How Ankerkraut uses recipes to explain spices that don't explain themselves
A jar called Wubba Lubba Dub Dub Rub doesn't tell you what to cook. Ankerkraut's 567 recipes do, one linked spice at a time.
Ankerkraut sells spice blends with names that say nothing about cooking. Its recipe page promises "zu (beinahe) jedem Gewürz auch ein Rezept," a recipe for (almost) every spice, and the library keeps that promise.
The Hamburg brand publishes 567 recipes in German on Recipe Kit, and they link the Ankerkraut products they call for. A linked recipe names the jar, says how much to use, and puts it one tap from the cart. Readers have left more than 52,000 ratings on those recipes.
The challenge
Stefan and Anne Lemcke founded Ankerkraut in Hamburg in 2013, mixing the first spice blends themselves without flow agents, flavor enhancers, or artificial additives. The company grew fast from there: a 2016 appearance on Die Höhle der Löwen, the German equivalent of Shark Tank, Nestlé taking a majority stake in 2022, and in April 2026 the Lemckes buying the company back. Today the catalog spans single spices, BBQ rubs like Magic Dust, baking spices, teas and mulled wine, gift sets, and oils.
Ankerkraut also runs licensed collaborations most spice companies would never attempt: a Rick and Morty line, Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings lines, an Original Stormtrooper line, tie-ins with SpongeBob, Avatar and Garfield, plus collaborations with television chefs like Tim Raue and Ali Güngörmüs. A licensed blend sells on the strength of the character on the jar, but the name does not tell anyone how to use it. Ankerkraut calls these "abstract license products," the kind "which don't carry the 'what?' or 'how?' within their product name."
The main reason we're using Recipe Kit is to show our (potential) customers how to use our products.
We spoke with Ole Joussen, who handles SEO at Ankerkraut, about how the recipes get made and what they do for the business.
Who writes a recipe called Portal-Pickle-Pasta?
The Rick and Morty tie-in is a set of jars plus a set of recipes: Portal-Pickle-Pasta, Existence is Pain Tacos, and Get Schwifty Airfryer Chicken. We asked whether the licensor approved only the packaging or the recipes too. Ankerkraut develops all of it together with the licensor.
In most of the cases we develop our license products, their names, look and the recipes accompanying them in close coordination with the licensor. In the Rick and Morty case we've felt that the topic of the recipes and the name of the product should be as crazy as the TV series itself.
A colleague on the Ankerkraut team who is a real fan of the show wrote the recipes, and it reads that way. Each one features a blend from the line, like Wubba Lubba Dub Dub Rub or Pickle Rick Flavor, and each blend sits one tap from the cart inside the recipe. The joke gets someone to open the page, and the recipe shows them what the jar is for.
In my opinion the Portal-Pickle-Pasta, Existence is Pain Tacos and Get Schwifty Airfryer Chicken are the most creative recipes we've ever made.
How Recipe Kit supports the system
The licensed recipes run on the same setup as the rest of the library. Open Kroketten im Airfryer (croquettes in the air fryer) and each seasoning carries a "Zum Produkt" link and an "In den Warenkorb" add-to-cart button, from Pommes Frites Salz to Kräuterbutter Gewürz to Pfeffer Symphonie. The reader does not have to hunt for the product afterward.
Recipe Kit handles the parts a shopper and a search engine see. Ingredients link to product pages, so a limited edition or licensed blend keeps a path to the cart once its campaign ends. Each recipe carries structured recipe schema, which helps Google read it as a recipe. Readers can rate every recipe, and Ankerkraut's have collected more than 52,000 ratings. The most rated, Weltbester Crêpe Teig, has more than 4,600 on its own. The library is organized by diet, cuisine, and cooking method, so a Rick and Morty taco and a Tahdig (Persian crispy rice) live in the same catalog without either getting lost.
Weltbester Crêpe Teig: the pantry staples stay plain text, the Zimt & Zucker blend is linked, and step three says when to add it
Are recipes an SEO strategy, or a happy side effect?
For Ankerkraut, the strategy is deliberate. The SEO team uses recipes to reach search terms that product pages cannot.
To me, as the SEO of Ankerkraut, recipes are a great way of positioning us as a brand for keywords related to our native sales-driven search terms.
We've started optimizing our recipes some time ago and meanwhile we're pulling quite some traffic from it.
Ankerkraut keeps its own traffic numbers private, but public search results show the effect. As of October 2026, the crêpe recipe, the most rated in the library, ranks on page one of Google in Germany for "crepes rezept," a search made about 110,000 times a month.
That search does not name a spice. It brings a cook to a recipe where the Zimt & Zucker blend is listed, linked, and named again in the method.
While the reach of keywords fitting for our products or collections are limited, the number of recipes you can create with our products is infinite.
How do recipes fit into growing Ankerkraut?
The answer goes back to the reason the library exists.
Over the years we've noticed that knowing how to use our products is one of the main needs our customers have. For that reason our job doesn't end with offering a great product. We want to share our expertise in cooking, baking and barbecuing, using our products in a creative way, with our customers.
The library serves two audiences. Existing customers learn new uses for jars they already own. Search brings in people who have never heard of Ankerkraut and only want something for dinner. Ankerkraut is realistic about that second group.
And of course we're also reaching out for people out there, who are only looking for a tasty recipe for today's dinner. Most of them leave our website instantly after they've finished cooking, but maybe they come back on us, when considering to buy some exciting new seasoning.
In practice, that makes the dinner search a first introduction to the brand. A cook who made the salmon has seen which seasoning went into it, and where to buy it, before they ever shop for spices.
Lessons for spice and seasoning brands
- Give every licensed or novelty product its own recipes. A product name that does not say what it is for needs a recipe that does. Ankerkraut develops the recipes with the licensor, alongside the name and the packaging, so they launch together.
- Let the recipe carry the brand's personality. Portal-Pickle-Pasta works because it commits to the show. Ankerkraut handed the recipes to a colleague who knows the series well, and the team counts them as the most creative it has made.
- Target dishes, not only product terms. Searches for a product or collection are limited. Searches for dishes like crêpes are not, and the recipe can list the spice that makes the dish work.
- Link every branded ingredient, not just the headline blend. Kroketten im Airfryer links Pommes Frites Salz, Kräuterbutter Gewürz, and Pfeffer Symphonie individually, so the reader can buy the whole recipe from the page.
- Publish in your customers' language. Ankerkraut writes its recipes natively in German, for the searches its customers actually make.
For the broader case for recipes as owned marketing, see our recipe content marketing guide and the rented versus owned land framework.
More spice stories from our case study library: how La Boîte turns famous dishes into spice discovery, how Spiceology turns every blend into a shoppable recipe, and inside Burlap and Barrel's six-year recipe library. If you run a spice brand yourself, our recipes for spice brands page covers the category.
Show shoppers what every blend is for
Publish structured recipes on Shopify, connect each dish with the products used to make it, and show shoppers what your products can actually do.
