Quiet Foodie is a clean, privacy-focused Hugo theme for building food blogs, with optional schema.org Recipe markup and a dedicated Life section for personal posts.
What is Quiet Foodie?
Quiet Foodie is a Hugo theme designed specifically for food blogs. It takes Markdown content and generates a static website with recipe pages, a Life section for personal posts, and an About page. The theme runs on the Hugo static site generator (version 0.41.0 or newer), is authored by paposeco, and is released under the MIT License.
Key Features
- No tracking or social links — Quiet Foodie includes no social media links and no tracking of any kind, keeping your readers' privacy intact.
- Recipe schema markup — Enable
recipeSchema = trueinhugo.tomlto add schema.org Recipe structured data to your recipe pages for better search engine results. New recipes can be generated with therecipeschemaarchetype. - Tag and course taxonomies — By default, the theme sets up
tagsand a customcoursetaxonomy, allowing recipes to be grouped and browsed (see the Punched Potatoes demo). - Hidden personal notes — Each recipe can include a personal note that is hidden from readers by default but remains in the blog post for you.
- Life section — A dedicated section for non-recipe posts that do not appear on the front page, giving you a separate space for stories or updates.
- About page — Built-in support for a single-page About page via the
singlepagecontent type. - Flexible output — The home page outputs HTML, JSON, and RSS; the theme also supports
canonifyURLsfor hosting on GitHub Pages.
Who is it for?
Quiet Foodie is aimed at food bloggers who want a simple, fast, and privacy-conscious website without the bloat of trackers or social widgets. It is also well suited for Hugo users who need a minimal, clean base for a recipe site. Recipe developers who care about SEO will benefit from the optional structured data support.
Use cases
- Home cooks: publish your own recipes with step-by-step instructions and optional schema markup so they appear as rich results in Google.
- Food bloggers: create a food-focused blog with a separate Life section for personal stories and an About page, all without external tracking.
- Developers: use Quiet Foodie as a lean starting point for a custom Hugo food site, and extend its templates and configs as needed.
How does Quiet Foodie work?
To get started, install Hugo 0.41.0 or newer, create a new site, and clone the Quiet Foodie repository into the /themes directory. Then configure hugo.toml with the theme, taxonomies, and settings such as recipeSchema. Create the necessary _index.md files for Recipes, Life, and About, and add recipes using the provided archetypes via hugo new content.
Pros and cons
- Pros: Generates a static site with minimal dependencies; no tracking for readers; free under MIT; structured data available for SEO.
- Cons: The theme intentionally excludes social media links, so you must add sharing buttons yourself if needed; requires Hugo 0.41.0+ and a manual setup process.
Pricing
Quiet Foodie is free and open source. The theme's source code is available on GitHub under the MIT License, so you can use, modify, and redistribute it without cost.
FAQ
Is Quiet Foodie free?
Yes, Quiet Foodie is released under the MIT License, which allows free use, modification, and distribution, including for commercial projects.
Does Quiet Foodie support recipe schema markup?
Yes. Set recipeSchema = true in your hugo.toml and use the --kind recipeschema archetype when creating a new recipe to include schema.org Recipe structured data.
Can I host Quiet Foodie on GitHub Pages?
Yes, the live demo is hosted on GitHub Pages, and the theme includes a canonifyURLs option for cases where your base URL is not the site root.
What Hugo version does Quiet Foodie require?
The theme specifies a minimum Hugo version of 0.41.0 in its module configuration, so you need that version or newer.
Does Quiet Foodie include social media or tracking?
No. The theme explicitly states that it has no social media links and no tracking of any kind, making it a privacy-friendly choice.
