Food & beverage trends for 2025

Focus on the quality of ingredients, gut health and nutrition, sustainability & climate change, the naturalness of plant-based products, technology in agriculture, geopolitics, and even indulgence and flavor mashups would be some of the top customer priorities that would rule the F&B industry in the year 2025, suggest latest consumer trends.

Market research by Innova suggests brands must elevate quality beyond just ingredients to thrive in 2025 as more than half of consumers worldwide prioritize quality in ingredients and products, and put health on their priority list.

Lu Ann Williams, global insights director at Innova, says the top trend for 2025, ‘Ingredients and Beyond,’ underscores the necessity for companies to captivate consumers by enhancing quality attributes of ingredients, freshness, nutrition, health benefits, and ingredient sourcing.

The research suggests that nearly 60% of consumers are proactive about their health, with over a half planning their nutrition intake based on health issues. They want personalized functional food and beverage products tailored to their life stage, lifestyle, and health needs.

Post-pandemic, there’s a renewed focus on gut health and consumers are more interested in digestive health, driven by key ingredients such as fiber and probiotics. Digestive health is the top physical health aspect for which consumers purchase functional food and beverages.

Coming to plant-based foods, companies are focusing on improving taste and texture while meeting demands for naturalness, health, and environmental benefits amid concerns over ultra-processing. Consumers believe plant-based products should be standalone rather than meat and dairy alternatives.

Taste is not taking a backseat as creativity and excitement in product innovation will take center stage as consumers are eager to explore unexpected flavors, fusion cuisines, cobranding, unusual formats, cross-category mashups, and limited editions.  

Sustainability, however, remains a key focus. Nearly half of surveyed global consumers are aware of climate change’s effects on F&B, with increased prices being the most noticeable impact. This climate uncertainty presents opportunities for innovation, such as developing alternatives to climate-sensitive crops like cocoa, coffee, and olive oil.

Mintel trends along similar lines

Mintel’s four trends for 2025 also puts the spotlight on health and nutrition, indulgence, technology, and sustainability. They explore the often contradictory ways consumers traverse between health and indulgence in opposing pair of trends, ‘fundamentally nutritious’ and ‘rule rebellion’. The other two trends, ‘chain reaction’ and ‘hybrid harvests’ explore how supply chain disruptions and innovations impact consumers’ mindsets while challenging their preferences for tradition or high-tech innovation.

As scrutiny grew on ultra-processed food in 2024, consumers wanted to know more about ingredients and manufacturing. To reassure consumers, Mintel says F&B companies adopt clear communication. In the next 18 months to three years, the markets will see more nutrient-dense product innovations for people using their diets to improve their health. According to the report, 52% of Indian consumers agree that tracking health factors, such as diet and exercise, helps keep oneself motivated.

The report, however, says certain consumers would be unwilling to compromise on moments of pleasure and indulgence. Rather than marketing certain foods and drinks as ‘guilty pleasures’, brands could encourage overwhelmed consumers with the freedom to indulge.

As disruptions to the food supply owing to geopolitics become more frequent, the industry will need to encourage consumers to accept and trust the new origins, ingredients and flavors that will emerge locally and globally. Consumers, the report says, are now more aware of the impact of climate challenges and geopolitical events on their meal decisions. Looking ahead, the global food supply chain will continue to face disruptions caused by climate change, geopolitics and technology challenges, including cyber terrorism.

The report talks about sustainability and says F&B companies need to demonstrate how technology and agriculture work together to benefit consumers, farmers and the environment. The report says 53% of Indian consumers feel science can provide solutions to the climate crisis.

Technology, it says, needs to be combined with simpler and traditional agriculture and food production rather than positioned as a replacement. Food and drink brands will need to integrate technology within current systems and explain how nature and technology complement—or better yet, enhance—each other. Once companies establish themselves as trustworthy agricultural innovators and educators, food and drink brands will be more in a position to begin to integrate new technology into their products.