How to Add Recipes to a BigCommerce Store (With Recipe Schema)
BigCommerce is a strong place to sell food. It is a weak place to publish recipes. The blog has no recipe format, so most stores paste recipes in as plain text and never get recipe results in search. Here are three ways to fix that, and how to pick one.
The short answer
- The BigCommerce blog has no recipe format, so recipes show up in search as plain articles.
- You can post plain text, hand-write recipe schema, or use a recipe card.
- If recipes are a real channel for you, use a recipe card. It does the schema for you and gives readers cook mode, scaling and print.
Why put recipes on your BigCommerce store?
A recipe is the most useful page a food brand can publish. It shows a shopper what to do with the product, and it answers searches a product page never will. Nobody searches for your brand's chili crisp. Plenty of people search for chili crisp noodles.
Keep the recipe on your store, not on a separate site. On your store, the recipe and the product sit side by side, and the search traffic lands where the sale happens.
What does the BigCommerce blog give you for recipes?
A post has a title, a body, an image, tags and an author. There is no field for ingredients, cook time or servings, and no recipe block. So a recipe ends up as a wall of text.
That costs you twice:
- Readers can't halve the batch, switch cups to grams, keep the screen awake or print a clean copy.
- Search engines read an article, not a recipe, so your recipe never shows up as a recipe result.
What does Google need to show a recipe result?
Recipe schema: structured data that labels each part of the recipe. Google's documentation lists two required properties, name and image, and recommends more. The ones that matter most:
| Property | What it holds | Example |
|---|---|---|
recipeIngredient |
One entry per ingredient line | 2 tbsp smoked paprika |
recipeInstructions |
The steps, in order | Roast for 35 minutes |
totalTime |
Time in ISO 8601 format | PT45M |
recipeYield |
Servings or quantity | 4 servings |
description |
One or two sentences on the dish | Crispy thighs with garlic |
Keep them in step. The schema must match what the reader sees. If the schema says 300 g and the page says 400 g, Google may ignore the markup.
Which option fits your store?
| Plain blog post | Hand-written schema | Recipe card | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recipe results in search | No | Yes | Yes |
| Cook mode, scaling, print | No | No | Yes |
| Schema stays in step with edits | — | Only if you update it by hand | Yes |
| Effort per recipe | Low | High | Low |
| Best for | A few recipes a year | A handful you rarely edit | Recipes as a real channel |
Option 1: a plain blog post
Fine for a recipe or two a year. Write ingredients as a list and steps as a numbered list, and link every ingredient you sell to its product page. You give up recipe results and every kitchen feature.
Option 2: hand-written recipe schema
Free, and it works if you're careful. Open the post in the editor's HTML view and add a JSON-LD block under the recipe. The core of it looks like this:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Recipe",
"name": "Smoky Paprika Chicken Thighs",
"image": ["https://yourstore.com/images/paprika-chicken.jpg"],
"recipeIngredient": ["8 bone-in chicken thighs", "2 tbsp smoked paprika"],
"recipeInstructions": [{ "@type": "HowToStep", "text": "Roast at 425°F for 35 minutes." }]
}
</script>Don't write the full block by hand. Our free recipe schema generator builds it from your recipe, with times, yield and every step.
Check it survives. Some editors strip script tags. Save, view the live page source, and run Google’s Rich Results Test on every recipe.
Option 3: a recipe card
A recipe card draws the recipe from structured data instead of plain text. The same data builds the page and the schema, so they never disagree, and readers get the kitchen features a blog post can't give them.
This is a live Recipe Kit card. Try the servings, the units and the checkboxes.
With Recipe Kit on BigCommerce, readers get:
- Cook mode, which keeps the screen awake
- Serving scaling and a cups-to-grams switch
- Step check-off, so a cook keeps their place
- A clean print page and share buttons
- Recipe schema built from the recipe itself
You write each recipe once. Change a quantity, and the card and the schema change together.
Checklist: recipes on a BigCommerce store
- Each recipe is on your store, next to the products it uses.
- Ingredients are a list, and steps are numbered.
- Every ingredient you sell links to its product page.
- Each recipe has recipe schema with at least name and image, plus ingredients, steps, times and yield.
- The schema matches the visible recipe, line by line.
- Every recipe page passes Google's Rich Results Test.
- The recipe reads well on a phone.
How do I get Recipe Kit on my BigCommerce store?
Join the waitlist above, or on the Recipe Kit for BigCommerce page, and we'll email your invite. On another platform? See every platform.
