take the plung and potentially take on more than my skillset or schedule can handle, I was wondering if you could clarify a few more things regarding my current content for me?
The thing I am most concerned about is how my current images will look. If I understand correctly, any current images, on my blog, that are in the content area should stay the same size. So, if those images are smaller than 680 px wide, they will not expand across the full content area in Foodie???? If that is the case I know it will drive me bonkers, so is there any way to make them fill the contest area width? Stretching them – I assume this would create fuzziness. Or re uploading them at 680px wide or greater – huge undertaking and would it cause broken links if the images have been pinned to Pinterest or shared in other ways on social media?
I’m guess I’m just trying to figure out if switching is even a feasible option for me. It seems that as themes trend toward larger images this would be a common problem, the question is can it be fixed fairly easily or is it a major overhaul?
If your current images are 600px wide, they will remain at 600px wide, despite the content column being 680px wide. As you mentioned, stretching them would make them look blurry. There’s no way to make a smaller image bigger without quality loss.
However, if your current images are 800px wide, but being used in a 600px content area, after switching, they would display in the content area as though they were 680px wide.
There’s no real work around as the images are the problem. Hope that makes more sense!
Jessica Robinson says
Hello! I just purchased the Genesis with foodie pro through your link. Thank you. I have a question, when I install Genesis with foodie pro will that automatically populate all the previous blog posts from my old word press theme onto this new theme?
Yes! Foodie Pro is simply changing your theme which is similar to giving your current site a new paint job. All the underlying good stuff (data – posts, pages, etc.) will remain and be available the same way you have used WordPress prior to changing.
In any case, it’d be worth backing up your site before you make the switch just so you can always revert to the way it was if something goes awry.