The Top 26 Food & Beverage Trends of 2025

Freeze dried foods on the rise

Cereal companies are often at the forefront of adopting new kinds of preserved fruit. Since freeze-dried fruit has low water content, they're mostly sugar, so buyers like the taste and cereal companies like the fact that they can say “no sugar added” by removing the non-sugar components of an ingredient. These strategies help cereal companies address the growing group of consumers shying away from cereal in favor of a more healthy breakfast option. On the demand side, freeze-dried food is growing in popularity alongside hiking. Covid also accelerated this trend, as people bought preserved foods and experimented with more baked goods.

In parallel, the "ugly produce" business is booming; Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market have collectively raised over half a billion dollars to grow their business of selling produce that tastes better than it looks. As it turns out, the "ugly produce" business has existed for a long time: soups, sauces, and baked goods are often made with pieces of produce that wouldn't look good on a shelf but that taste fine when chopped up and processed. Freeze-dried strawberries are another example of how the food industry repurposes food products that wouldn’t otherwise have strong shelf appeal.

The economics of strawberry production also tie to the rise of freeze-dried strawberries. Strawberries are a very labor-intensive product, with labor representing 50x the share of costs relative to a more mechanized product like corn. When strawberry pickers pick an excessively ripe strawberry, they usually discard it, because it won't stay fresh in time to get to a grocery store. Since the labor component of cost is so high, waste is less of a problem—but it is an opportunity. Freeze-drying strawberries is not only a way to deal with the lower visual appeal, but also a way to preserve them. This has gotten easier since the development of a more complex cold chain, which allows more foods to be transported through cheaper forms of transit that may take longer.

Interest in dairy alternatives accelerates

The demand for dairy alternatives continues to expand beyond just milk to include other products like butter, with options such as beef tallow gaining popularity. Additionally, the increasing trend of purchasing groceries online has boosted the appeal of shelf-stable dairy alternatives. Consumers are now more likely to opt for these convenient, long-lasting options, further driving the growth of the dairy alternative market.

Snacking on the rise as line between snacks and meals blurs

Snacking is on the rise as the line between snacks and meals is blurring. Research shows that consumers are eating more meals at non-standard times and that snacks now account for over half the times younger generations eat. It’s a function of a more fragmented day that's less likely to be bookended by a context-setting commute.

Mushroom infused coffee

Four Sigmatic initially gained traction by combining the health benefits of mushrooms with familiar beverages such as coffee. The bitter taste of mushrooms was masked by coffee, which consumers were already familiar with.

The rise of food delivery apps has led to unprecedented analysis paralysis – and even apps to help consumers pick what to eat

The rise of food delivery apps has led to unprecedented analysis paralysis, with consumers taking to TikTok and Reddit for advice. Posts titled, “What should I eat?” rack up millions of views.

Some apps like Tiny Decisions and Food Picker (Featured in Feb 2023) are designed to help users break the deadlock for the sake of deciding, producing answers that are either truly random or close to it.

The Which One app has emerged as a blend of decision-making meets social media. Users can post polls for questions like, “What book should I read next?” or “Which picture should I post on Instagram?”, providing a dual opportunity both for posters to make decisions and scrollers to feel their voice is heard. If your favorite creator or artist pops a question, it even presents a unique chance to be on the inside of their creative process.

While any opinion may be valuable for lower-risk decisions, others require more trustworthy input. Emerging as a modern replacement for business consultants, some startups are developing apps that use AI to provide trustworthy guidance. Platforms like Rationale help business owners and managers to think through the possibilities using simplified analysis.

An increasing number of tools could soon support decision-making across a wide range of fields and perhaps, ironically, introduce a paradox of choice in selecting the right app for the job.

High-protein everything on the rise as consumers look for any opportunity to gain muscle

Protein powder has been growing in popularity for years, and while it's a good way to add protein to shakes and smoothies, it's not very compatible with preexisting meal habits. Now, everything from high protein deserts, to high protein fast food, and the integration of protein into existing snacks like Quest Chips, are all on the rise.

Online food purchases drives growth of shelf-stable foods

Mass adoption of electric lighting in the 1900s is, surprisingly, the reason consumers first switched from cooking with animal fats to cooking with vegetable oils.

At that time, Proctor & Gamble was largely in the business of making candles and candle demand was falling as electric lighting took off. P&G’s massive infrastructure for processing cottonseed oil, the key ingredient in their candles, was in danger of becoming obsolete so they started using the same material to produce shortening, turning into the massively popular cooking product Crisco in 1911.

Consumers were initially hesitant to switch from their seemingly healthy and natural lard to what they saw as processed candle wax, but P&G pushed hard to convince the world that Crisco was superior. To do so, they sent samples to food scientists and hospitals then later advertised the fact that hospitals and schools used it. They also embarked on a massive campaign to put out cookbooks with recipes that called for Crisco.

More recently, it’s becoming popular again to cook with animal fats like beef tallow. Aside from the supposed health benefits of tallow, demand for butter alternatives is on the rise. As more consumers buy food online, there’s a clear advantage to tallow–which has a long shelf life without the need for refrigeration, helping it fit into the standard ecommerce supply chain better than food like butter.

Interest in beef tallow regained momentum when factory farms attempted to figure out how to repackage their byproducts into something they could sell. Some brands, like Ancestral Supplements, lean directly into the saying that “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure”. The company has a unique business: taking the parts of agricultural farm animals that are usually discarded, and selling them for a premium as ”Grass Fed Beef Brain Supplements”. Their top products, including Beef Organs and Beef Liver, each have several thousand reviews on Amazon.

Meal replacement shakes continue to garner demand as consumers try to fit meals into increasingly busy days

For many people these days, time is the ultimate currency. And while meal replacement shakes have been around since the 1950s, it's the marketing that has shifted to focus on productivity that has given this category a comeback.

Back then, meal replacement products were marketed with great success as weight-loss tools — today’s iterations are marketed instead as healthy meal alternatives to productivity-minded professionals and on-the-go consumers. Metrecal, which led the craze half a century ago, likewise used convenience as a selling point, encouraging customers in one ad to keep the cans in their car’s glove box.

Today’s other category leader, Soylent, first sold itself as the non-food of choice for too-busy-to-eat Silicon Valley workers, but it’s now facing a rising tide of competition.

Huel says its customers include doctors, students, and shift workers on top of fitness buffs and efficiency-obsessed tech executives. The focus is on offering "nutritionally complete" meals rather than low-calorie products — a message that mirrors the broader cultural shift toward health and wellness over weight loss.

Increasing consumer investment into premium home coffee equipment

Recently, many coffee shops have updated their layouts to include retail sections, selling everything from high-end tea kettles to exotic coffee filters. It’s all part of the emerging, and fastest-growing category of middle-end coffee products: priced below the $20,000+ machines used by Blue Bottle and Starbucks but above the instant at-home coffee makers many consumers now have on their countertops.

While coffee is the world's second most-traded commodity, after oil, a growing number of consumers want a very non-commoditized experience. In fact, while coffee has been consumed for half a millennium, it wasn’t until roughly 50 years ago that the coffee world generally started to differentiate by origin or beverage type. Until then, instant and undifferentiated coffee dominated the market. Many restaurants offered free refills.

Today, specialty coffee hasn’t just taken over commercial coffee houses but also made its way into the home in the form of specialty beans, advanced grinders, special filter systems, and purified water. Part of this category is the single-dose grinder. While most coffee grinders need to be cleaned each time the bean type is switched, single-dose grinders grind just one serving and don’t leave any residue. It helps move away from needing to set up a whole bag and finish it over the course of weeks, letting consumers more easily alternate between different flavors and setups.

From single dose grinders, to coffee pucks, the influx of specialty coffee and equipment into households has gained considerable momentum.