Your Food Blog Deserves Better: Why Established Bloggers Go Custom

You’ve built a successful food blog. You’re monetized. You’re seeing great traffic. And you know—deep down—that this business is worth investing in.

But here’s the thing: Your website isn’t reflecting the level you’re operating at anymore.

Maybe your site is functional, but it’s not memorable. Maybe it feels cobbled together after years of band-aid fixes. Or maybe you just know it’s time to show up differently—with a brand and website that match the authority you’ve already built.

That’s exactly what our custom web design package is for.

Today, I’m pulling back the curtain on our premium offering—the full package for established food bloggers who are ready to think bigger and take their entire business to the next level. And I’m sharing what’s NEW for 2026, including something our Crafted clients have been requesting over and over again.

Who Custom Web Design Is For

Let me start by painting a picture of who this package is designed for. (And yes, there are always exceptions, but this is what we typically see with our custom clients.)

You’re ready for custom web design if:

You’re well established. From a traffic perspective, you’re typically over 250,000 page views per month—though many of our custom clients have exceeded 1 million page views monthly.

You’re crystal clear on your niche and audience. When we do the branding deep dive, we’re not figuring out who you serve from scratch. You already know. We’re just making sure every piece of your online presence reflects that clarity.

You’ve seen success and know investing is worth it. To be honest, the risk isn’t the same as it would be if your business was brand new and not bringing in revenue. The investment makes sense for the level you’re at.

You have a sky’s-the-limit vision. You don’t want to be put in a box—whether that’s with a pre-made theme or even a semi-custom approach. You want to come to the drawing board where anything is possible.

You need more than just a website. Many of our Crafted clients focus solely on web design (maybe they’ve already done branding with us or feel good about what they have). But custom clients need the complete brand foundation PLUS all the web design elements—because your content and the experience you’re giving people deserve that level of cohesion.

What Makes Custom Different from Crafted?

If you listened to our episode about Crafted (our semi-custom package), you might be wondering: What’s actually different about custom?

Here’s the breakdown:

More Content, More Complexity

Our Crafted clients typically have anywhere from 20 to a few hundred blog posts. Our custom clients? Usually over 400 blog posts, sometimes up to 1,000. That extensive library means more complexity, which is why the custom option includes so much more hands-on involvement from our team.

Full Collaboration and Custom Strategy

When you work with us on custom web design, you’re working hand-in-hand with our team every step of the way. You’re collaborating with me directly. There’s extensive web and brand strategy woven throughout the entire project.

Don’t get me wrong—our other packages are collaborative too. But custom goes deeper. There’s just more to it. (And I say that not to make it overwhelming, but to paint an accurate picture!)

Everything Designed in Mockups First

This is huge: With custom web design, we design everything in digital mockups before it ever gets coded.

Why does this matter? Because it’s so much easier to change the design before we get into development. You can see exactly how everything will look before we ever touch the website. That doesn’t mean there aren’t tweaks after development starts, but for the most part, everything is established visually first—then we code it to look exactly like the design mockups.

This is very different from seeing everything built on a staging site (like in Crafted).

Premium Investment, Premium Results

Let me be completely transparent here: A lot of our Crafted clients are taking a leap of faith when they invest. They might be investing more than they make in a month, or a sizable portion of their monthly income.

For many of our custom clients, the investment is less than one month’s income—simply because of the level they’re operating at. Not always, but often.

You’re willing to invest at a premium level because you understand the ROI. You’re not hoping it works—you know it will.

What’s Included in Custom Web Design

Our custom web design package has evolved over 10+ years in business and 8+ years working exclusively with food bloggers. Here’s what you get:

Part 1: Complete Branding Foundations

This includes everything from our Branding Intensive package, plus more:

• Complete brand strategy and messaging deep dive
• Full logo system (primary logo, alternates, submarks, patterns)
• Custom typography and color palette
• Comprehensive brand guide
• Marketing templates

Part 2: Where Brand and Web Strategy Come Together

This is what truly sets custom apart. You’re not getting the strategy we know works for most clients—you’re getting custom strategy specifically for YOUR brand, YOUR blog, YOUR audience.

Custom wireframes with walkthrough video. I design wireframes of your homepage specifically, then walk you through WHY every element is placed where it is. I explain why we should showcase certain categories over others, what the best freebie placement is for your audience, and how all the pieces work together.

Every page designed in mockups. We design every single page individually before coding anything. This gives us complete flexibility and helps you see the visual design before we build. Nothing is locked in until you approve it.

Strategy for now AND the future. We’re not just thinking about what you need right now—we’re thinking 3, 5, even 10 years ahead. We want to build something you can grow into.

Pages Included:

• Homepage with fully custom, strategic layout
• Recipe index that’s SEO optimized and beautifully organized
• Category pages (more on this in a second!)
• Single blog post with extensive custom blocks
• Recipe card designed for your brand
• About page that tells your story in a compelling way

You’re getting a fully custom Kadence theme—not semi-custom, truly custom-built for exactly what you need. The sky is really the limit here. If you can dream it, if we can dream it together during strategy, we’re going to make it happen.

What’s NEW for 2026: Strategic Category Audit

Okay, this is the big addition I’ve been hinting at.

Our Crafted clients have been requesting this as an add-on over and over again. And honestly? Our custom clients deserve to have this burden taken off their shoulders entirely.

Starting in 2026, every custom web design package includes a full strategic category audit.

What’s Included in the Category Audit:

Deep dive of at least 10 categories. We look at your categories in the grand scheme of your content to make sure you have the right ones in place. (We have an add-on available if you need us to review more than 10.)

Full SEO optimization. We optimize each category page with descriptions, interlinking—all the things you need.

Restructuring. We handle unneeded, duplicate, or “dead” categories (like a Diet parent category with subcategories underneath it that never gets browsed).

Cleanup and redirects. We do all the restructuring and redirecting properly so you don’t have issues down the road.

Strategic new categories. We add any categories that are needed—especially for places on your website where we want to feature certain content or fill major gaps.

Why Categories Matter So Much

I’ve had a million conversations about categories over the years. It’s one of those things that makes sense in my brain but is really hard for a lot of food bloggers to wrap their heads around.

Here’s what we typically find:

• Too many categories that dilute your content and make it hard to know where recipes should go
• Underfilled categories with only 3-4 recipes (not enough to justify their existence)
• No descriptions or interlinking (huge missed SEO opportunity!)
• Duplicate or poorly organized categories (like appetizers as a subcategory of dinner—what?)

Why this matters: Categories are a HUGE part of SEO. They help your readers navigate. They help Google understand what your site is about. When done correctly, they can even become pages that generate traffic on their own.

But most food bloggers set them up at the beginning or along the way and never really revisit them holistically.

Why We’re Including This in Custom Packages

Our custom clients are paying a premium, and this is a premium service that really helps. It never feels good to me when a client invests so much and we put a bunch of work on their plate during the design process.

Plus, our custom clients typically have MORE content than our semi-custom clients, so there’s more to untangle. That’s exactly why this gets put off for years—it feels complicated, it’s not fun, and it’s certainly not the sexy part of food blogging.

We’re taking it off your plate. We’re covering all the bases and handing over a site that’s beautifully designed, great for SEO, and has everything taken care of.

Custom vs. Crafted: The Key Difference

Here’s how I think about it:

Crafted is done WITH you. Custom is done FOR you.

Both are highly collaborative—that’s just my nature and how we’ve built this business. But custom goes so much deeper and covers all the bases. We’re doing more of the heavy lifting and making sure everything is packaged up beautifully at the end, not leaving you with a long to-do list.

We take the lead on web design strategy. I’m doing the research and strategy work and bringing it to you. You can come with ideas (I love hearing them!), but the burden isn’t on you to have all the answers.

We’re not just executing a vision you hand to us. We’re not building from blueprints you provide. We’re dreaming together. We’re building together. We’re collaborating every step of the way.

This comes from asking strategic questions you might not know to ask. It’s absolutely my favorite part of the project when I ask a question that makes a client pause and say, “That is such a GOOD question.” It helps them think about their blog in a completely new way—and that’s when we discover opportunities we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

The Process and Timeline

Custom web design packages typically take 6-8 weeks (now probably 7-9 weeks with the category audit).

Here’s how it works:

Discovery Phase: We dive deep into your brand, audience, and goals.

Strategy Phase: Wireframing, planning, mapping everything out.

Design Phase: Branding is established, then visual mockups of all pages are created.

Development Phase: We build everything on a staging site (this is quieter for you—mostly internal work).

Walkthrough Call: This is one of my favorite parts! I literally walk you through all the pages, explain how everything works, and answer your questions. Clients get to see everything come together for the first time, and it’s so fun to watch them light up.

Launch: We set the date, provide training and support, and continue to help after launch.

Investment Structure

Payments are broken into three installments:

• 35% deposit to secure your spot
• 35% due at the beginning of the project
• 30% due right before launch

This allows the larger investment to be spread out instead of all at once.

Is Custom Right for You?

If you’re not sure whether Crafted or Custom is the better fit, the best way to figure it out is to get on a call with me.

I’m never going to tell someone they should invest way more than they need to. If Crafted is a good fit and will give you everything you need, I’ll tell you that.

But here’s what I’ve noticed: Custom clients usually KNOW. If you’re listening to this and thinking, “Yes, that’s absolutely what I need—I don’t want to cut any corners, I don’t want to leave any stone unturned,” then custom is most likely for you.

The Bottom Line

Custom web design is the full package. No stone unturned. The complete experience.

If you need branding, strategy, web design, development, AND you’d like your categories to finally make sense? This is the package for you.

It’s for established food bloggers ready to invest at a premium level—bloggers who understand that their website should reflect the authority they’ve already built.

Here’s what I know from working with custom clients: Every single time, they end the project saying they wish they hadn’t waited.

So if you’re an established food blogger who’s seeing success and you’re ready for all the pieces to finally be cohesive and match the level your brand is operating at, I’d really encourage you to make next year the year you make it happen.

Your content is incredible. Your business is thriving. It’s time for your website to reflect that.

Related episode: EP 94: What is the ROI of a new website?