Millions of people use Yelp to search for restaurants. The data compiled from their orders has formed the basis for the review site’s first-ever trend forecast report.
Yelp looked at 28 million new reviews over the course of the past year to find a list of words and phrases that were rising the fastest and most significantly between 2018 and 2019, in terms of percentage of users who were mentioning them. This list was then narrowed down to those whose mention rate over the last three years was most indicative of further growth.
Yelp then consulted with Yelp Trend Expert Tara Lewis and scoured the menus popular restaurants to determine the hottest food trends for the year ahead. The following are the top ten to look for in 2020, according to Yelp:
- Elevated Breakfast – Reviews for dishes like souffle pancakes and cinnamon swirl pancakes have increased by 156.2 percent in the last year.
- Mocktails, Non-Alcoholic Happy Hours – These non-alcoholic beverages mimicking cocktails are popping up on menus across the country, as are full bars dedicated to them.
- Floral-Infused Drinks and Dishes – Floral-infused food and drinks were high in big cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco.
- Nashville Hot Chicken – This fried chicken dish is showing up everywhere in 2020, both at local establishments and major chains such as KFC.
- Ube is the New Matcha – The purple yam that hails from the Philippines has been a rising ice cream and dessert flavor and that will continue in 2020.
- Healthy-Swap Comfort Food – People are finding healthy-swaps for their favorite comfort foods, such as cauliflower pizza.
- Boozy Kombucha – Review mentions are up 377 percent in the last 12 months for the hard beverage.
- Pineapple Bun – These popular sweet Cantonese pastries are often served as a dim sum snack, breakfast bun, or dessert pastry.
- Next Level Desserts – Stretchy ice cream and brick toast could be big items in 2020.
- Korean Cuisine – Korean cuisine and Korean BBQ are seeing a surge in popularity and are expected to be a top cuisine of the coming year.