Trend: Famous & Familiar. Topic: Celebrity-Backed Pub Hospitality. Daniel Craig has partnered with hospitality operators Charlie Carroll and Nick Jones, alongside beer-brand creative director Justin O’Shea, to take over The Horseshoe in Clerkenwell. The venture combines celebrity recognition with a familiar proposition: an informal pub downstairs, a restaurant upstairs and a beer garden. ➡️ Trend Insight: Famous names can make familiar experiences newly interesting, while the

Trend: Maximum Affordable. Topic: Pay-What-You-Can Fine Dining. Merchant Roots in San Francisco is offering selected dinners where guests decide what they can pay for an experience normally priced at $238 per person. The experiment illustrates how affordability can expand through flexible access to an existing premium offer. ➡️ Trend Insight: Maximum Affordable creates opportunities to make desirable experiences financially accessible while preserving what makes them worth ch

Trend: Playful Experiences. Topic: Starbucks’ Halloween Cat-Ear Frappuccino. Starbucks Japan’s Halloween drink combines a purple berry-and-yogurt recipe with chocolate cat ears and a character-discovery campaign. The launch illustrates how a familiar purchase can offer several rewards at once: a seasonal treat, a playful choice and something worth showing or discussing. ➡️ Trend Insight: Everyday products become more engaging when consumers can enjoy their appearance, partici

Trend: Human Touch. Topic: AI Drive-Thru Ordering. As restaurants explore AI to make ordering faster and more efficient, Chick-fil-A is drawing a line around one of the most visible parts of its customer experience: the drive-thru. Its decision not to embrace AI ordering points to a wider consumer tension emerging across service industries—people appreciate technology when it removes friction, but they may not want every interaction transformed into an exchange with a machine

Trend: Experience. Beverage innovation is moving beyond flavour as brands experiment with texture, movement and visual transformation to make familiar drinks feel new. Starbucks’ Aerocano captures this shift by air-whipping iced blonde espresso into a light, velvety drink with a cascading effect, turning an everyday coffee into a more playful sensory experience. The emerging opportunity is Texture Innovation: changing how a drink feels, looks and behaves without asking consum

Trend: Life on My Terms. Doing things alone is shifting from something consumers tolerate when nobody else is available into something they increasingly choose for themselves. In Britain, 78% say they are more comfortable doing things alone than five years ago, while 72% have actively chosen a solo activity even when somebody was available to join them. The emerging Solo Experiences trend reflects a wider desire to stop waiting for other people's schedules, preferences and av

Trend: Experiences. Dining is becoming less defined by traditional restaurant rules and more by the complete experience surrounding food and drink. The rise of restaurant-quality venues identifying themselves as wine bars reflects a move toward Casual Fine Dining, where premium food, strong wine programs, social atmosphere and flexible ordering allow consumers to decide whether the occasion becomes one glass, a few shared plates or an entire dinner. Why Everyone Is Talking Ab

Trend: Convenience. Healthy eating is becoming easier to carry into everyday life as restaurants rethink not only what consumers eat, but how and where they can eat it. Sweetgreen's wraps are turning its familiar fresh-food proposition into a more portable, customizable format, helping the chain attract younger consumers while expanding beyond its traditional workday lunch occasion. Wraps now appear in one out of five Sweetgreen orders, with strong repeat visits and Gen Z tra

Trend: Discovery. Matcha helped make Japanese tea culture familiar to mainstream consumers; now restaurants are beginning to explore what might come next. Hojicha — Japanese roasted tea — is starting to appear on chain restaurant menus, signalling an early shift from one established tea trend toward broader flavour exploration. The emerging Hojicha Rising trend is therefore less about replacing matcha than expanding the consumer's tea repertoire. For restaurants, the challeng

Trend: Storytelling. Food and beverage brands are increasingly using stories to transform familiar products into experiences with greater cultural meaning. Narrative Menus bring meals, drinks, sauces, packaging and promotion together around recognizable themes, allowing consumers to step into a story while keeping the underlying purchase familiar. Why Everyone Is Talking About It: The Menu Is Becoming the Story Quick-service restaurants and beverage brands are moving beyond s

Trend: Participation. Digital culture is shifting audiences from passive consumption toward active involvement, where watching entertainment is increasingly only the beginning of the experience. As Gen Z reacts, explains, remixes and creates around the culture it loves, Participatory Fandom is turning fans into creators and giving audiences new ways to express themselves through entertainment. Why Everyone Is Talking About It: The Content Around the Content Is Taking Over Fan

Trend: Relevance. Consumers increasingly notice brands that participate in the culture, conversations and experiences already competing for their attention. Chili’s is turning Cultural Marketing into a repeatable growth strategy, combining value, distinctive brand assets and culturally connected activations with a bold food proposition that gives consumers reasons to participate beyond traditional advertising. Why Everyone Is Talking About It: Chili’s Is Making Relevance Repe

Participation is changing the relationship between consumers and fast-food brands as customers move beyond simply ordering products to customizing, remixing and influencing what appears on menus next. Chipotle, Taco Bell and IHOP are turning customer hacks, requests and social-media behaviors into official products, revealing the rise of Fan-Made Innovation. Consumers increasingly want to Make It Mine — and the strongest customer-created ideas can give brands a ready-made pip

Everyday Indulgence is moving into the drinks cup as consumers increasingly look for small, affordable pleasures that add excitement to ordinary moments. Fast-food chains are responding with matcha, boba, iced coffees, refreshers, frozen lemonades and increasingly elaborate specialty drinks that consumers can buy without ordering a meal. KFC's Kwench, Greggs' matcha and McDonald's expanding iced-drink range reveal the rise of Drinkable Treats — turning beverages from supporti

Trust is becoming something consumers increasingly want brands to demonstrate rather than simply claim. McDonald’s is bringing that shift to life with The Counter, a three-day London experience running from September 17–19, 2026, designed to take consumers closer to the ingredients and processes behind its food. Instead of keeping sourcing and production behind the scenes, the activation points toward Experiential Transparency — turning normally invisible parts of a business

Life Under Pressure is making consumers more demanding about what every purchase delivers. As budgets become more carefully managed, consumers are not simply searching for the cheapest option — they want spending to feel worthwhile, generous and satisfying. Restaurants are responding through Value, creating offers that combine accessible prices with full portions, greater choice and complete experiences rather than asking consumers to accept obvious compromises. TGI Fridays'

Film events are expanding beyond screenings into complete lifestyle experiences as consumers increasingly want to live the cultural moment rather than simply attend it. Film festivals are becoming platforms for hotels, restaurants, bars and luxury brands to extend entertainment into travel, dining, nightlife and memory-making. W Toronto’s TIFF 2026 programming captures this shift, transforming a hotel stay into part of the film-event experience through themed accommodation, c

Convenience is becoming more personal. Consumers still want fast food to be easy and efficient, but convenience increasingly means getting food freshly prepared for their order rather than simply receiving something that was prepared in advance. Carl’s Jr.’s move to cooked-to-order burgers reflects this evolution: preparation begins when the customer orders, combining the convenience of fast food with freshness, quality and the feeling that the meal has been made specifically

Consumers are rediscovering traditional food, but they aren't interested in preserving every rule that comes with it. British diners want Sunday roasts, fish and chips and full English breakfasts back on menus while simultaneously adding new condiments, global flavours, healthier adaptations and more visually appealing presentation. The result is a new kind of nostalgia: consumers want the emotional comfort of food they remember, but they increasingly expect permission to rem

Consumers are looking harder at what every dollar actually buys. As financial pressure makes eating out more difficult to justify, the winning value proposition is shifting from simply offering the lowest price to delivering enough food, choice, quality and satisfaction for the money. Wendy’s position as consumers’ top fast-food brand for value shows why affordability increasingly needs to feel generous — because consumers want cheaper options without feeling that the experie