The emerging flavour trends and popular flavours for 2025 are based on consumers’ desire for new and surprising taste experiences.
Last year marked an exciting chapter for Glanbia, as we strengthened our flavour capabilities through another strategic acquisition. We had already welcomed Foodarom, a custom flavour designer renowned for its innovative, tailor-made solutions, into the Glanbia family.
Building on this momentum, we acquired Flavor Producers, a leading flavour house recognised for its expertise in organic and natural flavours and extracts. These partnerships reinforce our commitment to shaping the future of flavour, enabling us to deliver even more creative, high-quality, and sustainable flavour solutions—critical to meeting the trends ahead.
Emerging flavour trends for 2025
The popular flavours for 2025 will be bold, unexpected, and uniquely innovative, driven by blended, swapped, and fusion flavour profiles.
Flavor Producers’ AI tool, Tastewise, reveals a 57.8% year-over-year increase in demand for complex flavours (1). This includes combinations such as sour & savoury, earthy & umami, and Spicy & umami, reflecting consumers’ growing appetite for adventurous and multi-dimensional taste experiences, especially among younger consumers.
Almost one-third of US consumers aged 13-24 are continually looking for new foods and flavours to try, followed closely by 27% of consumers aged 25-34, reports Mintel (2). According to Mintel, nearly half (49%) of Millennials think unique flavours make a snack indulgent (3).
Here’s a look at the flavour trends for 2025 that are meeting this demand:
1. Sweet Heat
The Sweet Heat trend is turning up the temperature on sweet foods and beverages, moving beyond Mexican chocolate and hot honey. Bold innovations like Hot Take Dr Pepper, a limited-edition soda with fiery pepper flavour and flame-branded cans, showcase how brands are spicing up their sweet treats to excite consumers.
2. Just add umami
Umami has been showing up in surprising places, from Jeni’s Miso Butterscotch Brownie ice cream to Johnnie Walker Blue Label Exclusive Umami whiskey, crafted with Michelin-starred chef Kei Kobayashi. Exclusive Umami whiskey boasts rich caramelised miso notes blended with hints of blood orange and red berry, adding savoury depth consumers didn’t know they were missing.
3. Unexpected decadence
Liquid Death’s Hot Fudge Sundae Flavoured Sparkling Water shows consumers also find indulgent flavours in unexpected places. Another example is S’mores Cup Noodles, ramen noodles in a chocolate graham cracker-flavoured sauce with crunchy marshmallows, transforming a savoury food into a comforting dessert-inspired treat.
4. Flavour swaps
The flavour swaps trend is driving increasingly innovative cross-category collaborations, with brands exchanging signature flavours in new ways. Standouts include the Oreo and Coca-Cola limited-time releases of Oreo-flavoured soda and Coca-Cola-flavoured cookies. With Oreo emerging as the fastest growing flavour (+433% YoY) in social media conversations around soda (4) these playful mashups capture consumer curiosity.
The importance of consumer insights
Staying ahead of flavour trends requires a deep understanding of consumer insights to anticipate evolving tastes and preferences. Using consumer insights helps brands spot new flavours and preferences before they become mainstream, giving them a competitive edge.
Conducting market research—like looking at social media conversations, tracking sales data, and engaging directly with consumers to gather feedback—can provide valuable clues. By staying connected to what people want, brands can create products that are fresh, exciting, and on target with what’s next.
Highlighting our flavour partners
Our flavour partners, Flavor Producers and Foodarom, have extensive innovation experience and broad portfolios that ensure all key flavour categories are available to our customers, including fruit, dairy, sweet, savoury, masking flavours and more.
Shaping the future of flavour together
Today’s flavour trends reflect a growing excitement among consumers—particularly Gen Z and Millennials—for unexpected, complex, and innovative flavour experiences. Food and beverage brands are responding with increasingly creative solutions, pushing the boundaries of traditional flavour combinations.
Innovation is key to staying relevant in the market, and we are pleased that through our flavour partnerships, we can support our customers with flavour expertise, customisation, and cutting-edge solutions. Our natural and organic options, as well as state-of-the-art masking solutions for functional and plant-based proteins, ensure brands can create products that align with today’s needs.
Contact Glanbia Nutritionals for more information.
References
1. Flavor Producers, Tastewise, October 2024.
2. Mintel, Bring on the heat, as long as it’s sweet. June 2023.
3. Innova Market Insights, Consumer Insider: Now & Next in Consumer Attitudes Toward Snacking in the US & Canada, August 2024.
4. Flavor Producers, Tastewise, October 2024.