Food and Beverage Trends to Watch

“Functional” is still a bankable buzzword in the food and beverage world, with drinks being a particularly liquid category. To quote Food Navigator, “[f]rom smoothies to hot chocolate, there is no beverage the functionality trend hasn’t touched.” With the massive success of Olipop and Poppi, Spindrift joins the new-wave soda brigade with a line of no-sugar “sodas” (success TBD). Some brands have floundered when trying to dip into this trend: GoodPop, for example, shuttered its line of low-sugar drinks when parents reported their kids found them not sweet enough. On the more sci-fi side of things, Europe’s BlueTree Technologies says it has a way of removing select parts of the sugar molecule in beverages—lowering sugar content without affecting taste. Woah.

And speaking of tech: Companies across categories and food and beverage industry sectors try to find ways to gain edge with AI, from cultivating meat to precision agriculture to developing new GLP-1s.

Economically, Americans are still feeling cautious, with the Wall Street Journal reporting disappointing quarterly earnings from fancy fast casuals like Cava and Sweetgreen. We love Cava, but those bowls are pricey. The Journal also informs us that Gen Z is staying home at their parents’ instead of going out, to bars or to Cava. Just as well since everyone just wants to sit inside on their phone anyway. Kids today.

Looking further: there’s real concern that one of these days, we’ll run out of coffee. In the short term, bad harvests, climate issues, and tariffs have driven up coffee prices. In the long term, airable land is shrinking while global demand for coffee is rising. It’s not something any of us want to think about (and definitely not before our morning cup), but companies like Belgian startup Koppie are finding ways to turn non-coffee-beans into coffee beans through some high-tech wizardry we’re not smart enough to understand. Kind of love the name, though.