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The What’s Hot 2025 Culinary Forecast from The National Restaurant Association (NRA) is out — and a focus on the environment tops the list of what consumers are looking for in the restaurants they support. The forecast draws on the expertise of industry professionals who were asked to rank 71 items in 7 categories: dishes, ingredients, flavors, condiments, beverages, alcohol beverages, and macro trends.
“Industry professionals identified restaurants' commitment to sustainability as the leading overall trend that will impact where customers choose to eat out,” the report says. “Generationally, we can expect that customers’ support of businesses that support environmental stewardship — through local sourcing, reduced-waste cooking, sustainable ingredients — will grow stronger rather than diminish.”
According the NRA, the team behind the forecast “assumed customers are sensitive to restaurant value, and value deals came in second to sustainability as a macro trend.” However, value was outranked by cold brew, hot honey, global cuisine and local beer and wine in the overall trends category, “telling us that at the end of the day, if the food’s worth it, it’s worth it.”
Highlights from the What’s Hot forecast include:
TOP 10 OVERALL TRENDS
- Sustainability & Local Sourcing
- Cold Brew
- Korean Cuisine
- Hot Honey
- Vietnamese Cuisine
- Hyper-Local Beer & Wine
- Fermented/Pickled Foods
- Wellness Drinks
- Creative Spritzes
- Value Deals
TOP INGREDIENTS
- Honey and Seeds
- Functional Mushrooms
- Pineapple
- Tamarind
- Ube
TOP FLAVORS & CONDIMENTS
- Hot Honey
- Fermented/Pickled Foods
- Matcha
- Miso
- Spicy Maple
TOP BEVERAGE ALCOHOL
- Hyper-Local Beer & Wine
- Creative Spritzes
- Flights
- Innovative Old Fashioneds
- '90s Martinis (espresso, apple martinis)
“Look for these and other alcohol beverages — martinis, mimosas, bloody marys — to be served in flights of three or four tasting-size glasses,” the forecast says, noting that “flights ranked highly in the beverage alcohol category, but food flights are appearing with increased frequency.”
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TOP 10 MACRO TRENDS
- Sustainability & Local Sourcing
- Value Deals/Propositions
- Smaller or Streamlined Menus
- Healthy Kids' Menus
- Pop-Up Restaurants
- Hyper-Local
- Convenience Proteins (sous vide, individual serving packs, shelf stable, plant based)
- Limited-Time-Only Menus
- Flights
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) Integration
To download the report, click here.
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