From insects as food to meatless jerky and matcha-infused everything, last year's food-and-drink landscape gave us plenty of innovation and change to digest, but what about 2025? Siobhán Maguire meets world-renowned food futurologists and FMCG experts to find out what supermarket surprises might be in store. This article first appeared in ESM’s January/February 2025 edition.
Last year gave us plenty of food for thought when it came to food and drink trends. Who can forget the fascination with fermented foods like kimchi or kefir?
Brands collaborated with tech companies to create AI-powered cooking apps and recipe platforms, generating unexpected mash-ups across snacks and plant-based foods, while the humble mushroom, well, mushroomed.
Nootropic-infused beverages and snacks took hold, while the more conscious consumer demanded edible packaging and zero-waste food.
So, what does 2025 have in store? Will fermented food and fungal fascinations continue – and will shoppers demand even more from retailers in the sustainability space?
Plan Ahead
According to Mintel, the market intelligence agency, global food and drink trends this year highlight a significant duality: how consumers traverse between health and indulgence, and how the global food market navigates a bumpy supply chain.
Globally acclaimed applied futurist Tom Cheesewright agrees with the supply chain sentiment, with retailers having to pre-empt problems and offer consumers suitable alternatives to stock-outs.
“Disruptions to the global supply chain present stores with a couple of problems,” Cheesewright says. “Firstly, customer communication – how do you keep a customer happy and loyal while telling them that the product they want isn’t available or that the price has tripled? – and, secondly, agility. How do you shuffle the product mix and promotions to offer alternative or hero other products that distract from the disruption?
“The future is likely to be quite volatile between fast-changing weather conditions and the levels of geopolitical uncertainty, so retailers are likely to need to invest in processes and practices to help them manage the volatility.”
Self-Defence
Dr Morgaine Gaye, a world-renowned food futurologist who has appeared in the Netflix series The Future Of and worked with brands like Mondelēz, Mars, Unilever and Nestlé, says that some of the biggest watchwords for 2025 are ‘added immunity’ and ‘immune boosting’.
“We feel vulnerable, and we’ve all been confronted with illnesses in a different way, with mega-viruses and the fear of that, which I think is now part of our international psyche,” Gaye says.
“We’re protecting ourselves on so many levels, so immunity speaks to us and our wellbeing. As a spin-off from that, we’ll see this fortified with adaptogens, and products will have some benefit. It’s not good enough to just taste good – a product’s going to have more than that.
“If it’s coffee, it’s going to have lion’s mane mushrooms in it, or it’s fermented from artisan grain. These are the things that are going to underpin real wellness, rather than just having something like, the product contains Vitamin D. That elevation is not just physical, but mood boosting, sleep enhancing, and the whole wellness package in food.”
Savoury Over Sweet
One of the biggest trends tipped for 2025 is around the snacking industry and how it caters to the millions upon millions around the world availing of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, GLP-1 medication that helps patients feel full and often, preferring savoury to sugary products.
“What we’ll start seeing – not at the beginning of the year, but if brands get on it – we’ll see the increase in savoury snacking and in the reduction of sweet snacks like Mars Bars or Twix, and that’s because of the Ozempic wave,” says Gaye.
“Originally, GLP-1 was connected to diabetics and blood sugar control. People using these products won’t have the same sugar craving as before, so they’ll be having the salty snack in small amounts.
“I know from insider working that brands like Cadbury or Nestlé will be inside, innovating fiercely for that savoury snacking hit. What is it when you feel like you might have gone and got a granola bar? What is the savoury version of that? I think we can expect a big influx of that.”
Affordability Factor
Ananda Roy, senior vice-president of global thought leadership and strategic insights at Circana, says that across the largest European grocery markets, the future of foods in 2025 will be determined by several factors, not the least of which is affordability.
“Across the largest European grocery markets, the future of foods in 2025 will be determined by affordability, as commodity prices rise again; sustainability, whose definition has widened to include ingredient-sourcing and traceability; higher standards in animal husbandry; and food production’s impact on the local environment and communities,” Roy says.
“Finally, consumers want global brands to meet their local commitments and responsibilities.”According to Roy, the challenge for the FMCG industry is a growing health consciousness driving a trend to clean labels,which, he says, is an unrealistic goal for food manufacturers.
“Decades-old food production techniques make food cheaper, increase shelf life and reduce food waste, mitigate the impact of climate change on food security, providing a variety of foods, often offseason, and allow standardised quality and nutrition value to be delivered to consumers,” he adds.
“The empirical benefit of clean labels to ‘better for me’ is also unproven.
“Food manufacturers and retailers will have to adapt to generational changes in food and beverages to put them on shelves: less alcohol and spirits, more low-impact waters and dairy-based high-fibre and protein beverages, less indulgent snacks and healthier flexitarian options, smaller portion sizes – rather than promotions that encourage food waste and overconsumption – more local produce produced in-season, with higher welfare standards, a greater understanding of the impacts of ultra-processed foods on health, and, ultimately, affordability.”
Shop Around
What about our shopping habits? Is loyalty rewarded enough across chains to keep customers coming back for one big weekly shop, or are they likely to shop around?
“We’re a fickle bunch in 2025,” says Cheesewright. “It’s true of our consumption habits across a whole range of products and services – from banking to cars, to grocery – and it’s causing many incumbents a headache.
I suspect our shopping habits will be ultra-hybrid for some time now because there is so little friction involved in shopping from multiple channels now, like staples from a discounter, luxuries on subscription, or treats from a metro store.”
Cheesewright says that this hybrid approach to shopping directly stems from the cost-of-living cloud that has been hanging over many European countries in recent years.
“We save where we can and we spend where we need to, to manage our mood. We have a lot more choice now, and we’re using it to meet the priorities we feel at any time,” he adds.
“I’m expecting slow levels of economic growth for the next couple of years, so we’re unlikely to be too extravagant in the near future.”
Evolution Of Supermarkets
Gaye says to expect “a really tricky year” in the retail space, with a lot of destabilisation concerning global wars and the climate.
On the back of that, she says that supermarkets have been looking at grocery delivery services like Ocado in the UK and asked, ‘Well, what’s the point of supermarkets?’ because older-generation numbers are declining, and these are traditionally reliable as in-store shoppers.
“What supermarkets are going to have to do to stay relevant is offer some kind of experience,” Gaye says. “Just before Covid, we saw a lot of butchers and bakers close within supermarkets because people weren’t going there as much, but now what people want is those boutique relationship experiences.
More of our life is online, so we’re having less connections.“One of the things that’s been happening for millennials and younger [generations] is this massive self-care epidemic, but what’s been happening with that has actually created this isolation and loneliness and mental health issues because people are focusing inwards so much.
It’s almost like an analysis paralysis, and it’s stopped people creating communities and looking outward.“Paired with that, we’re also seeing there is a weird sense of nostalgia from younger generations for a time that was pre-tech because it seemed simpler and more authentic, and so that’s about connections, and simplicity.
We always see nostalgia where there’s destabilisation and when there’s a cost-of-living crisis.
“One of the ways that nostalgia will show up is in ways that are connected to environmental causes, like refills, [and] keepsakes, like a tin revival in food brands. One of the things we could see in supermarkets is this reason for people to go out and have an experience. There’s going to be much more of an emphasis on quality over quantity, so we’ll see people much more concerned about waste, so an increase in frozen products. People are going towards a more plant-based diet, too, so buying a frozen cauliflower over a fresh one address those two things.
“In Covid we saw a decline in fake meats, so only the good ones have survived, and we’re going to see more mushroom or seaweed-based products. Dietary needs will also be more developed.
“We’ll see [the] community-based selling of food, too. People want meaning, and they are concerned about the environment.
“I don’t know if you’ve been to a food convention, where there are cooking demos, and I can see people coming into stores for that experience – the sensorial touchpoints that will make you shop more.
This is more about, ‘What do I do with these sausages?’ and there’s a demonstration with those sausages, showing you how to make a tray bake and how it takes five minutes to prepare, and you get this ingredient, and this is how you do it.”
Tech And AI
Can we expect a more tech-driven retail experience in 2025? Will our aisles embrace more generative AI, say, or will robotic automation grow as a means of speeding up a supply chain hampered by global crises in 2024, or distribution and logistics stymied by world events, including climate impact?
“German has a great word – jein – which really just means yes and no,” says Cheesewright. “More automation in the supply chain is a given. There’s still plenty of friction to be stripped out, and robots are becoming more affordable and accessible all the time.
“Androids are now in the tens-, rather than hundreds-, of-thousands-of-pounds range, so we’ll likely see them deployed in a range of capacities in the coming years – and, yes, the intuitive user interfaces that generative AI enables will definitely be more present in the year ahead.
If they can answer questions or help to promote specific items, it’s a no-brainer if the cost is right – and, ultimately, it will be – but there’s an important counter-trend as well.
“Younger generations have a huge amount of false nostalgia for pre-smartphone eras – nineties – and the rest of us have demonstrated a real desire to get away from the digital sometimes. Part of the appeal of bricks-and-mortar grocery shopping, I think, will increasingly be its somewhat analogue nature, and retailers shouldn’t forget that in the pursuit of efficiency and cool toys.”
