The Food Writers Business Lab is available through the paid subscription tier of Mastermind for Food Writers. An annual membership costs $150 and includes:

• Unlimited access to every Part One instructional workshop throughout the year

• Access to recordings of every instructional session

• The opportunity to register for optional Part Two working sessions for $50 each

• A growing library of practical education created specifically for food writers, by food writers

The Food Writers Business Lab is self-funded. This means that the income generated through paid subscriptions directly supports the instructors who teach the classes. So, the number of classes scheduled are dependent on the number of paid subscriptions generated. New classes are added as funding is made available.

It’s just one more way we can support one another.

Join The Food Writers Business Lab

DIY Cookbook Proposals

Writing a cookbook proposal is different from writing a cookbook. It requires a different set of skills. But, they’re skills anyone can learn. Whether you’re a chef, recipe developer, food writer, content creator, or culinary professional, you can write a compelling cookbook proposal yourself. You just need to know what agents and editors are looking for and have a roadmap for getting there.

Instructor:

Part 1: Learn. The first session will be a recorded instructional workshop with an in-depth homework assignment to help you put the material into practice.

When: Friday, August 7, 1:00pm-2:30pm EDT

Part 2: Implement. Bring your homework, your questions, your roadblocks, and your challenges. Together, we’ll review what you’ve implemented, troubleshoot challenges, exchange ideas, and get thoughtful feedback from both the instructor and other food writers working toward similar goals.

When: Friday, August 28, 1:00pm-2:30pm EDT

More Information + Register

How To Build A Platform That Will Sell Your Book

You can be posting, showing up, and creating content consistently and still feel like your audience isn’t growing the way you expected. In many cases, the problem isn’t that you’re not doing enough. It’s that you’re focusing on only one piece of the puzzle.

In this class, Stephanie Moon will show you how readers move from discovering your work to trusting you to buying your book. You’ll learn the three essential stages of author platform growth: visibility, nurture, and conversion. You’ll learn why social media alone isn’t a full audience-building strategy, what it really takes to create lasting reader relationships, and how to spot the stage that’s missing in your own platform.

Instructor:

Part 1: Learn. The first session will be a recorded instructional workshop with an in-depth homework assignment to help you put the material into practice.

When: Thursday, September 17, 1:00pm-2:30pm EDT

Part 2: Implement. Bring your homework, your questions, your roadblocks, and your challenges. Together, we’ll review what you’ve implemented, troubleshoot challenges, exchange ideas, and get thoughtful feedback from both the instructor and other food writers working toward similar goals.

When: Thursday, September 24, 1:00pm-2:30pm EDT

More Information + Register

SEO for Food Writers

In this hands-on workshop, food writers will learn to think about SEO not as a technical burden, but as a way of building bridges from their work to their readers. Because that’s exactly what good SEO is: paths that meet readers where they are and lead them back to you.

Instructor:

Part 1: Learn. The first session will be a recorded instructional workshop with an in-depth homework assignment to help you put the material into practice.

When: October 15, 12pm-1:30pm CST

Part 2: Implement. Bring your homework, your questions, your roadblocks, and your challenges. Together, we’ll review what you’ve implemented, troubleshoot challenges, exchange ideas, and get thoughtful feedback from both the instructor and other food writers working toward similar goals.

When: October 22, 12pm-1:30pm CST

More Information + Register

Part 1: Learn. The first session will be a recorded instructional workshop with an in-depth homework assignment to help you put the material into practice.

When: Friday, August 7, 1:00pm-2:30pm EDT

Part 2: Implement. Bring your homework, your questions, your roadblocks, and your challenges. Together, we’ll review what you’ve implemented, troubleshoot challenges, exchange ideas, and get thoughtful feedback from both the instructor and other food writers working toward similar goals.

When: Friday, August 28, 1:00pm-2:30pm EDT

Substack LIVE Cookbook Proposal Q&A

Join and on Thursday, July 23 for a Substack LIVE where we’ll be talking about cookbook proposals and answering your questions. We’ll discuss: what they are, what they need to include, and how to start turning a cookbook idea into something agents and publishers can understand. We’ll talk through the major pieces of a strong cookbook proposal, including concept, audience, comp titles, sample recipes, author platform, visual direction, and why your book belongs in the market now.

Topic: Cookbook Proposals Q&A
Date: Thursday, July 23rd
Time: 12pm CDT

Join Now

DIY Cookbook Proposals

Writing a cookbook proposal is different from writing a cookbook. It requires a different set of skills. But, they’re skills anyone can learn. Whether you’re a chef, recipe developer, food writer, content creator, or culinary professional, you can write a compelling cookbook proposal yourself. You just need to know what agents and editors are looking for and have a roadmap for getting there.

In this two-part Food Writers Business Lab workshop, cookbook collaborator and book proposal consultant will walk you through every section of a cookbook proposal, using a her proprietary Book Proposal Checklist, developed after years of writing and consulting on dozens of book proposals. Together, we’ll cover everything from your hook and audience to recipe organization, competitive titles, marketing strategy, and visual direction, with a focus on what makes cookbook proposals different from other nonfiction proposals.

This workshop is designed for writers who want to build their own proposal from the ground up. You’ll leave understanding not only what belongs in each section, but why publishers ask for it and how to write it in a way that strengthens your overall project.

You will come away from this lab with:

• A clear understanding of every section of a cookbook proposal targeted towards traditional publishing

• A cookbook-specific version of Kelsey’s Book Proposal Checklist to guide your writing long after class ends

• A stronger cookbook concept and positioning in today’s publishing market

• Strategies for organizing recipes, chapters, and the overall structure of your book

• Practical guidance for writing your overview, author bio, audience, competitive titles, marketing plan, and sample material

• A realistic roadmap for completing your proposal on your own

Whether you’re starting with a notebook full of recipe ideas or a rough draft of a proposal, this workshop will give you the tools, structure, and confidence to create a cookbook proposal ready for agents and publishers.

Participants will receive an in-depth homework assignment to help you put the material into practice.

About Kelsey Shipman

Writer, Educator, Creative Partner

Kelsey Shipman is a cookbook collaborator and ghostwriter who has spent years helping chefs, recipe developers, and food writers shape cookbook ideas into proposals for traditional publishers. She is represented by Transatlantic Agency and specializes in cookbook and memoir collaborations. Kelsey is the co-founder of Write Up where she co-teaches an annual 12-week Book Proposal Intensive alongside food writer and author Hannah Howard.

Her food and travel writing has appeared in The Rumpus, The Chocolate Professor, ParentCo, Off Assignment, HuffPost, USA Today, and The Austin Chronicle. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing, has worked as an educator for more than seventeen years, and writes the Substack newsletter Cheese Toast with White People, which explores food, family, and the strange inheritance of Southern white culture.

Register for DIY Cookbook Proposals

Classes are free for paid subscribers, but registration is required.

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Part 1: Learn. The first session will be a recorded instructional workshop with an in-depth homework assignment to help you put the material into practice.

When: Thursday, September 17, 1:00pm-2:30pm EDT

Part 2: Implement. Bring your homework, your questions, your roadblocks, and your challenges. Together, we’ll review what you’ve implemented, troubleshoot challenges, exchange ideas, and get thoughtful feedback from both the instructor and other food writers working toward similar goals.

When: Thursday, September 24, 1:00pm-2:30pm EDT

You can be posting, showing up, and creating content consistently and still feel like your audience isn’t growing the way you expected. In many cases, the problem isn’t that you’re not doing enough. It’s that you’re focusing on only one piece of the puzzle.

In this class, Stephanie Moon will show you how readers move from discovering your work to trusting you to buying your book. You’ll learn the three essential stages of author platform growth: visibility, nurture, and conversion. You’ll learn why social media alone isn’t a full audience-building strategy, what it really takes to create lasting reader relationships, and how to spot the stage that’s missing in your own platform.

Rather than treating audience growth as a vague or frustrating process, this class will help you see it as a relationship-building system. You’ll leave with a clearer understanding of what each stage requires, how they work together, and what to focus on next to build a stronger path from stranger to reader.

In this class, you’ll walk away with:

• A clear understanding of the three stages that drive book sales: visibility, nurture, and conversion

• A framework for identifying which stage is missing or underdeveloped in your current platform

• A broader view of what visibility can look like beyond social media alone

• A better understanding of how newsletters, long-form content, and other assets help build trust over time

• A more confident sense of how and when to make an ask without feeling overly salesy

• A homework assignment to help you audit your platform and determine what to strengthen next

This class is for authors at any stage who want a more strategic, sustainable way to grow an audience and build genuine reader relationships that lead to book sales. We’ll look at the many forms visibility can take, what nurture looks like after someone finds you, and how to make a clear, confident ask without feeling salesy. By the end, you’ll know where your gaps are, what to build next, and how these pieces work together to support book sales over time.

Participants will receive an in-depth homework assignment to help you put the material into practice.

About Stephanie Moon

Brand + Book Marketing Strategist

Stephanie Moon has spent over 15 years in book marketing and publicity, leading campaigns for New York Times bestsellers and working with publishers including Chronicle Books, HarperCollins, Scholastic, and Hardie Grant. She teaches authors how to sell more books by building real relationships and communities. In addition, Stephanie is and an Advisor in Residence for Write Up.

Follow her on Instagram or read The FAQs on her Substack where she answers the most frequently asked questions she gets from authors and shares insights, and truths about book marketing, and publishing.

Register for How To Build A Platform That Will Sell Your Book

Classes are free for paid subscribers, but registration is required.

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The Food Writers Business Lab is an online community for food writers who want practical, affordable guidance for growing their businesses, expanding their audience, and building sustainable careers.

Here you’ll find classes and workshops taught by experienced food writers who understand the unique challenges and opportunities of this industry. It’s education for food writers taught by food writers.

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How the Food Writers Business Lab Works

The idea is simple: practical, hands-on workshops designed to help you make meaningful progress in your business.

Throughout the year, experienced food writers will lead workshops on topics like SEO, food photography, cookbook publishing, platform building, creative recipe writing, video, organizational strategies, creating digital products, and other skills essential to building a sustainable food writing business.

Each workshop is divided into two parts.

Part One: Learn

The first session is a 90-minute live Zoom class focused on teaching practical strategies you can put to work immediately. You’ll leave with clear instruction, real-world examples, and homework designed to help you apply what you’ve learned to your own business.

Every Part One session is included with your Food Writers Business Lab membership. For $150 a year you can attend as many live classes as you’d like, or watch the recordings later if you can’t make it in real time.

Part Two: Working Session

One to two weeks later, participants have the opportunity to join a small-group working session.

This is my favorite part.

Bring your homework, your questions, your roadblocks, and your challenges. Together, we’ll review what you’ve implemented, troubleshoot challenges, exchange ideas, and get thoughtful feedback from both the instructor and other food writers working toward similar goals.

Rather than simply learning new concepts, you’ll leave with real progress already underway.

Participation in the hands-on working session is optional and costs $50. Every dollar from these sessions goes directly to the instructor leading the workshop as compensation for their time and energy.

View The Class Calendar

Membership

The Food Writers Business Lab is available through the paid subscription tier of Mastermind for Food Writers.

An annual membership costs $150 and includes:

• Unlimited access to every Part One instructional workshop throughout the year

• Access to recordings of every instructional session

• The opportunity to register for optional Part Two working sessions for $50 each

• A growing library of practical education created specifically for food writers, by food writers

Whether you’re building your audience, improving your photography, writing a cookbook proposal, strengthening your SEO, or creating new income streams, the Food Writers Business Lab is designed to give you practical education you can use immediately and a community of people who understand exactly what you’re building and why you’re building it.

Join The Food Writers Business Lab

Upcoming Class Topics

The Food Writers Business Lab is self-funded. This means that the income generated through paid subscriptions directly supports the instructors who teach the classes. So, the number of classes scheduled are dependent on the number of paid subscriptions generated. New classes are added as funding is made available.

It’s just one more way we can support one another.

Upcoming topics include:

• SEO for Food Writers

• Food Photography

• Brand & Platform Building

• Writing a Cookbook Proposal

• Cookbook Marketing

• Organizational Strategies for Food Writers

• Creative Recipe Writing

• Self-publishing

• Video for Food Writers

• Creating Products & eBooks

• Teaching Paid Cooking Classes

Check out the class calendar for all scheduled classes. Classes are free for paid subscribers, but registration is required.

Join The Food Writers Business Lab

Part 1: Learn. The first session will be a recorded instructional workshop with an in-depth homework assignment to help you put the material into practice.

When: October 15, 12pm-1:30pm CST

Part 2: Implement. Bring your homework, your questions, your roadblocks, and your challenges. Together, we’ll review what you’ve implemented, troubleshoot challenges, exchange ideas, and get thoughtful feedback from both the instructor and other food writers working toward similar goals.

When: October 22, 12pm-1:30pm CST

Your audience is everywhere. They are scattered around the world and across the internet. You know they’re out there, but finding them can feel overwhelming. You feel like you’re publishing into the void, pouring your heart and soul into your work and then hoping the right people will discover it. And, sometimes they do! But, our job as food writers isn’t just to create good work. It’s also to help people find it.

In this hands-on workshop, food writers will learn to think about SEO not as a technical burden, but as a way of building bridges from their work to their readers. Because that’s exactly what good SEO is: paths that meet readers where they are and lead them back to you.

Better still, those bridges keep working over time, helping your recipes and stories reach new readers again and again for months and years to come.

This is a two-part workshop. The first session will be instructional and will include homework. The second session will be a hands-on workshop where we will roll up our sleeves and get to work. You will come away from this lab with:

• A deeper understanding of what SEO means today and what it might mean in the future

• How AI is changing discoverability and how everyone creating something real has an unfair advantage (Hint: It’s harder to game the system and this is GOOD NEWS for everyone creating something real.)

• How to create a sustainable strategy for long term growth

• How to build bridges between your work and your readers

That last point is important: It’s not only your job to create the work, it’s your job to build the bridge TO your work. And the bridge must meet readers where they are. That’s what good SEO really means and that’s what you’ll learn in this class.

Participants will receive an in-depth homework assignment to help you put the material into practice.

About Rebecca Blackwell

Food Writer, Recipe Developer, & Founder of Mastermind for Food Writers and The Food Writers Business Lab

Rebecca Blackwell has spent nearly 30 years cooking and baking professionally and has published thousands of recipes. She is the creator of the recipe websites Of Batter and Dough and A Little and A Lot, and the author of the Let’s Get Lost newsletter.

In addition to her work as a writer and creator, Rebecca is the founder of Mastermind for Food Writers, and an Advisor in Residence for Write Up. Through the Food Writers Business Lab, she brings together experienced industry professionals to share practical, actionable education designed specifically for food writers.

Rebecca currently travels full-time by RV and sailboat with her husband, creating recipes, telling stories, and helping other writers navigate the evolving world of food media.

Register for SEO For Food Writers

Classes are free for paid subscribers, but registration is required.

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“In all my years as a recipe developer, nothing has done more to draw people to my work and inspire them to actually make the recipes than my photographs. Without a doubt, nothing has moved my business forward more than learning to take stronger, better, more intentional photographs.” -

Some food photos do more than make a dish look good. They create a feeling. They make us want to pull up a chair, reach for a fork, linger at the table, or imagine the story behind the recipe. Food photography is never just about the food.

A strong food photo has to be clear, useful, and appetizing. It needs to show the reader what they are making and help them understand the dish. But in a crowded world of food blogs, newsletters, cookbooks, social media, and brand partnerships, beautiful food photography is also one of the most powerful ways to communicate your voice and the emotional world of your work.

In this two-part workshop, , and and Shelly Waldman will help food writers and recipe developers understand the visual language of food photography. Together, we’ll explore how light, shadow, color, texture, styling, composition, and human elements can shape the story a photo tells.

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We’ll talk about how to make intentional creative choices before you pick up the camera: what mood you want to create, what story the recipe is telling, where the photo will live, and how you want the reader to feel. Then we’ll show you what to do with whatever camera you have to create that mood and tell that story.

This is a two-part workshop. The first session will be instructional and will include homework. The second session will be a hands-on workshop where we will roll up our sleeves and get to work. You will come away from this lab with:

• How to plan a shoot around the story you want your photographs to tell

• How to use color to convey mood and emotion

• How to incorporate texture to transform a mediocre photograph into a stellar one

• How to use lighting as both a styling and technical element

• The best strategies for incorporating the human element into your photographs

If you’ve ever looked at one of your photographs and thought, This is fine, but it doesn’t quite feel like me. Or, This is fine, but I KNOW it could be better. This class is for you.

Register Now

💡 This is a two-part workshop. Your $99 registration fee includes both live sessions: Friday, July 24th and Wednesday, August 5th. When you pay and register for the first session, we will automatically add you to the second session within 24 hours.

✏️The first session will be a recorded instructional workshop with an in-depth homework assignment to help you put the material into practice. A recording of that session will be available for registered attendees within 24 hours.

✏️The second session will be an interactive, hands-on workshop where each attendee will receive personalized feedback on their homework, discuss roadblocks and challenges, and have their questions answered. This session will only be recorded and sent to registered attendees.

—> More about The Food Writers Business Lab.

Questions? Send a direct message!

We also talked about the importance of being able to communicate your values to your audience, the difference between your values, strengths and talents, how to know when to push through and when to re-evaluate and pivot, how discomfort and fear can be indicators that you’re on the right track and why building your brand around who you are and what you really care about takes courage.

If you are focused on creating a business that is aligned, intentional, distinctly your own, AND financially sustainable, please join us for this hands-on workshop:

Creating a Values-Led Brand for Food Writers

For many food writers, branding can start to feel external and performative: the right bio, the right niche, the right content pillars, the right way to show up online. But the strongest brands are not built from the outside in. They are rooted in something deeper: your values, your strengths, your voice, your boundaries, and the kind of work you want to create over time.

In this two-part workshop, and will help food writers clarify the core values that shape who they are, how they work, and what they want their business to stand for. Together, we’ll explore both the personal qualities that are essential to your identity and the practical values that guide your long-term goals.

Rather than treating values as abstract ideas, we’ll make them personal and actionable, so they can become a foundation for your brand and the impact you want to have on the world.

This is a two-part workshop. The first session will be instructional and will include homework. The second session will be a hands-on workshop where we will roll up our sleeves and get to work. You will come away from this lab with:

• A clearer understanding of the core values that define your brand and creative work

• A stronger sense of your innate value: the strengths, qualities, and perspective you naturally bring to your work

• Language for communicating what you do and why it matters with more clarity and confidence

• A values-based framework for making decisions about opportunities, collaborations, boundaries, and growth

• A more aligned strategy for showing up consistently and attracting the right readers and opportunities

Because a strong brand is not just how people recognize your work. It is how your work becomes more honest, sustainable, and distinctly your own.

Find Out More

FREE: Creating a Values Led Brand

Join us on Friday, May 15 for a FREE introductory class to the topics we’ll be covering in the full two-part workshop.

Together, we’ll look at how values influence your voice, your messaging, your boundaries, and the kinds of opportunities you choose to pursue. You’ll leave with a clearer sense of why this clarity matters if you want your writing and business to feel more aligned, intentional, and distinctly your own.

Register For This Free Class

🌶️ This class is part of our free introductory series for the Food Writers’ Business Lab. These sessions are designed to give you a useful introduction to the topic, a feel for the teachers, and a taste of the kind of practical support we offer inside the Lab. If you enjoy this class and want to go deeper, we hope you’ll join us for the full two-part paid lab , where we’ll spend more time on hands-on strategy, examples, and personalized guidance.

If the idea of SEO makes you want to run the other way, I understand.

For a long time, SEO was presented as a rigid set of rules, formulas, and tricks for pleasing Google. For food writers especially, it felt like you had to game the system to succeed, muting your unique voice and personality and pumping out cookie-cutter content that mimicked every other recipe site on the web.

I’ve never been interested in playing that game and I’ve talked to hundreds of food writers who share my aversion.

That understanding of SEO was always incomplete, and now it is even less useful than it used to be, thankgod.

Today, SEO is better understood as simply this: building bridges that help your readers find your work. For food writers, that means helping readers discover your recipes, stories, expertise, and perspective wherever they are searching—through search engines, Pinterest, AI answers, image-based search, social media, and newsletters.

The point is not to game the system. The point is to understand that it’s our responsibility as food writers to not only create good work, but to help our readers find it. Good SEO is not separate from good creative work. It is the part that helps the work connect.

In the simplest possible terms, SEO strategy has two steps:

1. Create the best content you can for your readers.

2. Help them find it.

I’m certain that you’re already doing the first part. It’s the second part that gets a bit tricky.

AI is reshaping how people search and generic content is easier than ever to produce. For food writers, I think that’s good news because readers (the very real people on the other side of the screen) are increasingly drawn to work that feels unmistakably human.

In HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing Report, nearly half of marketers said AI is making content so easy to produce that it is becoming less effective overall, while 63 percent said they need more unique, human content to stand out. To me, the takeaway is clear: your voice, your experience, your testing process, your photography, and your perspective are not extras. They are part of what people are looking for.

SEO Is More Art Than Science… But Please Don’t Ignore The Science

SEO used to be more science than art but over the past few years that’s reversed. To be clear, there are technical best practices that are essential to your work being found online. But beyond that, it’s about observation, strategy, experimentation, and figuring out how to meet your readers where they are.

The goal is not to follow someone else’s template. The goal is to develop your own understanding of what helps your work connect with the people who are looking for it.

What Has Changed About Search

Older SEO advice often rewarded sameness. Writers were encouraged to study top-ranking results and imitate them closely. That led to formulaic blog posts, recipes, and articles, copycat intros, and repetitive structures.

It also rewarded a lot of thin, low-value content whose only purpose was to capture search traffic. One of the clearest examples is the era of mass-produced “how to” articles answering the simplest possible questions—content designed to catch searches like how to peel a potato or how to slice a banana. That strategy generated huge page views for a while for the writers who were willing to create it. But it was never a sustainable long-term strategy. Now, when people ask basic questions, AI usually supplies the answer directly. Content built on that model becomes much easier to bypass and all those sites who built their entire growth strategy on that tactic are left with hundreds (or even thousands) of pages of content that no one is reading.

The safest long-term strategy is not to create more generic content. It is to create work that carries your voice, your point of view, and your real-world experience.

And isn’t that exactly the kind of work you want to produce?

I know I do.

Search systems are more sophisticated now. They are better at understanding language, context, images, video, and relationships between ideas. People are also searching differently. They ask longer, more conversational questions. They search with photos. They use AI tools to compare options, request substitutions, or refine what they want.

This means visibility is no longer just about ranking for one exact keyword in a list of blue links. Discoverability can happen in a recipe carousel, an AI-generated answer, a visual search result, Pinterest, Google Lens, a newsletter recommendation, or a social post that answers the right question at the right moment.

For food writers, this means that clear, useful, human-centered content has become more important, not less. It may seem counterintuitive, but the growing sea of AI generated content just might elevate human-created art as something worth seeking out.

How Search Engines Understand Your Content

Modern search relies heavily on natural language processing, or NLP. In practical terms, that means search engines are better able to understand language more like people do. They can recognize related phrases, interpret context, and distinguish between vague language and precise meaning.

NLP is why Google understands that “vegetarian curry” and “meatless curry” can be used to describe the same recipe. It’s how it knows that when you type “lemon cookies with butter” you’re probably looking for a recipe for shortbread. It’s why you can type disconnected phrases into search, filled with misspelled words, and Google will still usually know what you’re trying to find.

With this understanding, one of the best SEO strategies is to help your reader know immediately that they are in the right place. You can do this with carefully crafted headlines and thoughtful introductions that help readers know immediately that they’ve landed on what they were looking for.

Keyword research is still very important. But how you shape the context around those keywords is where the magic lies. Keyword research is about discovering clues about what readers are trying to solve, make, learn, or eat.

For recipe writers, this means answering some key questions through carefully crafted headlines, titles, and intros:

• What type of ingredient is used?

• What type of ingredient is not used?

• What kind of cooking vessel is involved?

• What meal type is this?

These questions help reveal the attributes that matter to readers. They also help you write with more clarity. A reader wants to know not just that a recipe is for muffins, but whether they are bakery-style, freezer-friendly, make-ahead, or topped with streusel. They want to know whether a chicken recipe is for thighs or breasts, whether it is a skillet dinner, whether it suits a weeknight, and whether leftovers hold up well.

That specificity improves the experience for readers and gives search systems stronger signals about what the content actually is.

In practical terms, this kind of research does not have to be overwhelming. A tool like KeySearch can help you see how often a phrase is searched and how competitive it is and the other phrases people are using to search for a specific recipe or topic.

The Rise of Multimodal Search

We live in a multi-media world and search now includes text, image, video, and voice. Google and other AI systems are getting better and better at interpreting these signals together.

A person might snap a photo of a restaurant dish and search for a homemade version. Someone else might upload a screenshot and ask for a dairy-free variation. Another user may search visually for recipes similar to a dish they have seen online.

That means the visual side of food writing matters in new ways. Descriptive file names, helpful alt text, accurate captions, process shots, and instructional video all support discoverability. They also support readers directly by making your content easier to follow and understand.

Food writing has always been visual. Now those visuals are part of how search systems interpret your work too.

A Layered Model For SEO

One useful way to think about SEO is as a layered system rather than a single tactic.

At the foundation is your brand. Brand is not just your logo, fonts, or colors. It is your perspective, your expertise, your values, and the throughline that makes your work uniquely yours. It shapes what you publish, how you frame recipes, what kinds of stories you tell, and why readers return to you instead of someone else.

On top of the brand, we want to layer clear, NLP-friendly writing for humans. This is the language that helps readers and search systems understand your content quickly. It includes strong titles, specific introductions, descriptive subheadings, and useful supporting copy.

Layer in some visuals: hero images, process shots, and video. These help clarify the recipe, demonstrate method, build trust, and support discovery across visual platforms and multimodal search experiences.

And then there’s the layer that ties everything together: personal insight and lived experience. This is the texture that generic AI-generated content struggles to replicate. It includes your personal experience, the lessons you learned while testing, why a technique works, what can go wrong, and the small details that make a reader trust you.

A Better Way to Think About SEO

For food writers, SEO is not about tricking an algorithm. It is about clarity, usefulness, and connection.

It asks you to understand your audience, communicate what your content is with more precision, and present your work in a way that helps both people and platforms recognize its value. It rewards brand clarity, strong writing, thoughtful visuals, and lived experience.

In an AI-shaped landscape, that kind of humanity is not a weakness. It is the advantage.

Your audience is looking for you. The future of SEO for food writers belongs to people who create something real and know how to present their work in a way that helps their readers find it. In other words, they understand that their responsibility is not only to create good work. It is also to build the bridge.

Think of this as meeting your reader where they are. The more clearly you communicate what your work is, who it is for, and why it matters, the easier it becomes to build that bridge.

And that, really, is the job.

SEO for Food Writers

In this hands-on workshop, food writers will learn to think about SEO not as a technical burden, but as a way of building bridges from their work to their readers. Because that’s exactly what good SEO is: paths that meet readers where they are and lead them back to you.

Instructor:

Part 1: Learn. The first session will be a recorded instructional workshop with an in-depth homework assignment to help you put the material into practice.

When: October 15, 12pm-1:30pm CST

Part 2: Implement. Bring your homework, your questions, your roadblocks, and your challenges. Together, we’ll review what you’ve implemented, troubleshoot challenges, exchange ideas, and get thoughtful feedback from both the instructor and other food writers working toward similar goals.

When: October 22, 12pm-1:30pm CST

More Information + Register

At first glance, Substack Recipe Cards might seem like just another formatting tool. And it is… but, as many of you have already noticed, it’s kind of clunky and lacking in the kind of functionality you might expect from a recipe card template.

But let’s take a moment to talk about WHY this functionality is suddenly available for food writers at all. Why has Substack invested resources in creating it? Food writers have been publishing recipes here for a while. So, why now?

I don’t have an inside track to the answers to these questions, but as someone who’s been publishing recipes online since 2013, I have some educated guesses.

Educated Guess #1:

If you’re a food writer on Substack, recipe cards can help you organize the recipes you publish here in a way that makes them easier for readers to find. For example, in this issue of my newsletter, I included a recipe for Fettuccine with Chicken and Tomato Cream Sauce. This is how I’ve been publishing recipes on Substack since I started writing here in early 2024. I’ve published somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 new recipes on Substack so far and every single one is buried in the middle of one of the 150+ issues I’ve sent out so far.

Put yourself in the shoes of one of my readers. You are standing in your kitchen thinking about what you’re going to make for dinner. You remember that there was a chicken and pasta recipe in one of my newsletters but you can’t remember which issue. How would you go about finding it? How many archived issues would you scroll through before giving up?

What if, instead, you could just go to a “Recipes” section of my substack to find it?

This is one way I am using the recipe cards to improve the experience for my readers. One by one, I am creating a dedicated post for each and every recipe I’ve published on Substack. All of them live in one place and make it easier for readers to find the recipes I’ve published here without having to sort through the archive of newsletters. Because it’s easier to show than to tell, here’s where you’ll find the recipe section of my newsletter: : www.rebeccablackwell.com/s/recipes

Summary: Publishing recipes as their own post using the Recipe Card makes it easier to build an actual recipe archive within your publication instead of letting recipes disappear into the general stream of posts. That’s better for readers, because it makes your work easier to browse and return to, and it’s better for you because it helps you build a catalog of work that’s more durable than your newsletter archive.

Educated guess #2:

The recipe card functionality makes your work easier to find outside of Substack, and create posts that keep working for you long after you hit publish.

That last part is worth paying attention to.

A newsletter post can continue to generate views over time, but usually not at huge volume. You send out your newsletter. A lot of people read it in the first few days. After that the readership diminishes significantly.

A recipe is different. A recipe can keep bringing people to your Substack indefinitely through Google, Pinterest, social sharing, and links from other websites.

That’s a very different kind of asset.

Here’s an example: Right now, if you type these words into Google, “whole wheat carrot bran muffins” one of my recipes on Substack will show up in the search results. That recipe will continue showing up in search results for people who are looking for whole wheat carrot bran muffins for as long as Google includes it in search results.

One of the earliest recipes I published on one of my recipe websites is Napoleon Dessert. Over the past 12 months, that recipe has generated 12,000 clicks from Google to that recipe. In other words, 12,000 people found my recipe when they went to Google and searched for “Napoleon Dessert”. And that’s just over the past 12 months. I originally published the recipe in 2019.

Will a recipe you publish on Substack today bring you 12,000 new visitors to your Substack over the next 12 months? Probably not. 🙂 But, what if it brought you 400? That’s 400 people who may not have known about you before they clicked on your recipe.

And what if that one recipe brought in 400 new people next year and the year after that and the year after that?

Will all of those 400 people subscribe to your newsletter? No. But what if 25 of them do? And what if that one recipe continues to generate 25 new subscribers every year?

Now consider the possibility that an additional 400 people are coming to your recipe every year through Pinterest.

Do you see the long term potential?

As writers and recipe creators, we spend a lot of time trying to get our work in front of people who might be interested in it. A lot of those people are searching for recipes outside of Substack. By formatting your recipes as their own post and using the recipe card template, every recipe you publish on Substack becomes a bridge between your work and the people who are looking for it.

Summary: Recipes are one of the clearest ways to reach people who are not already in your Substack world. Someone might never discover you through the app, but they may absolutely find you because they are looking for whole wheat carrot bran muffins, or whatever kind of recipes you publish.

Recipes stick around and can travel. Individual recipes can be found through search engines, Pinterest, and social media. If you want your Substack to reach beyond your existing subscribers, recipes can help do that.

Educated guess #3:

Formatting recipes as their own post using the recipe card makes it easier to link to individual recipes from other websites.

I publish recipes to two recipe websites. Including recipes in the middle of every newsletter issue made it more difficult to link to recipes I published on Substack from a recipe I published on one of my recipe sites. Publishing individual recipes as their own post makes it much easier to accomplish this.

You can see what I mean here: If you scroll down to the bottom of this post for Apple Upside Down Cake, you’ll find a section titled, “Year round recipes for apple lovers”. In that section, you’ll see a link to Apple Dutch Baby, which is a recipe I’ve published here on Substack.

As said during our last Mastermind Meeting, you can think of that link as a bridge that has the potential to bring people from one site to the next.

The big picture: Even if you don’t publish work to other websites, by formatting your recipes as their own post, you make it easier for other people to link to your recipe from their website.

Building Bridges and a Big Picture Strategy

What if paid subscriptions aren’t the only opportunity for revenue creation?

Or maybe the better question is: How does Substack fit into your larger business goals?

If Substack isn’t a part of your business goals, if publishing here is a creative outlet that you do to enrich your life, not build a business, I doubt you’ve stuck with me this far. 🙂

For me, I started publishing here because I wanted to expand my creative reach. As someone said during the last Mastermind Meeting, I wanted a space where I could write about whatever the fuck I wanted.

This is one of the best things about Substack and I have no intention of abandoning that privilege. But, my work here is one part of my business and it needs to fit into my larger business goals.

One of the ways to do this is to start thinking of your recipes as long-term discovery assets. You’re not just publishing for the readers who open this week’s email. You’re also building a library of work that people can discover on and off Substack over time.

This can support growth in all kinds of ways that are not strictly subscription-based.

On Google, search results have been shifting away from “how popular is this creator?” to “who would find this genuinely useful, and how do we get it in front of them?”

That is a meaningful shift, and I actually think it favors a lot of Substack writers.

A smaller, highly engaged audience can outperform a large passive one, because engagement is now a distribution signal. Topical authority matters more than breadth. The people who deeply serve a niche are often the people these new systems want to surface.

Most of you are already doing the hard part. You’re honing your craft, pouring your heart and your resources into creating really good content for an audience of readers who trust you. You are building something real.

Taking the time to think about the strategy behind building your audience is, for many of us, one of the most valuable things we can do to create something sustainable.

Many of you started publishing on Substack because you wanted to avoid SEO. But SEO is really just doing everything you can to help the right people find you.

That’s it.

And honestly, a lot of people who say they hate SEO are already doing exactly that on Substack. They’re trying to make useful work. They’re trying to connect it to the right audience. They’re trying to be findable.

That same principle applies to search engines.

One of the best things about SEO right now is that there are fewer ways to game the system. That means there is more room for those of us who are creating something real.

2 practical things to keep in mind

1. If one of your goals is to help people find your recipes off Substack, consider using a custom domain. Substack has instructions for setting that up here.

2. When adding images to a recipe post, be sure to fill in the alt text. The alt text is for people who are visually impaired so they know what’s in the photo. So, when filling in the alt text, simply tell those people what’s in the photo. Alt text is also important information for Google because it tells Google what’s in the photo AND tells Google that you are doing the bare minimum to create content that everyone can access.

Final thoughts

My real takeaway is that Recipe Cards are not just a nice feature for food writers. They’re a structural opportunity.

They can help you organize your recipes, make your archive more useful, improve discoverability, and create content that keeps working for you over time.

And if you’re already creating recipes that serve a clear niche and a real audience, this is exactly the kind of feature worth thinking about.

Yes, it’s clunky and buggy right now. But, I can’t imagine that Substack is going to abandon the feature, which means it will improve over time.

One important question that came up during the Mastermind Meeting: Can’t I just publish my recipes as their own post without using the recipe card to format them?

A: Yes. However, the recipe card has some back-end code that tells Google (and the rest of the internet) that an actual recipe is a part of the post. This makes it MUCH more likely that your recipe will show up in Google search results.

What to do now

In May, I will be teaching a comprehensive online workshop that dives much deeper into everything I’ve written about here.

• What SEO really is, how it’s changed, and how creators who are focused on creating real content for real people have a significant advantage.

• How to set up and use Pinterest to drive new readers to your work on Substack.

• How to create a big-picture strategy for your work that will help you connect your creative work to your business goals.

• How to make money as a food writer. This is something I am very passionate about. If you want to make a living through your creative work, we’ll talk about the ways to do that.

• Keyword research: This is simply meeting people where they are by using the same words for your recipes that they are using to find your recipes. We’ll dive into the tools that make this easy and how AI has changed the game.

• How to format your recipe posts and the Substack recipe cards to increase the chances that the recipe will show up in search. In other words: How to make it easier for the people looking for that recipe to find it.

Registration for this workshop is not yet available but if you are interested, please let me know in the comments below and I will reach out directly with more information when I have it.

Questions? Comments?

Please leave a comment below or send me a direct message.

Until next time,

First of all thank you to over 40 people who joined the LIVE. And thank you to so many viewers who were super active with comments and questions in the chat. Thank you for staying despite our technical challenge. We really enjoyed this conversation and judging by the comments, so have many of you.

Here are some things we covered in the conversation:

• how to find your voice

• why you need to throw some spaghetti at the wall

• once you put content out you have no control over how it will be received

• no one will give you a reward for doing something you don’t enjoy

For more on this subject, see this article.

And finally, since we mentioned the Principles of Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown, here is a list of them, if you are curious:

We would love to hear your thoughts on the subject, do watch the video and let us know what your experience is. And subscribe for Mastermind for Food Writers so you can join us in our monthly calls where we host conversations on the similar topics.

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It was something I wanted to talk about mostly because I wanted to work out my own thoughts about what it means when people unsubscribe. As with everything, I started by putting my thoughts on a page.

Life, being the unpredictable and uncontrollable experience that it is, threw us a curveball this morning by way of a crippling migraine. Poor Liza is down for the count and our discussion is going to have to wait for another day.

Instead, I gathered up my notes and am sharing them with you here. At some point in January, we’ll try again for a LIVE discussion about this topic. You are only getting my very one sided thoughts on the subject, and I know for a fact that Liza also has a lot of insight to offer. By then, of course, the discussion will have changed. It will widen, and grow, and expand, and we’ll probably all be better for it.

Let’s all send Liza some healing energy. These are some of the things I wanted to share with you today. If it brings anything up for you, I’d love for you to leave your thoughts in the comments.

Have the courage to write, or not write, about whatever you like

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” - William James.

It can feel like caring about everything, being involved in everything, knowing about everything, and having an opinion about everything is what’s demanded of us today.

The truth is that I can’t care about everything. I simply can’t make every cause my cause. It’s not even possible to write about everything I actually care about.

My mom saved a poem I wrote in the 3rd grade about how I was going to save the world.

Friends, I can’t save the world and neither can you.

There will always be critics telling you what you should and shouldn’t care about and what you should and shouldn’t write about. Let them filter themselves out. Let them unsubscribe. You are not for everyone.

Knowing this, we might as well take on projects that are in line with our actual desires - with what you actually really want to do, not what you think you should do. This means doing things you can sustain because you want to keep going even when it’s challenging and murky, and you don’t know where it’s all going to lead.

Your audience is not a concept. It’s real people who resonate with what you care about. They only way for them to find you is if you write about what you care about.

All those unsubscribes are also not a concept. They are real people who don’t resonate with what you care about. Let them go.

The freedom to try new things and make mistakes. Risk nothing, create nothing.

Just this morning I read this line, “There’s no prize for failing to spend your time as you wish.”

Well isn’t that the truth.

The only thing I actually know for sure about creativity is that there is no creativity without doing. You may regret it. You may think it was a mistake. You may regret nothing, and still, it may not work out the way you hoped. None of this matters. It wouldn’t exist in the first place if you didn’t create it.

This of course, is risky. The second you put it out into the world it’s no longer yours to control. The receiving part of your work has nothing to do with you.

This simple realization feels like freedom to me.

Releasing the illusion of control over how something will be received means spending a lot more time immersed in the freedom to try a lot of things, to quit what’s not working, and follow the things that light me up.

Success, whatever that means to you, is largely based on chance. The more chances we give ourselves, the greater the odds that one will land. Experiment widely, build your networks, and embrace uncertainty. Test multiple strategies. Most won’t pay off, but those that do will do so disproportionately.

Let’s pause for a moment to go back to where we started. Trying a lot of things does not mean trying everything. It simply means making choices about about what we really want to do and following through without attachment to outcome. Then doing that again and again and again.

How would you like to spend your time today?

Write without attachment to outcome

I mean, this is the whole story, isn’t it? You have no idea where it’s all going to lead because you have no control over where it’s all going to lead.

So we might as well pay attention to the things that light us up. I am drawn to people who are doing things in the world with passionate energy. So are you and so is your audience.

It’s good to know what you want, but hold loosely your thoughts and expectations about how you’ll get it, if you’ll get it, and where it will come from.

How to view your unsubscribes as evidence that you’re on the right track.

Numbers are simply little pieces of data. Impartial information. We get to decide what they mean and what if it means you’re on the right track?

Maybe you decide that the numbers are telling you you’ve strayed from the thing you really want to write about. Fantastic.

Maybe the numbers are telling you that your list has people on it that aren’t a good fit. Excellent.

Maybe the numbers are prompting you to take that class you’ve been wanting to take, to spend more time perfecting your craft, to get better at the thing you’re most passionate about. Even better.

External validation almost always comes after you’ve done all the important work. And movement of any kind, of people coming and going, opting in and opting out, is evidence that you’re doing the important work.

You are putting things out into the world that are causing a reaction. This deserves a heartfelt congratulations and pat on the back.

Let’s just stop for a moment to appreciate the truth that most people are too afraid to put anything out into the world at all. You are one of the brave souls who is not only putting your work out into the world, you’re receiving a reaction to it. Every single person who unsubscribes is evidence of this.

This is the point in the discussion, if we were LIVE, where I would ask you for your thoughts and read all your comments.

Instead I’ll ask you to leave them here.

What does this bring up for you? Where do you disagree? What has been left unsaid and incomplete?

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In this month’s mastermind meeting, shared that she is sending short posts to select subscribers that are “A gift… something that doesn’t ask readers to do anything…A moment of true connection, not just a short post.”

Linda calls these emails “crumbs”.

So, it’s in the spirit of crumbs that I send you this short note.

This week, I heard myself telling a friend that there might be enormous potential in using instagram to generate Substack subscriptions and blog traffic, but I’d missed that boat.

Here’s the thing that hit me, mid-sentence, and it has nothing to do with whether or not Instagram is a good or bad platform to use for anything: I had, at some point, made a decision that because I am not already on that ship, I cannot get on.

Forgive me all the sailing metaphors. My husband and I are currently in the middle of sailing lessons. It’s the only metaphor on my mind.

The point is this: Every single person who is right now at the height of anything - Substack, Instagram, pro hockey, whatever, was once at the beginning. Obviously. But, my brain has decided that if I haven’t reached a certain point by, I don’t even know… a certain age? A certain point in the age of the platform?… that the ship has sailed. I missed the boat. Shoulda woulda coulda.

This, I have realized, is ludicrous. When you get on the boat is simply when you get on the boat. There is not a right time or a wrong time. It is not linear.

And I don’t know who else needs to hear that, friends, but if you find yourself thinking, I’m too old, I’m too young, I’m too late… We need to stop that shit and just get on the boat.

xo

-Rebecca

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