Diverse voices and viewpoints add flavor to food trend forecasts

It’s that time of year when the culinary world looks forward to the trends that will flavor menus and fill grocery shelves in the year to come. This year, an array of diverse voices are sharing their takes on the hot trends expected to heat up even further in 2025.

Several forecasts released in recent weeks highlight some of the same trends, including the growing demand for functional foods, protein, global flavors and spicy chilis. But even as some trends prove universal, forecasters find ways to put their own spins on their reports.

The Specialty Food Association’s Trendspotter panelists have an advantage when it comes to discovering the latest trends – twice a year, the association gathers thousands of food and beverage makers, suppliers, retail buyers and others from the food world in one place, providing a rich array of resources for research.

Trendspotters walk the show floors to discover the next hot new things, and then they compare notes to compile the final forecast. The latest report, out late last month, features research from this year’s Summer Fancy Food Show. In January, the panelists will head to Las Vegas for the Winter Fancy Food Show and repeat the process.

“(The Trendspotter panel is) comprised of a diverse group of industry experts (academia, food scientists, journalists, trend watchers, analysts, chefs, and buyers), each of whom has their own unique perspective they bring to trends research,” said Leana Salamah, SFA’s senior vice president for marketing and communications.

Specialty food becomes springboard

“Almost every ‘mainstream’ food trend got its start in the specialty sector,” Salamah says. “From gluten-free alternatives to the hot-sauce boom to functional beverages, industry-shifting trends can nearly always be traced back to specialty. And that’s because specialty food makers are highly responsive to shifts in consumer values, preferences, and habits. Many SFA members got their start making foods that they themselves wanted or needed, based on their own unique ‘eating lifestyle.’ and this awareness and responsiveness continues as they grow their businesses.”

High on the list this year is a trend SFA is calling “Girl Dinner 2.0,” which stresses both that snacking is here to stay and that consumers are becoming ever-more flexible in how they consume snacks, whether between or instead of meals. A bigger trend goes along with this one – as consumers increasingly use GLP-1 medications for health and weight control, snack makers are meeting their needs with a focus on nutrition and portion sizes, Salamah says.

“Small portions, often involving protein-forward elements like tinned seafood, cured meats, or nuts, are central to this trend.”

Each of SFA’s Trendspotters come at the task from a different angle.

In the culinary world, Clara Park has worn many toques, from cooking in the kitchens of Michelin-starred eateries in California, New York and Philadelphia to creating recipes for big packaged food brands like Pepperidge Farm and Campbell’s Soup to developing products for major retailers like Costco.

Park has also developed menus for restaurants and trained staffers both in the kitchen and in the front of the house, and she’s on the board of The Food Lab at Drexel University and the advisory council for the Culinary Literacy Center at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Her career experiences bring together Park’s two big passions.

“Cooking food and feeding people is my favorite thing to do in the whole wide world,” she says. “A close second is teaching people to cook and giving them confidence in the kitchen.”

To that end, Park launched her own business called eat cetera philly earlier this year to offer cooking classes, demos and tastings.

Being part of the Trendspotters panel is another way for Park to keep her finger on the pulse of food trends and innovation.

Innovation can happen throughout the food world, but creating new products in the CPG world is typically a matter of developing new iterations of things that have already proved popular with consumers, while restaurants and chefs have more room to experiment and potentially create something completely new, Park says.

The process of developing new packaged foods is time-consuming and expensive, while restaurants and chefs have the ability to say “Oh my gosh, I saw this weird new vegetable at the farmers market and I’m going to cook it,” Park says.

The investment is small and eateries can quickly discover whether the new thing is something customers want and go from there. That discovery works both ways – foodservice channels are often where startups launch innovative new products, making it easy for customers to try new things that have been prepared by the expert hands of chefs.

Once consumers have become a bit familiar with new products like plant-based meat alternatives in restaurants, they may be more likely to purchase them at the grocery store for home consumption.

Global factors flavoring food trends

Trends in the wider world are also creating ripples in the food world, including inflation which has spurred the creation of chef-crafted ingredients and “cheffy kits for the home cook,” says Park.

That trend started during the pandemic and has only grown since then, says SFA’s Salamah.

Another panelist, V. Sheree Williams, sees the potential for further innovation in this category.

“With inflation hitting our pockets at the store and especially restaurants, people, especially those with families, will once again return to cooking fresh meals with cultural and flavorful twists,” Williams says.

Williams is editor-in-chief of the non-profit Global Food and Drink Initiative, whose mission is to use storytelling to preserve and shine a light on the “food histories and cultures of the African diaspora,” according to its website.

“It’s the culinary version of the critical race theory. It’s history that’s not being taught,” Williams says.

The focus on culture and education has been part of Williams’ relationship with SFA going back about a decade, she says, and she has long been an advocate for including more diverse companies and businesses of color.

“I would say that, when I’m there trendspotting, I keep my general hat on and then also I come from that standpoint of what I am seeing as a person of color,” Williams says.

“I was saying like five or so years ago, be on the lookout for Africa, and sure enough the continent has risen.”

Companies that used to export commodities like coffee, tea and chocolate are now keeping more of those products at home to create finished products for domestic consumption.

Raising the profiles of culinary cultures can also result in them melding in new ways.

“One of the things I love to see is cuisine fusion,” Williams says. “Whether it’s soul food and Mexican, or soul food and Asian, or Mexican and Asia, and so forth Seeing those fusions come about – that’s definitely one trend I’m seeing a lot of that we didn’t see on the list this time.”

From pretrends to traditions

Each member of the panel is there both to discover the latest trends for the panel and also to gain insights that will inform their own jobs, says Mikel Cirkus, senior director of global foresight and design for ingredients company dsm-firmenich.

“I’m looking for themes and messages,” Cirkus says. “Sometimes I’m not even paying attention to what the product is but to the messaging, the booth” and so forth.

Cirkus, who has been attending the Fancy Food Shows for about 30 years, says he’s most interested in what he calls “pretrends,” those new things with the potential to become hot trends with the potential to grow into long-lasting traditions.

He cites Ben & Jerry’s creation of cookie dough as an example.

“Everyone was like ‘What is this?’ Now you can’t go to an ice cream shop without seeing it,” Cirkus says.

Other examples include Fage and Chobani’s introducing consumers to Greek yogurt, which is now its own category. Red Bull did the same in the area of energy drinks.

“I remember when Stacy’s pita chips came just in Ziploc bags with a label – now it’s a huge brand,” he says.

Read more from SFA’s Trendspotters and check out this roundup of trend forecasts: