How Growing Naturals built a lasting plant protein recipe library
As of July 2026, Growing Naturals' High-Protein Peach Ginger Turmeric Smoothie ranks fourth on Google for 'peach ginger turmeric smoothie'. It is one of 334 recipes the brand has published for essentially one thing, plant protein, over more than four years.
Growing Naturals makes hypoallergenic pea and rice protein for people who have cut out dairy, soy, gluten and most other common allergens. Its recipe library exists to answer the one question that stalls a plant-protein reorder: what do I actually make with this.
The library has grown steadily since 2021, most of it developed in-house by the company dietitian, and it now shows pea and rice protein working across smoothies, bakes and savory dishes. The recipes that rank were not engineered to. The visibility is a byproduct of publishing something useful, over and over, for years.
One powder, and one question that stalls the reorder
A shopper who has cut out dairy, soy, gluten and more is not short on protein powder options. They are short on ideas that fit their restrictions. The first few shakes from a new tub are easy. The tub outlasts the enthusiasm, and the reorder depends on whether the powder becomes part of how someone actually eats.
That is the real tension for a single-ingredient supplement brand. The product is clean and the label is a genuine differentiator, but a clean label does not tell a customer what to cook on a Tuesday. Growing Naturals grew out of Axiom Foods, the California plant-protein ingredient maker, and its rice protein is built on the clinically tested Oryzatein alongside its VegOtein pea protein. The chemistry is settled. The open question is usefulness: whether the brand can show a coeliac or a dairy-free athlete enough things to make that the powder never sits idle.
Its answer is a large, slowly built recipe library that turns one ingredient into a few hundred everyday meals.
The Growing Naturals storefront, built on hypoallergenic pea and rice protein (live, July 2026)
We spoke with Growing Naturals' company dietitian, who has developed the recipes for the past few years, about how the library gets made and what it does for the brand.
Who develops the recipes, and what earns a new page?
There is no content team behind the library. One person decides what gets made and writes most of it.
I'm the company Dietitian and the main person responsible for deciding which recipes we create and when they're published. I've also been the primary recipe developer for the past 3 to 4 years. We do have some older recipes in our library that were contributed by customers or brand partners, but all of our recent recipes have been developed in-house. For the accompanying blog content, I typically use AI to help expand the recipe and optimize it for SEO.
The recipe itself is developed in-house; the blog copy around it is expanded and tuned for search with AI. She is refreshingly plain about the honesty of that split, and about how little of the outcome she can predict when a page goes live. What guides the work is not a ranking target but a publishing rule.
My goal is to publish about two new recipes each month. I usually look for opportunities to tie them to seasonal ingredients or themes while keeping our primary audience of adults 40+ in mind. For example, July is National Blueberry Month, so instead of creating another blueberry smoothie, I'll look for a gap in our collection, maybe a blueberry overnight oats recipe or a baked good, to give customers fresh ways to use our products.
The rule is simple and repeatable: about two recipes a month, tied to a season or a theme, and aimed at a gap the library does not yet cover. After more than 300 recipes, a new page has to earn its place by filling a hole rather than duplicating one. That gap-filling is visible on the live site. Rather than another blueberry smoothie, the collection carries pages like blueberry breakfast protein bars and blueberry protein pancakes, alongside make-ahead options such as spiced peach cobbler overnight oats. Keeping an audience of adults 40+ in mind, the collection keeps widening instead of piling more smoothies onto the same search term.
What that looks like on Google
Breadth like that shows up in search. As of July 2026, the High-Protein Peach Ginger Turmeric Smoothie ranks fourth on Google for 'peach ginger turmeric smoothie', and the Healthy Vanilla Matcha Protein Smoothie sits inside the top 20 for 'matcha protein smoothie'. Both pages point the reader to the pea or rice protein the recipe is built on.
The striking part is that the team does not chase those positions.
I honestly have no idea how they'll rank before publishing.
The recipes are developed for customers first and expanded for search second. Ranking is the reward for publishing something genuinely useful on a steady schedule, not the target the work is built around. It is worth sitting with: a two-product supplement brand holds page one for a seasonal smoothie search without a dedicated SEO team behind it.
One recipe, one scoop, one product link
The peach ginger turmeric smoothie is a clean example of the pattern. It is the page that ranks, and it is also a working demonstration. The recipe calls for a scoop of Growing Naturals protein, and the recipe card links straight to the product it uses, so a reader who wants to make the smoothie is one click from the powder that goes in it.
A Growing Naturals recipe page, with the Recipe Kit card linking to the exact protein the recipe uses (live, July 2026)
The same shape repeats across the library. A spiced golden chia pudding, a tray of banana chocolate chip muffins, a batch of chickpea and sweet potato burgers: each is a different everyday dish, and each ends at the same two products.
How the recipes fit into the rest of the business
The recipes are not framed as a sales machine. They are framed as a reason to keep using the tub. The dietitian is blunt about the ceiling on the obvious use.
There's a limit to how many shakes most people want to drink.
Past that ceiling, the recipes exist to show range. They help customers see the versatility of the products, she says, and inspire them to work protein into breakfasts, snacks, desserts, and other everyday meals, sweet or savory. The commercial hope is stated plainly: that the inspiration gets someone using the tub more often and, ultimately, come back for another purchase.
That only works if buyers find the recipes in the first place, and discovery is deliberate.
The recipes themselves aren't typically educational, but we do introduce new customers to our recipe library through our welcome email series. It's one of the first resources they receive after purchasing so they can discover different ways to use our protein powders beyond a simple shake.
The library is one of the first things a new buyer meets, so they leave the first purchase with more than a single shake in mind. The brand is equally candid about where recipes actually sit among its sales channels.
In terms of what moves the needle for us, I'd say digital advertising, retail partnerships, and email marketing have the biggest impact today. We're also hoping to expand into TikTok in the near future.
Recipes are not the biggest sales driver here, and the brand does not pretend otherwise. Digital ads, retail and email carry most of the sales today, with TikTok next in line, and the rankings above are a July 2026 snapshot rather than a fixed position. What the recipe library adds is the durable, evergreen layer underneath that paid and retail work, compounding quietly and building organic reach rather than replacing the channels that drive most sales.
How Recipe Kit supports the system
The division of labor is clean. Growing Naturals brings the recipes, the dietitian's judgment, and the audience. Recipe Kit publishes each recipe as a structured, schema-tagged page inside the brand's Shopify store, links the pea or rice protein it calls for straight to the product, and keeps the whole library searchable and discoverable.
That is what turns a recipe from a blog post into a shoppable, indexable asset. The dietitian supplies the idea and the AI-expanded copy; Recipe Kit gives every recipe the same reliable structure, the product link, and the search-ready markup, so a page written once keeps working years later. Recipe analytics then show which pages are compounding, so the next recipe can fill the next gap.
Why 334 recipes are hard to copy
334 live recipes for a two-product brand is not clutter, it is coverage. Search for a high-protein, allergen-friendly version of almost any everyday dish and Growing Naturals tends to have a page waiting, one that points straight to the powder that makes it. A newer competitor can match the product in a week. Matching four years of published, indexed recipes is a slow, expensive climb. That is the quiet advantage of starting early and never stopping.
What other supplement and wellness brands can take from this
A few moves from Growing Naturals that a single-ingredient brand can borrow:
- Treat breadth as the strategy when you sell one thing. With a single hero ingredient, the job is to cover every reasonable way to use it, because each new recipe is another everyday dish your buyers might search for.
- Publish steadily for years, not in one launch push. The compounding only happens if the library keeps growing. A recipe written in 2022 that is still working in 2026 is the whole return.
- Lead with the format people already search. Growing Naturals weights the library toward high-protein smoothies and make-ahead breakfasts, and ties new recipes to seasonal themes and gaps in the collection.
- Turn your constraint into the hook. Allergen-free is a limitation on paper, so the recipes make it the selling point by showing dozens of dishes that fit a restricted diet.
- Start now, because the moat is time. A competitor can copy the product, but not four years of recipes already published and compounding.
More supplements and wellness stories from the case study library: how Chief Nutrition turns protein into reorders, how Further Food gives every supplement a daily use, and how Navitas Organics turns unfamiliar superfoods into everyday cooking.
Turn one ingredient into a library of everyday recipes
Publish structured recipes on Shopify, link each dish to the product that makes it, and give shoppers a hundred reasons to keep reaching for the same tub.
