Kerry 2025 taste charts: Consumers seek adventurous flavor palettes in mainstream food and beverages

Kerry recently unveiled its 2025 Taste Charts, a comprehensive resource on developing trends designed to guide food and beverage innovators worldwide. The company hails the charts as a consumer insights tool to propel future innovation, help brands anticipate market shifts, and create impactful products.

Taste is the ultimate non-negotiable for product development. In a rapidly evolving industry, challenges such as nutritional optimization, sustainability, and consumer demand must all be addressed without sacrificing taste.

One of the key takeaways from the taste charts is how consumers in 2025 are seeking a balance of adventurous taste profiles and wellness-driven goals. 

Kerry identifies some major flavors for 2025, including Japanese Sudachi, Mikan Satsuma, and Calamansi. These flavors are finding new audiences outside of traditional heartlands, providing opportunities for new twists on citrus flavors. 

In Europe and Latin America, Finger Lime or “lime caviar” is bursting onto the flavor scene alongside the lemony-scented Verbena, while Latin America shows an inclination for the sweet, being the region with the greatest presence of caramel flavors.

Globally, sweet flavors inspired by barbecue continue to show popularity, with Honey Barbecue, Sweet Smoke, and Maple Barbecue being particularly noted by Kerry. Meanwhile, traditional chocolate combinations like chocolate mint, hazelnut, or almond are increasingly being used in alcoholic beverages, providing indulgent dessert alternatives.

In an exclusive interview with Food Ingredients First, Soumya Nair, global director, Consumer Research and Insights, at Kerry, goes through the charts in more detail. 

Kerry highlights Roots redefined as a key trend. This is how provenance, authenticity, and discovery are key drivers of global trends influencing local markets.

What’s behind the increasing consumer demand for a balance of adventurous taste profiles and wellness-driven goals? 
Nair: Consumers face trade-offs between their primary desire for taste and achieving their health and nutrition goals every day. The demand to strike a balance between those has increased with access to and awareness of information coupled with rising price pressures. We call this kind of consumer the “& consumer” — one who is unwilling to trade off their values and principles purely in the name of a deal or price. 

More than one in three consumers globally prioritize weight management and a balanced diet for healthy aging, according to Innova Market Insights. Wellness goals no longer default to physical goals such as weight management. In fact, mental wellness is increasingly understood as a key factor in their overall healthy aging goals. 

When it comes to taste, we also note that despite their sense of adventure, this kind of consumer is also looking for healthier options with low sodium or low sugar, with 48.1% of consumers highlighting the importance of lower sugar alternatives. In an indulgent category such as salty snacks, approximately 27% of consumers want reduced sodium in popcorn, 28% in potato chips, 28% in pretzels, 23% in puffs, and 29% in tortilla chips.

Why do you think we are seeing global trends influence local markets?
Nair: One of the 2025 taste trends identified by Kerry’s taste charts — Roots redefined — highlights how provenance, authenticity, and discovery are key drivers of global trends influencing local markets. As a result of people traveling in much greater numbers and experiencing different cultures, both through their real and digital travels, we’re seeing consumers showing a curiosity and expectation for new flavors and cuisines. 

Kerry’s taste charts capture future emerging flavors paired with familiar favorite flavors like citrus.Our insights show this with Korean barbecue, for example, an up-and-coming savory flavor in Canada, Europe, and Central America. From Gochujang rising in salty snacks as an up-and-coming flavor in Australia and emerging in Canada; to Maple Butter emerging in Australia and New Zealand, consumers are seeking adventurous flavor palettes in mainstream F&B. 

Social media has had a significant impact on consumer expectations from international F&B innovation, influencing almost half of their users to try a new restaurant or a new food or beverage. TikTok reported that hashtags like #FusionFood and #UniqueRecipes have amassed over 500 million views each in 2023, indicating a strong interest in diverse and innovative cooking styles. The final piece of influence we’re seeing in the global to local trends is the rise of third and fourth-generation chefs and baristas around the world, which are also giving rise to third-culture cuisine. This is evident as 45% of new cookbook releases 2024 (Amazon book sales) feature fusion recipes that blend multiple culinary traditions, specifically global trends influencing local markets. 

Raised in a culture outside their parents’/grandparents’ country of origin, they are expanding on this local cultural heritage with their own authentic twist. From Jon Kung’s Shanghainese-American cuisine to chef Christian Baumann’s Korean & Scandinavian fusion flavors, consumers are hungrier than ever for this delicious new clash of authentic worlds. 

What are some of the major flavors for 2025?
Nair: Mainstream flavors loved by consumers for years — chocolate, caramel, lemon — open a large creative canvas for flavor layering and give consumers the opportunity to dabble in familiar to fantastic taste profiles, depending on the spectrum of consumer curiosity. 

We are witnessing a rise in familiar yet luxurious experience in alcoholic beverages with dessert-like and indulgent treats rising in the category. Chocolate has had a decade-long dominance in the Kerry taste charts: ruling both the sweet and hot and dairy-based beverage charts; in fact, in the 2025 charts, 51% of chocolate flavors appear in the sweet category, while 31% are featured in hot and dairy-based beverages. 

Kerry’s taste charts capture future emerging flavors paired with familiar favorite flavors of chocolate and citrus. We are seeing miso in the US, shiso (a Japanese spearmint-flavored herb) in Asia, yuzu (fruit), lychee (fruit), and mocha in Europe, and cheesecake and espresso in Brazil coming through as favorite cocktail creations by bartenders and mixologists at the top 118 bars in the world.