Every year, the food industry collectively scrambles to determine the top trends that will define the months ahead. These are the foods, flavors, ingredients, and dishes that are supposed to keep your concept and menu fresh and exciting in your customer’s eyes—shortcuts to success, you might say. The past decade are filled with the “it” trend of the year: avocado toast, gochujang, ube, birria, etc.

It’s not that any of these trends are bad ideas, of course—each one is delicious in its own right. And they were certainly trending, depending on how you measured the trend—an increase in social media mentions, growth on menus, increasing sales, etc. You may have even put some of them on the menu with success in increased sales, mentions, or visitation.

But often we are sold these trends as the solution first, and we then must back into the problem we were trying to solve with that flavor or ingredient, if we think about it at all. When someone says avocado toast is trending, does that mean everyone should immediately put it on the menu? The breathless, ever-quickening pace of the trend cycle means we are constantly bombarded by trends, wondering if we’re missing out on a new consumer want and if the trends are passing us by. We are always sifting through this endless onslaught of trends, deciding if they make sense for our concept, brand, menu, and marketing goals. When we decide we should activate on them, we often feature them for a short amount of time, until that churn-and-burn trend cycle moves onto the next “it” item.

Instead of thinking this way, it’s time to flip the script. Consider this your chance to take a step back, decide what you are truly trying to solve for in the year ahead, and then decide which trends can help you solve those needs. That includes new ways of looking at value beyond just low prices and an endless stream of combo meals. It means giving customers a new way to escape the grind of everyday life, whether that’s through new experiences or global flavors. It’s also about focusing on hospitality again, giving customers the human touch that may be lacking.

As you think through the customer needs in the pages ahead, consider what resonates with you and your brand. Maybe you are looking for ways to give customers fun, exciting flavors and experiences that keep your concept young and fresh. Or maybe you want to incorporate more sensory experiences into the menu, getting your customers excited through smoky cocktails or the “crackling latte” trend. Once you’ve decided which customer needs will be a focus for your brand, it will then be much easier to choose the trends that will help you solve for those needs.

But there is one overarching customer need to keep in mind as we head into 2025: Customers are looking to you for something new. Today, more consumers are experimenting with new foods and flavors at home than they are at restaurants, a momentous change from pre-pandemic times, when customers mainly trusted chefs to introduce them to something new.

So it’s time to give them something fresh. After years of nostalgia and comfort foods, it’s time to get consumers excited again. It’s time to start getting creative, focusing on innovation and showcasing what consumers love about restaurants again.

KEY CONSUMER NEED:

Value: Give customers a fresh perspective on value and pricing

Over the last year, food has experienced some of the highest rates of inflation. From skimpflation and shrinkflation to higher prices at restaurants, consumers are feeling the squeeze. The result is increased tensions between consumers and the brands they purchase.

Yes, price is a key contributor to the perceived value of a purchase at foodservice. And extended periods of rising prices on menus has led 43 percent of consumers to want lower prices at restaurants in 2025.

But price isn’t the only factor. True value, value that is sustainable and impactful, is driven by more factors. When value is based on unique experiences, hospitality, consistent quality, and reliability, higher prices are less painful. Value underpinned by more than just cheap prices can and does drive greater patron loyalty, increased traffic, and greater acceptance of price increases.

No one wants to be taken advantage of, and that includes businesses. There are a lot of pressures now forcing prices to increase. Even though consumers may hear about legislation increasing minimum wages or understand food costs are rising, without effective communication they won’t immediately connect the dots. Remember, though, they are being squeezed. Realistically, we are all in this together, and communication with your patrons should focus on that.

How are you building greater value into your patron experience? If compromises on quality must be made, how are you offsetting those compromises to mitigate poor consumer perceptions. If portion sizes decline, can you increase the quality of key ingredients to offset that shrink? Can you improve the atmosphere or the hospitality to help support higher prices? Is technology eliminating pain points to improve the customer experience?

Increased costs must be addressed and tough operational decisions must be made to protect profit margins. These decisions can’t be made in a vacuum, discounting the customer experience. The decisions made to protect your interests should dovetail with improvements for your customers. They may not understand your business dynamics, but they will understand efforts to make their lives easier or better.

Take the time to find, and address, any value pain points. If you don’t, consumers will notice and go elsewhere.

KEY CONSUMER NEED:

Escape: Give customers a chance to get away from it all

2024 was a record year for travel. According to the Transportation Security Administration, the top 10 busiest days in the agency’s history have all occurred this year, with July 7 being the busiest day ever for the TSA as it screened over 3 million airport passengers for the first time.

The demand for experiences and travel has led to unprecedented crowds in some of the most popular travel destinations around the world, as tourists jetted off to the London, Greece, Portugal, Japan, Croatia, Mexico City, Italy, Spain, and beyond.

Consumers clearly want to get away. Much of this travel is the result of pent-up demand from the pandemic, but it’s also partly due to the growing purchasing power of generations who prioritize travel and experiences.

That demand for travel also creates a demand for the foods, flavors, and ingredients that consumers discover on their trips or learn about from friends and family who travel. Japan, where a weak yen has made travel more affordable for visitors, has been breaking record after record for travel, welcoming more tourists than ever before in the nation’s history, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization. Visitors have been embracing Japanese food on these trips–and sharing them on social media–creating a booming market in the U.S. for options like matcha, a wide range of sandos, and tanghulu, the candied fruit that has trended on TikTok.

That gives you an opportunity to not only offer even more global foods, flavors, ingredients, dishes, and trends to menus, but to highlight the escapist nature of them. Don’t just put a matcha or cherry blossom latte or baked good on the menu, use evocative terminology like, “Travel to Japan with us this spring with flavors like matcha and Sakura.” Street food or night market menus and LTOs give customers a sense of place and escape in their everyday lives.

KEY CONSUMER NEED:

The Senses: Give customers new sensory experiences

As consumers embrace a more optimistic and bolder approach to life, inherent in this is the desire for new sensory experiences. Food and dining away from home are among the few full sensory experiences a consumer can enjoy, alone or with others, and embracing all the senses is the best way for operators to truly connect with their patrons.

When asked to rate their senses in order of importance when selecting foods and beverages, it’s not surprising taste was ranked either No. 1 or No. 2 by 69 percent of consumers. Taste is critical, and taste exploration and experimentation is a key part of new experiences.

After years of focusing on the Instagrammability of foods, you may have guessed that consumers ranked sight second–but that’s not the case. Sixty-one percent ranked smell and aroma second. How effectively is aroma being used to create unique new experiences for consumers? Consciously innovating against aroma can change consumer experiences and reset expectations.

Sensory experiences extend well beyond the foods and beverages, starting when a consumer enters and following through to the end of the meal, which may be off-site or as they leave the property. Remember, all the senses should be engaged and thoughtfully considered to create not only new experiences, but the right sensory experiences unique to an operator’s brand. This includes the hospitality offered by employees and the interactive technology used to enhance or ease a patron’s experience. In the end, sensory experiences elicit emotional responses and emotions resonate far more with consumers than any one trend. What emotions do you want to provoke from your patrons?

Over the past 12 months, consumers have become more focused on sincerity and authenticity, and that’s as true for sensory experiences as it is for marketing and communications. Great food can be undercut by experiences that seem forced, artificial, or too consciously designed to elicit certain emotions. Make sure your experiences are as authentic as your brand voice and strategy.

KEY CONSUMER NEED:

Hospitality: Give customers the human touch

The word “hospitality” itself comes from the Latin word “hospitalitas,” meaning to receive or care for a guest or stranger. Yet many consumers say that the hospitality is missing from the guest experience at many restaurants–they don’t feel like they’re being taken care of. Thirty-eight percent of consumers say the value of eating out overall has declined, which means one out of every three customers that walks in the door is primed for a bad experience.

At some restaurant concepts, customers are ordering on their phones, picking up a bag from a series of cubbies, never having to interact with a single person. At full-service restaurants, they may bring up the menu using a QR code and view it on their tiny screen, and they may pay for it using the same phone system.

While in the short term these solutions may feel beneficial, in the long term consumers start to lose the human connection–the touch of hospitality. Picking up a meal from a cubby starts to feel scarcely differentiated from buying a product at the supermarket.

That’s why a key trend for the year ahead will be helping consumers connect again. Operators will start looking for ways to make transactions less, well, transactional and more human and experiential again. In 2023, the U.S. surgeon general declared a loneliness epidemic across the country, comparing the health impacts of loneliness to smoking a dozen cigarettes a day. It’s a widespread issue: over a third of consumers say they didn’t eat a single meal with a friend or family member in the past week.

There is a place for technology, of course: some consumers are in a hurry, it does assist with labor crunches, etc. But when adopting tech solutions, consider the overall impact on the human connection that may be lost in the long term. In the year ahead, consider ways to balance industry changes with the need to keep hospitality as a central, non-negotiable element of the dining experience. Tech may even be a part of the solution–can you use an app to reach out directly to customers more often, to invite them to an in-person event, to learn where the human connection points may be missing?

The decline in restaurant traffic may in fact be exacerbating the loneliness epidemic in the U.S., as consumers pull back from a place where they might connect. But that also means that there are few industries better suited to bringing back that human touch and helping consumers connect again.

Source: FSR