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Shopify Taste Theme: Best Choice For F&B Startups

July 08, 2024
Written and researched by experts at AvadaLearn more about our methodology

By Sam Nguyen

CEO Avada Commerce

The Taste theme is your secret ingredient for creating a mouthwatering online store that’s perfect for food and beverage businesses. It’s like a recipe for success, designed to turn your Shopify store into a delicious digital experience.

In this article, we’ll take a bite out of the Shopify Taste theme and explore all its unique flavors. We’ll dig into its features, customization options, and even show you real-world examples of successful food and beverage startups that have used it to their advantage.

Avada’s Verdict
Pros:
  • Free to use
  • Clean and roomy layout
  • Customization options
  • Mobile-friendly
  • Product Showcase
  • Primary features provided
  • Easy setup
Cons:
  • Limit functions for advanced needs
  • Only one preset
  • Limited customization settings
Rating: 4.0/5⭐
Best For
F&B startups and SMEs

What Is The Taste Shopify Theme?

What Is The Taste Shopify Theme?

Shopify created the Taste theme as a free option for Online Store 2.0, specifically for food and drink businesses. It’s got a clean, fresh vibe with simple lines, lots of white space, stylish fonts, and a high-contrast color palette. It’s designed to be visually appealing and easy to use, giving customers a sense of trust and confidence.

Even though it’s got a simple and minimalist layout, the Taste theme is packed with features to help you boost sales and showcase your brand vision.

6 Features That Make Taste A Leading Free Shopify Theme

Quick Buy

The Quick Buy feature in Taste is a real time-saver. Customers can simply click the “Quick Buy” button right from the product list or catalog page, adding it straight to their cart.

I’ve noticed that when there are fewer steps involved in buying something, customers are less likely to give up and leave their carts empty. Quick Buy makes the process super simple, which can really improve sales for F&B startups.

Quick Buy

How this feature can be helpful for Shopify merchants

  • Improved Mobile Experience: The Quick Buy feature is particularly beneficial for mobile users, where screen space is limited and navigation can be more cumbersome.
  • Increased Average Order Value: By making it easier to add items to the cart, Quick Buy can encourage customers to purchase multiple products at once, leading to a higher AOV.

Mega Menu

Taste theme Shopify has a mega menu built-in. This is especially useful for F&B startups, as they often have a wide variety of items on their menu, like different types of food, drinks, meal plans, and dietary options.

For example, imagine a bakery using the Taste theme. They might have categories like “Breads,” “Pastries,” “Cakes,” and “Cookies.” Each of these categories could then have subcategories like “Gluten-Free,” “Vegan,” or “Organic.” The mega menu lets them neatly display all specialty product highlights without overwhelming the customer.

Shopify Ride theme mega menu

How this feature can be helpful for Shopify merchants

  • Promotional Opportunities: You can feature specific products, promotions, or new arrivals in the mega menu, driving traffic to those pages and increasing their visibility.
  • Branding: A well-designed mega menu can reinforce your brand identity and create a professional impression. You can customize the colors, fonts, and images to match your brand’s aesthetic.

This theme can suggest other products based on what a customer has already looked at or bought. For example, if someone clicks on a pasta product page or adds a bottle of red wine to their cart, the theme might suggest a cheese that pairs well with it, encouraging the shopper to buy both.

Cross-selling and Recommended Products Shopify taste theme

How this feature can be helpful for Shopify merchants

  • Enhanced Personalization: You can tailor the recommended products based on customer behavior, browsing history, or purchase patterns, creating a more personalized shopping experience.
  • Increased Average Order Value: By showcasing related or complementary products to customers, you encourage them to add more items to their cart, directly boosting the average amount spent per order.

Enhanced Search

One cool feature I like about the Taste theme is its smart predictive search. When customers start typing in the search bar, it suggests relevant terms, making it quicker and easier to find what they’re after.

For example, I just typed the letter “l” and it instantly suggested related products with pictures. This is a great way to improve the user experience and help customers find the products they want, which can ultimately lead to more sales.

Taste theme enhanced search

How this feature can be helpful for Shopify merchants

  • Product Discovery: An efficient search function helps customers discover products they might not have found otherwise, potentially leading to additional purchases.
  • Keyword Optimization: You can use search data to identify popular keywords and optimize your product descriptions and tags for better search visibility.

Rich Product Information 

The Taste Shopify theme allows F&B merchants to provide a wealth of information about their products, which is essential as consumers nowadays are more aware and curious about what they consume.

With this theme, you can include details about each product, like the ingredients, nutrition facts, and even where the ingredients come from. The theme also lets you add instructions or recipes with each product.

Since food and drinks often need special handling and have expiration dates, the Taste theme makes it easy to clearly show shipping policies and timelines. This puts customers at ease, knowing their products will arrive fresh and in good condition.

Rich Information 

How this feature can be helpful for Shopify merchants

  • Detailed Descriptions: Thorough product descriptions build credibility by providing customers with all the necessary information upfront. This reduces uncertainty and increases confidence in their purchase decisions.
  • Storytelling: The Taste theme allows for longer-form text sections, enabling merchants to share the story behind their products, their sourcing practices, and their brand values, further strengthening the connection with customers.

Products Reviews

I’ve built a lot of Shopify stores, and I can tell you that customer reviews are super important.

Thankfully, the Taste theme makes it easy to showcase them. You can put customer reviews right on your homepage with pictures alongside them and on individual product pages, too.

Promotion banners

How this feature can be helpful for Shopify merchants

  • Reduced Cart Abandonment: Reviews can help customers feel confident in their purchase decisions, reducing the likelihood of abandoning their carts.
  • Fresh Content: Customer reviews add unique and fresh content to your product pages, which can improve your search engine rankings.

Taste Theme Shopify’s Pricing

The Shopify Taste theme is completely free to use. It is available on the Shopify Theme Store for all merchants to download and install.

What Do Users Say About The Shopify Taste Theme?

What Do Users Say About The Shopify Taste Theme

While Taste is not as widely used as other free Shopify themes, users have generally positive feedback, highlighting its ease of use, variety of options, and appealing design. However, some users have encountered specific issues.

Here is what they said on the Shopify theme store:

Ari’s Glow Candle Co. – “I really like this theme a LOT but the blog function is not my favorite. The blog section doesn’t display all blogs and the Blog menu only leads to one blog at a time which is not ideal for businesses that like to implement this feature. I also noticed that the Blog page is one-sided? The blog only displays on one side of the page so all of the blogs are sitting on the left side of the page.”

AERA – “I am totally satisfied with this theme. Well matched with black-white colouring, anonymous-pro font looks artistic and mobile responsive.”

Better Coffee Club – “Fantastic theme with more features than you might need. Easy to modify and looks great! Could use some more flexibility with how videos appear on the page. Parallax options for blocks/photos would also be nice.”

Who Should Use Shopify Taste Theme?

  • F&B starts ups & SMEs
  • Gourmet shops, organic food stores, and specialty beverage shops
  • Restaurants to coffee or pastry shops
  • Brands focused on health and wellness
  • Boutique retailers

How To Try And Publish Taste Shopify Theme?

Here are the steps to try the Taste theme

  • From the Shopify admin dashboard, go to Online Store > Themes.
  • Click “Visit theme store” to directly visit the store
  • Find “Taste” on the search bar 
  • Click “Try theme” to try it

If you are delighted with the theme, you can publish your Taste demo store by

  • From the Shopify admin dashboard, go to Online Store > Themes
  • Choose the “Taste” theme that you have customized before
  • Choose “Publish” in the Action box.

2 Beautiful Shopify Taste Theme Example Stores

Glogang

Stores Using The Shopify Taste Theme

Glo Gang Worldwide is a bold and expressive brand offering a range of streetwear and accessories that resonate with a vibrant youth culture.

Using the Shopify Taste theme, the store design is direct and focused, with a clear layout that effectively showcases their products. Bold visuals and a consistent color scheme reflect the brand’s identity and make browsing enjoyable and easy.

Categories are well-organized, and the site’s responsive design ensures a seamless shopping experience across various devices.

What the Teacher Wears

Beautiful Stores Using The Shopify Taste Theme

What the Teacher Wears is a fashion-forward brand that caters to stylish, modern educators who love chic and comfortable clothes.

The store design impresses with its clean and organized layout, showcasing a selection of new arrivals, dresses, knitwear, and more in an easily navigable format. The Taste Shopify theme enhances the visual appeal with high-quality images and a cohesive color scheme that reflects the brand’s style.

Quick links and a clear categorization of products make browsing and finding the perfect outfit a breeze.

Which Shopify Theme Is Better: Taste or Dawn?

Which Shopify Theme Is Better: Taste or Dawn?

Features

Both Taste and Dawn offer a solid set of features that cater to the needs of online stores, such as a mega menu, quick buy, promo banners, and many more.

Design

Taste has a classic vibe with clean lines and ample white space, while Dawn showcases a contemporary design with vibrant color options and a visually engaging layout.

User Reviews and Ratings

So far, Dawn has received 129 reviews on the Shopify marketplace, which is much more than Taste. However, Dawn has garnered a low positive feedback proportion of only 35%. Taste has 3 reviews, of which 67% are positive.

Documentation and Support

Shopify provides comprehensive documentation and support for both the Taste and Dawn themes. They offer resources such as tutorials and guides. Shopify’s support team is available to help resolve any technical issues or inquiries.

Pricing

Both Taste and Dawn are free Shopify themes.

The Verdict

Overall, the Dawn Shopify theme is more popular due to its more modern and versatile look. 

Both are free themes developed by Shopify that target different customer segments. So, aspects of customer support or built-in features could be similar. Ultimately, choosing between the Taste and Dawn themes depends on your business’s types and needs.

Shopify Taste Theme: FAQs

Yes, Taste is a highly regarded free Shopify theme for the F&B industry, known for its minimalist design and user-friendly features that can offer a visually appealing and seamless shopping experience for customers. 
Yes, switching your Shopify store’s theme does not cause data loss. All your product information, customer data, and order history remain intact when you change themes. However, any customizations or alterations you’ve made to your current theme (like specific design tweaks or custom code) won’t be automatically transferred to the new theme. You’ll have to manually implement these changes again in the Taste theme if desired.
The Taste theme itself is a free Shopify theme and does not come with any additional costs or subscriptions.
Yes, you can. Shopify provides customization options that allow you to modify your theme’s code, including adding custom HTML, CSS, Liquid, or JavaScript code.
Yes. Shopify, as a developer of the Taste theme, provides built-in functionality to easily connect and integrate with popular analytics and tracking services, including Google Analytics.

Ending Words

If you are a budding Shopify merchant looking for a compelling theme for your online store among the multitude of options available, the Taste Shopify theme has emerged as a compelling choice. 


Sam Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Avada Commerce, an e-commerce solution provider headquartered in Singapore. He is an expert on the Shopify e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Sam loves talking about e-commerce and he aims to help over a million online businesses grow and thrive.