The Specialty Food Association’s Trendspotter Panel expects to see several trends on the rise in 2025, including innovative snacking, South Asian flavors, restaurant-quality meals at home, functional foods, flavorful chilis, vinegars and natural sweeteners. The panel consists of 20 professionals from diverse segments of the culinary world who predict the top food and beverage trends for the coming year.

While snacking in place of meals has been trending among consumers for years, the panel foresees different flavors and creative combinations gaining traction in 2025. The trend is about more than just convenience, said Leana Salamah, SFA senior vice president, marketing and communications.

She said the COVID-19 pandemic “fundamentally changed the structure of our days,” leading to the adoption of snacking as an ongoing lifestyle. Two other factors are in the mix as well, she noted.

“Certainly, in part of the world, GLP-1 shots have created a situation where people on (the drugs) are forced to snack because they cannot have full meals,” Salamah said. “And scheduling challenges within a family make it very difficult for a traditional three-meal-a-day structure.”

The panel also called out South Asian and US regional products as gaining popularity. Salamah credited influences and experiences in consumers’ daily lives for the trend.

“As people are traveling more and trying to experience other cultures, they bring back flavors and ingredients and eating sensibilities they want to incorporate into their day-to-day lifestyles so they can experience that,” she said. Some of the trend is happening in the frozen segment, she added, giving the example of Connecticut-based Saffron Road, which focuses on regional and global flavors in its products.

Consumers are looking to save money by not eating at restaurants, but they want restaurant-quality meals at home, Salamah said. The trend is toward consumers buying ingredients they perceive as premium to make those meals, which require cooking ability, well-equipped kitchens and recipes. She said this may mean more consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies providing the recipes.

Functional foods and personalized nutrition are continuing to appear on trends lists, including the latest one from the SFA. Salamah said the trend goes back to food as medicine and the added-value aspects of some specialty foods.

“For the most part, they’re pretty natural; mushrooms, herbs and ashwagandha are some of those,” she said. “You’re seeing coffees and you’re seeing teas with ashwagandha.”

Spicy continues to be a food and beverage trend, but now it’s about more diverse and lesser-known types of chilis with varied flavor profiles, the panel said.

“There’s a sophistication around it now rather than just, ‘How much can I take?,’” Salamah said. “This will only happen with the food community coming out with different chiles that help consumers with that nuance rather than just seeing how much you can take — to enjoy the actual flavor that’s behind that heat.”

The panel singled out vinegars with more adventurous flavors as another trend for the coming year. The flavors include black cherry vinegar and cucumber vinegar, Salamah said, which break out of the product’s traditional sweet or spicy flavor profile.

“As we think about consumers cooking more at home, vinegars are a way to incorporate that kick into your dishes, so I think they allow for a lot of creativity in cooking,” she said. “Vinegars are fermented, so they end up in that halo of fermented foods because they have that wellness thing about them.”

The panel’s final major trend for 2025 is toward more natural sweeteners such as sugar, honey, maple and other syrups. They’re perceived as cleaner than artificial sweeteners and a less manufactured and more natural way to eat despite the calories, Salamah said.

“When I grew up, calories were king, and you didn’t pay attention to anything else on the label,” she said. “That’s really evolved into calorie-counting being a far less important metric when consumers are looking for what they want to eat. The notion of snacking more rather than eating full meals kind of gives you permission to eat things that are slightly more calories, more indulgent but less portions. It gives you permission to do that instead of worrying so much about the calorie count over everything else.”

Other 2025 trends pinpointed by the Trendspotter Panel include oil-based hot sauces, black garlic, lavender and flavored cheeses.

Functional foods, chilis and beverages that maximize pleasure and minimize stress were some of the trends the panel predicted for 2024.

The SFA’s Winter Fancy Food Show will be held Jan. 19-21 in Las Vegas, Salamah said, where participants will be able to see and sample the panel’s top trends in foods and beverages for the coming year.