After sitting down with the Food Blogger Pro team, and after countless of conversations with food creators using Grocers List, one theme keeps coming back:

Most small creators wait too long to build their growth funnel.

And I understand why. When you’re starting out, you’re focused on staying consistent, making great recipes, and figuring out your content rhythm. Setting up automations or thinking about email growth feels like something you do “later.”

But you can’t predict the moment something goes viral. And when it does, you’ll want to have these paths already in place. You’ll want to make sure you capture some of that value while you can.

This is the biggest missed opportunity I see across smaller creators. And it’s exactly why Grocers List has a free plan for creators under 15,000 followers, so you can set up your funnel now, before you grow.

This playbook lays out the exact system I recommend for early-stage creators to be ready for the moment attention arrives.

Why funnels matter, even for small recipe creators

A common question I get from small recipe creators is:

“Is it too early to use Grocers List?”

My answer is always no. In fact, being early is an advantage.

Listen, if you’re just starting out, it might not be worth it to pay for a tool. But if it’s free, yeah, it reduces the friction around that decision. And if a piece of content does take off, you want to make sure you capture some of that value.

Meta’s algorithms don’t really care how big your account is. A brand-new creator can wake up to thousands of new eyeballs overnight.

But if all those people leave your content without a way to:

get the recipe
visit your site
join your email list
or save what they saw

…then the spike doesn’t translate into anything long-term.

Step 1: Set up your first “send recipe” comment automation

If you’re new to Grocers List, start here.

Comment for DM is the simplest, highest-leverage funnel you can turn on. A follower comments “recipe,” “save,” or any keyword you choose, and they instantly get the link to that recipe in their DMs. It’ll look something like this:

Once those are in place, when someone goes to comment on your in-feed posts or reels, they’ll receive a DM from you with a link to that recipe. This does a few important things for small creators:

It boosts engagement

Comments drive reach, reach drives growth.

It removes friction

Followers no longer need to hunt for a link in your bio.

It ensures every post or Reel has a pathway back to your site

Even if a post goes unexpectedly viral, the funnel is already in place. And once you add a keyword or two, you never have to touch it again.

Step 2: Add “Save to Email” to quietly grow your list

After someone gets the recipe in their DMs, they can choose to have it emailed to them with one tap. Behind the scenes, you capture their email automatically.

Bjork described the importance of this really well on our call:

“When you start to get those eyeballs, the question is: what are you doing to continue that relationship? The easiest example is capturing an email address.”

Save to Email gives your followers something useful, a saved recipe, while helping you build your email list without extra work.

The full Save to Email flow using Grocers List automations.

For creators under 15k followers, this is one of the easiest ways to build an email list before you even have a newsletter strategy.

It’s passive. It’s organic. And it compounds over time.

Step 3: Build three basic story reply automations

This is the feature that surprises creators the most, and one of the ones we talked about at length during the interview.

Story Reply Automations let followers reply to a story with a keyword (“brownie,” “soup,” “link”), and they automatically get a DM with the recipe, image, and link. In my discussion with Bjork, I mentioned:

“Instagram loves this because when your story gets a lot of replies, they say, ‘Oh wow, this is a highly engaged story. Let me show it to a higher percentage of the audience.’”

And some creators are seeing massive results. I shared one example during the conversation about Sammy Montgoms and her success driving traffic and capturing more emails through story replies than through her in-feed posts and reels.

For smaller recipe creators, here are the three reply automations I recommend setting up immediately:

1. The Sunday meal plan trigger

Every Sunday, share the recipes you’re making that week.

Add a keyword trigger like “meal plan” or “week,” and suddenly:

your story replies go up
Instagram pushes your stories to more people
your traffic increases
and your email list grows

2. Your evergreen recipe trigger

Pick your most popular, most reliable recipe. The one people ask for over and over.

Give it a keyword like “chicken” or “potatoes.”

Now you can post the recipe anytime, knowing the automation handles the rest.

3. Your affiliate favorite trigger

This tactic works incredibly well, especially once you pair it with Amazon deep links.

On the call with Bjork, I explained:

“A deep link is the same affiliate link, but it hops people from Instagram directly into the Amazon app. About five times more likely that a click will check out.”

A few examples of how @wearedanandsam use story reply deep links.

Set up a reply trigger for something you truly use:

your skillet
your blender
your meal prep containers

Then, whenever someone replies, they get a DM with your deep link.

Build the system before your growth spike

The biggest takeaway from my conversation with Food Blogger Pro was that success doesn’t come from chasing a viral post. It comes from being ready when one hits.

That’s why we built Grocers List—to help creators set up their growth workflows without needing any custom development or tech expertise.

And it’s why we made the platform free under 15k followers.

You don’t need a bigger following to build a system, you just need to start early enough that your system can catch the attention you’re already earning.

This is the playbook I wish every small creator would implement.

And every time I see a creator turn on these funnels, long before they feel “big enough”, they’re the ones who are ready when for take off!

The Growth Playbook for Recipe Creators With Under 15,000 Followers