The 10 Best Premium and Free Shopify Themes for Food & Drink Stores

Clearly, getting the design of your website right is key to maximising your sales online.

However, having a strong website layout isn’t just about using attractive imagery and a stylish colour scheme.

Creating and maintaining an exceptional user experience for your website’s visitors throughout the whole of your store is absolutely crucial for holding your customers’ interest in your products and driving sales on your website. Let’s take a closer look at how it’s done.

What should you look for in an ecommerce theme?

Customers have no time for websites that aren’t fast, intuitive and enjoyable to use. In fact, just a one second delay on your page load can cause a 7% reduction in conversions (sales) and nearly 8 in 10 consumers say they will quickly stop engaging with content that doesn’t display well on their mobile device.

All of this means that – aside from looking sleek and stylish – food and drink stores need to drive sales and stand out from the competition by being fast, easy to navigate and fully responsive (functioning just as well on mobile as they do on desktop). They also need to provide the user with a seamless journey to checkout using an obvious search bar, add-to-cart buttons and a clear product filtering system.

Generally speaking, when you find an ecommerce theme which can do all of these things, you’re onto a winner.

However, as an online food and drink store looking to stand out in an increasingly saturated and competitive market, there are a host of other brand-specific considerations that also need to be taken into account.

For example, part of the way you present your products to the user will depend on the size and nature of your product inventory – as well as your business’ unique mission, goals and vibe.

Are you creating a small organic product collection or a mass-produced confectionary range? What is it that makes your products unique? What story are you trying to tell? All of these factors should inform your choice of ecommerce template.

To help you get started on picking the theme that’s right for your unique consumables store, let’s take a look at our favourite premium and free themes from Shopify’s own selection – based on their aesthetic appeal, usability, responsiveness and conversion success.

Along the way, we’ll also hear some insight from Swanky’s Head of Creative, Matt Giles, who has been designing beautiful and high-converting custom Shopify websites for the past 8 years. Before diving in, it’s worth noting that Swanky is a leading food and beverage Shopify agency and have created websites for the likes of HelloFresh and Huel.

Premium themes

#1 Maker (Food)

Price: $160 / £120

Aesthetic appeal: 9/10

Mobile friendliness: 10/10

Ecommerce conversion: 9/10

Maker’s Food preset is built specifically for Shopify food and drink stores with a small number of products to show off using large, unique image panels, homepage slideshows and even a homepage video.

Due to its editorial-inspired layout, Food is also a strong choice for brands looking to tell their story through big, bold imagery – especially if they have articles, testimonials or artwork to showcase on their store.

Comments from a Shopify Plus Designer:

Maker is an excellent choice of template for food or drink businesses who are looking to take a more personal approach to the way they present their brand and products to customers. There is a lot of room for large, eye-catching imagery on both the homepage and collection pages – as well as plenty of space for making bold and powerful statements that convey the brand’s unique process, message and background story. Maker’s product pages themselves are also very aesthetically pleasing and unique. The balance between images and textual content on these pages is even, and the central position of the product photos makes them a real focal point for customers. The fact that buyers are also given the option to either ‘add to cart’ or ‘buy it now’ is also great for enhancing the user experience and maximising sales.

#2 Launch (Fresh)

Price: $180 / £136

Aesthetic appeal: 9/10

Mobile friendliness: 8/10

Ecommerce conversion: 9/10

Are you an innovative food or drink startup with big growth plans?

Designed to help scale startups into successful online stores, Launch enables new businesses to share their unique story, values and vibe with new audiences.

The preset Fresh has a modular-style homepage which allows you to promote your brand by sharing testimonials, videos and more – and is optimized for single-product stores or new food and drink companies with a small number of goods to sell.

Notably, Fresh also features a goal-tracking tool to measure and display the progress of your crowdfunding campaign, making it ideal for creative new startups and crowdfunded companies looking to scale and succeed.

Comments from a Shopify Plus Designer:

Every aspect of Fresh’s design is tailored specifically to startup companies who have a powerful message to spread. For example, the collection pages are efficiently designed to showcase just 3 or 4 products per collection with an eye-catching image and description. The product pages on this theme are exceptionally well laid out, with a good half-and-half balance between persuasive imagery and product description. The ‘add to cart’ buttons also remain clearly visible above the website’s fold – a proven way of boosting sales on ecommerce stores. All in all, this is a great theme for new businesses looking to build a strong reputation using testimonials, blogs and well-placed imagery to highlight their brand mission and their products’ USPs (unique selling points).

#3 Providence (Birch)

Price: $140 / £106

Aesthetic appeal: 7/10

Mobile friendliness: 8/10

Ecommerce conversion: 9/10

With its clean, simple and row-based design, Providence’s Birch preset is a strong choice of theme for food or drink businesses looking to present their products in a clear and organised way.

This theme features some impressive sales-boosting functionality such as a customisable sidebar menu, a quick-buy option (to allow customers to quickly add items to their cart without leaving their current page) and a product image zoom feature (to allow customers a closer look when they hover over images on your store).

Because of its enhanced functionality and simple, row-based layout, Birch is a solid choice for companies with a medium to large-sized product inventory.

Comments from a Shopify Plus Designer:

Birch is a safe, strong and standard ecommerce layout. While it may not blow customers away with any special effects or innovative design, its clean simplicity and focus on driving conversions is guaranteed to maximise sales. For example, the visibility of the ‘add to cart’ buttons on its collection pages helps the user along on their journey to checkout.  Birch’s product pages are also extremely well-presented, with all essential product information clearly communicated above the fold. This makes it a perfect fit for food and drink businesses looking to communicate more in-depth information about the flavours of their products to customers.

#4 Flow (Queenstown)

Price: $140 / £106

Aesthetic appeal: 10/10

Mobile friendliness: 7/10

Ecommerce conversion: 9/10

If you’re looking for a sharp, minimalist website design that puts the spotlight on your products, Flow’s Queenstown preset is well worth considering.

Featuring a slide-out cart, a promotional banner, unique product grids and an integrated Instagram feed, Queenstown is rich in features that will help your tasty products stand out from the rest and drive conversions on your store.

Comments from a Shopify Plus Designer:

The Queenstown preset is particularly strong on its use of imagery, allowing large high-quality product images to take centre-stage not just on the homepage but on your collection pages as well. This theme caters well for food and drink stores of all sizes, and offers ecommerce managers a lot of flexibility in terms of how many products they would like to display on their collection page rows. On each product page, there is also a large amount of space dedicated to product imagery, which is perfect for building customer trust in food and drink stores as it allows buyers to view the tasty products they are going to be eating or drinking up close, in detail and from multiple angles.

#5 Focal (Giveat)

Price: $170 / £130

Aesthetic appeal: 8/10

Mobile friendliness: 6/10

Ecommerce conversion: 8/10

Focal’s Giveat preset is a bold grid-style theme; perfect for placing emphasis on a wide range of different food or drink products.

Created specifically for food and drink brands with a larger product catalog, Giveat gives desktop users a seamless and enjoyable user experience when choosing which item they want to buy thanks to its large, multi-column drop-down menu and infinite scrolling effects.

Comments from a Shopify Plus Designer:

Giveat’s clean and simple design makes it an ideal theme for online stores that want to advertise a large number of products and variants while still maintaining a storefront that feels fresh, uncluttered and easy to navigate. The tab section across the bottom of the product pages is a particularly useful feature as it keeps the details of your food and drink products (such as the list of ingredients) from filling up the page while still being readily accessible to interested customers.

#6 Local (Light)

Price: $160 / £120

Aesthetic appeal: 10/10

Mobile friendliness: 9/10

Ecommerce conversion: 8/10

Choosing Local’s clean, modern and airy Light preset is an effective way of bringing your food and drink products to life for your customers.

Its design helps your brand stay socially connected and allows you to engage more directly with your customers. For example, ‘Light’ has an in-built blog posts feature (where you can promote news, events and store promotions on your homepage) and an integrated Instagram feed for sharing your latest tasty snaps with potential buyers.

If you have one or more physical stores stocking your products, Light may also be a good fit for you as it features a store-finder to allow customers to view and get directions to your store location in Google Maps.

Comments from a Shopify Plus Designer:

With its edgy, minimalist and niche design, Local would be a good fit for ecommerce stores who are looking to break out of the mould with a unique new product range; making a statement by showing off what differentiates their products from the rest. However, the template pays just as much attention to driving conversions and providing a good user experience as it does to staying trendy and attractive, using strong calls to action and prominent ‘add to cart’ and ‘buy it now’ buttons to maximise sales and provoke more instant buys.

#7 Blockshop (Deli)

Price: $140 / £106

Aesthetic appeal: 9/10

Mobile friendliness: 10/10

Ecommerce conversion: 9/10

Blockshop’s Deli preset is another strong option for food and drink businesses looking to present their edible or drinkable products in a way that is spacious and minimalist yet also quirky and fun.

For example, this template’s wide layout allows you to make the most of large product imagery on your store, while its integrated header slideshow, Instagram feed and homepage video options increase your store’s visual appeal even further.

Comments from a Shopify Plus Designer:

Blockshop is a sleek and fresh-feeling theme which manages to balance a modern, minimalist look with a substantial amount of product imagery and persuasive on-site content. It doesn’t have – or need – any of the superfluous extra effects that some modern quirky themes do, but keeps its focus on presenting products in the best light possible and guiding customers seamlessly through their journey to checkout. The product pages are well laid-out – with calls to action such as an ‘add to cart’ and ‘buy it now’ button remaining strikingly visible to customers – and the carousel layout of the collection pages also makes for an attractive modern touch. Importantly, the store feels just as uncluttered and easy to navigate on a mobile device as it is for desktop users.

#8 Kagami (Kyoto)

Price: $180 / £136

Aesthetic appeal: 9/10

Mobile friendliness: 6/10

Ecommerce conversion: 7/10

Kagami’s Kyoto preset allows business owners to showcase their brand and product imagery in a fun and dynamic masonry-style grid.

In addition to this engaging collage-style layout, Kyoto keeps your customers focussed on the visual appeal of your edibles through product page videos, a homepage slideshow and an integrated Instagram feed.

This template also features a dedicated FAQ page for addressing your customers’ most popular questions and two different menu options; either a large horizontal drop-down menu or a slide-out sidebar.

Comments from a Shopify Plus Designer:

Thanks to the quirkiness of its masonry-style grid layout, Kyoto feels completely unique as a theme – and is sure to make any food or drink brand’s website stand out from the rest. On desktop, product details are revealed when the users hover over the product images, which is a nice, sleek feature in general but can be a downside when accessed via mobile as users can’t immediately see the pricing of your products. One notably strong aspect of Kyoto’s design, however, is its strong in-built product filtering system. Having good filtration as part of your website’s design is especially important for businesses with larger inventories (to help customers find what they are looking for as quickly as possible) and also for brands selling product variants that don’t look drastically different from one another (such as teabags, for example).

Free themes

If you’re starting up your food or drink business on a budget, Shopify also provides a selection of stylish and sales-boosting free themes to help present your brand in the best light possible as you make your way onto the ecommerce scene.

While paid themes may offer more flexibility, customisation options and advanced functionality to ecommerce managers, these free alternative templates make an ideal starting point for smaller businesses or startups looking to simply get started on their ecommerce journey before investing in a premium template (or fully customised website design) later down the line.

So, to finish off our round-up of the top 10 foodie themes on the market, here are the free Shopify templates we would recommend for online food and drink brands.

#9 Narrative (Warm)

Aesthetic appeal: 7/10

Mobile friendliness: 10/10

Ecommerce conversion: 7/10

A fantastic free option for innovative food startups and single-product businesses, Narrative’s Warm preset was designed specifically for brands with a story to tell.

Warm gives you the option to share what your product and brand is all about with customisable image blocks, quote slides, vertical slideshows and a full-screen autoplay video on your homepage.

It also comes with some handy extra conversion-boosting features such as a fixed navigation bar to create a simpler and smoother browsing experience for your website’s visitors.

Comments from a Shopify Plus Designer:

Narrative is a solid mobile-first template which also features some engaging desktop features for building brand perception. For example, the theme’s unique homepage slider is an attractive way of introducing products and variants to the customer, and the fact that users can click straight into the products from it is a great method of driving sales and carrying more visitors through to the checkout page. Overall, Narrative’s design feels modern and fresh, using plenty of white space effectively to let the products, text and imagery speak for themselves.

#10 Brooklyn (Playful)

Aesthetic appeal: 7/10

Mobile friendliness: 8/10

Ecommerce conversion: 8/10

Brooklyn is a sleek, modern and image-focussed template, with its Playful preset making it a fantastic fit for food and drink brands looking to show off their yummy products in a bright and lively way.

Picking Playful as your theme of choice will attract all customer attention to the attractive design of your products thanks to its integrated header slideshow, homepage video feature and dynamic product grid display (which changes automatically based on how many products you want to showcase).

Comments from a Shopify Plus Designer:

This theme is clearly focussed on its essentials. The feel of the template is uncluttered, spacious and fresh, with the mix of both large and small images on the homepage giving a very aesthetically pleasing effect. One particularly useful feature of this template is the sticky right-hand side of every product page, which ensures that your ‘add to cart’ button always stays above the fold even when your customers scroll down the page for more information – a definite conversion-booster!

It’s time to pick your theme!

Ultimately, the theme you choose for your store will depend on your brand’s unique image, products, inventory size and business goals.

However, all of the templates listed above have been built to help online business managers with food and drink stores to scale and thrive. So, once you’ve picked one that matches your business’ unique criteria, you can be sure to see positive results from your beautiful website revamp.

Want to take your store’s design a step further?

A great way to ensure that your site’s design is perfectly tailored to your brand is by working with a Shopify Plus Expert agency on a unique and bespoke website design.

Professional web designers – who understand all of the ins and outs of the Shopify platform – will use their specialist knowledge to create a stand-out custom design that will enhance the appeal of your food and drink products, make the best impression possible on potential customers and ultimately help you convert more ‘browsers’ (people browsing your store) into buyers.

After your website’s new layout is all in place, read our article on ecommerce strategy for food and drink stores to learn how to maximise your online success and create the strongest possible growth strategy for your Shopify store.

At Swanky, our expert team are passionate about designing unique, beautiful and high-quality custom websites to help you unlock your full ecommerce potential and reap all of the exciting benefits of owning an exquisite Shopify store.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you are interested in finding out more.