Broad Trend: Influencer Inspired | Industry Trend: Influencer Inspired TikTok is transforming food influencers into cooking educators and cultural tastemakers, inspiring younger audiences to move from watching recipes to preparing them. At 24, chef and creator Tini Younger has built an audience of 12.5 million followers through approachable cooking videos and her viral six-cheese mac and cheese recipe. Her first cookbook, Today We Are Cooking, launching November 3, 2026, repr

Trend: Bold Experiences. Topic: Cappuccino Ramen and Playful Culinary Mashups. Tokyo restaurant Rahmen Eddie is attracting attention with Cappuccino Ramen, a ¥1,500 savory noodle dish that resembles a frothy coffee. Combining creamy mushroom broth, truffle and porcini sauce with caramelized meringue, the dish challenges expectations about how ramen should look and taste. The concept illustrates how Bold Experiences can transform familiar comfort foods into unexpected culinary

Trend: At-Home Indulgence. Topic: Menu Spillover - Packaged food adopting QSR flavor logic and stacked formats. Fast-food flavor logic is officially breaking out of the drive-thru and taking over supermarket shelves, with packaged food launches adopting over-the-top, multi-textured formats. By fusing stacked comfort cues like cheese, crunch, and sauce into single-serve items, CPG brands are delivering maximum craving satisfaction right in the pantry aisle. This massive shift

Trend: Wellbeing. Topic: Seya Health launching Full Fiber, a female-focused daily fiber supplement designed for perimenopause and menopause. The recent debut of Seya Health’s Full Fiber gummy marks a major shift in how wellness brands approach women's digestive health during midlife transitions. By pairing physician-guided formulations with palatable daily formats, the brand is transforming clinical nutrition into accessible everyday self-care. This exciting trend matters dee

Trend: Wellbeing. Topic: Beautrition & Functional Skincare Foods. Identified by Whole Foods Market as a defining food and drink movement for 2027, "beautrition" represents the growing convergence between beauty, nutrition, and personal care. As consumers shift from superficial cosmetic fixes to holistic, inside-out vitality, the boundary between the skincare counter and the grocery aisle is rapidly dissolving. From collagen-infused cookies and bone broths to olive oil shots,

Trend: Bold Flavors. Topic: "Bitter Done Better" & Flavor Complexity. In its latest industry trend evaluations, major food retailers and beverage analysts identified "Bitter Done Better" as a defining culinary movement for 2027 and beyond. Driven by expanding consumer palates, the rise of sober-curious drinking habits, and a desire for restaurant-quality flavor tension at home, bitterness is stepping out of the background. From ready-to-drink zero-proof amaro spritzes and hig

Trend: Fandom. Topic: Character-Themed Seasonal Food. Entertainment fandom is moving beyond screens and merchandise into everyday food experiences. Krispy Kreme’s limited-edition Looney Tunes Halloween collection turns familiar characters into edible experiences, combining nostalgia, seasonal excitement and highly visual design. The bigger shift is toward food as cultural participation, where buying a treat also becomes a way to engage with characters and entertainment worlds

Trend: Intensity. Consumers are looking for food and drink that delivers stronger sensory stimulation, turning familiar flavours into more memorable experiences through greater intensity, unexpected combinations and surprising formats. Sour illustrates the shift particularly clearly: despite being an established flavour trend, sales of sour food and beverages increased 10.8% in dollars and 6.9% in units over the past year, while brands are pushing sour beyond candy into bever

Trend: Wellbeing. Younger consumers are not necessarily turning away from wellness — they are changing how they want to access it. Protein is moving beyond powders and bars into cereal, coffee, chips, pasta, mac and cheese and even soda, turning everyday food and drink into potential sources of functional benefits. The emerging Functional Foodification trend reflects a pragmatic approach to wellbeing: instead of adding another health routine, consumers increasingly want funct

Trend: Indulgence. Fall indulgence is not disappearing, but consumers are looking beyond the predictable sweetness that has defined seasonal menus. Salted brown butter latte searches have jumped 900% year over year and salted maple latte searches 550%, while consumer research cited by The Food Institute finds 47% think pumpkin is overrated and one in four are completely over it. The emerging Swavory Flavors trend is introducing salt and savory notes into familiar sweet treats

Bold Experience is reshaping food and beverage as consumers increasingly look for products that do more than simply taste good — they want sensations that surprise, stimulate and create memorable moments. Spicy food captures this shift particularly well because heat introduces intensity, contrast and even controlled discomfort into everyday consumption. As consumers gravitate toward sweet heat, adventurous cultural flavors and increasingly layered profiles, Sensory Intensity

Familiarity is becoming a powerful route to discovery as consumers look for experiences that feel new without becoming unfamiliar. Food and beverage brands are responding by reinventing flavors people already know rather than relying exclusively on completely new taste experiences. Apple captures this shift particularly well: 87% of consumers love or like the flavor, significantly ahead of pumpkin and pumpkin spice, while new and limited-time apple menu launches increased nea

Social media is changing how consumers decide what is worth eating, visiting and experiencing. A single food post can become repeated recommendations, social conversation and visible hype until consumers no longer want to simply watch — they want to go and check for themselves. Across viral restaurants, bakeries and food concepts, digital word of mouth is increasingly translating online attention into physical crowds, with consumers joining queues not simply because they know

Healthy eating is supposed to make consumers feel better, but social media is increasingly turning wellness into something to perfect. A new study of TikTok and Instagram content shows how clean eating, supplements, food rules and idealized bodies can combine into a culture where being healthy means continuously controlling what goes into the body. As consumers are encouraged to optimize every meal, ingredient and nutrient, wellness risks creating a new problem: the pressure

Entertainment fandom is moving beyond watching and into everyday life. Jollibee’s Forgotten Island collaboration shows how the traditional movie meal is evolving into something much bigger: consumers can eat themed food, collect merchandise, wear limited-edition apparel and visit transformed restaurants connected to the entertainment they love. As audiences look for more immersive ways to participate in fandom, movies are becoming worlds consumers can physically experience ra

Food discovery is becoming part of the scroll. For teens, social feeds can turn eye-catching recipes, restaurant meals and creator diets into instant cravings, showing how digital influence is moving beyond what young consumers watch and increasingly shaping what they want to eat. Why Everyone Is Talking About It: The Feed Can Create the Craving Food content has become almost impossible to separate from everyday social-media use. In the study, teens described repeatedly enco

Peanut butter is returning as consumers combine nostalgic comfort with protein-rich everyday nutrition. The Evolution of Food: Peanut Butter Is Becoming a Modern Super Staple Peanut butter is making a remarkable comeback as one of 2026's most versatile food ingredients. Once viewed primarily as a childhood favourite, it is increasingly appearing in protein snacks, smoothies, desserts, breakfast products, beverages, and functional foods. Its renewed popularity reflects changin

The Future of Korean Food: Everyday Local Favorites Are Becoming the Next Global Obsession The global fascination with Korean food is entering a new chapter. For years, Korean barbecue, fried chicken, kimchi, and spicy tteokbokki defined the international perception of Korean cuisine. Today, consumers are looking beyond these iconic dishes to discover the foods that Koreans actually eat in their everyday lives. From comforting bowls of dwaeji gukbap and kalguksu to nostalgic