Flavor Trends Decoded: What's New & What's Next According to Google & TikTok

A Spate report on flavor trend forecasting for food and beverage brands, built on search and social data from Google Search and TikTok, not consumer surveys or forecaster opinion.

Every year, food and beverage brands place big bets on flavor. Some pay off. Most don't, because they're built on trend calls made too late, or on signals from a single platform that don't reflect where consumer interest is actually heading. This report from Spate uses the Spate Popularity Index, which combines Google Search volume with TikTok views, to track flavor trends as they emerge across snacks, meals, and non-alcoholic beverages, before they hit mainstream menus and shelves.

Featuring insights from Spate's Co-Founder & CEO Olivier Zimmer, Spate's F&B Category Insights Manager Alyssa Williams, and Kelli Heinz, VP of Marketing and Internal Affairs at Bell Flavors & Fragrances, this report gives food and beverage teams a data-backed view of where flavor is heading next.

What's Inside This Flavor Trend Report

Category-level flavor trend data across food and beverage: year-over-year growth across nine major food and beverage categories, including meals, snacks, beverages without alcohol, dairy alternatives, and baking & cooking, so you can see which parts of your business are seeing the strongest momentum in search and social interest right now.

Flavor mapping by category: a breakdown of the dominant flavor profiles sweet, salty/umami, bitter, sour, and mouthfeel driving consumer interest within meals, snacks, and beverages, based on combined Google Search and TikTok data.

Fastest-growing flavors, ranked two ways. The report ranks flavors both by absolute increase in popularity and by percentage growth year-over-year, across meal flavors, snack flavors, and non-alcoholic beverage flavors, giving you both the flavors with the biggest current footprint and the ones accelerating fastest from a smaller base.

Flavor spotlights with platform-level breakdowns: deep dives into individual breakout flavors, including onion, cucumber, pistachio, guava, blueberry, and ube, showing average monthly popularity, year-over-year growth, and the split between Google Search and TikTok, plus the specific search queries and TikTok content driving each trend.

Spate's POV on where flavor is heading: Three consumer-behavior takeaways drawn directly from the data: the rise of creamy, nutty flavors like ube and pistachio; the pull toward light, fruity, feel-good flavors like blueberry and guava; and how familiar flavors like onion and cucumber are being reinvented for different occasions and formats.

Why TikTok and Google Search Data Matters for Flavor Trend Forecasting

Single-platform trend data tells an incomplete story. TikTok surfaces what's culturally exciting; Google Search reveals what people are actually planning to cook, buy, or order. The Spate Popularity Index adjusts for growth differences between the two platforms so brands can track a trend's true trajectory not just its viral spike on one app. As one example in the report shows, mushroom coffee's popularity in the US grew significantly over the past year when measured across both platforms together.

Who This Flavor Trend Report Is For

This report is built for teams making flavor and product decisions, including:

• Flavor and food scientists developing new SKUs and reformulations
• CPG innovation and R&D teams prioritizing flavor pipelines
• Marketing and insights teams tracking consumer flavor trends
• Foodservice and menu development teams
• Ingredient and flavor house suppliers identifying demand signals early

If you're deciding what flavor to launch next in snacks, beverages, or meals this report gives you the data to back that decision before your competitors move on the same trend.

About the Data

Spate's Popularity Index combines Google Search volume and TikTok views, adjusted for platform-specific growth differences, to produce a single, comparable measure of flavor and food trend momentum over time. Data in this report reflects search volume and TikTok view growth over 12 months versus the prior 12 months.

Download the report →

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a flavor trend report and why do food and beverage brands use one?

A flavor trend report tracks which flavors and ingredients are gaining consumer interest, typically using search and social data, so brands can prioritize new product development and marketing around flavors with real, measurable momentum rather than guesswork.

What flavors are trending in food and beverage right now?

According to the report, standout flavors include onion and cucumber in meals, pistachio and guava in snacks, and blueberry and ube in non-alcoholic beverages, each showing strong year-over-year growth across Google Search and TikTok.

What is the Spate Popularity Index?

The Spate Popularity Index is a proprietary metric that combines Google Search data with TikTok views to measure how popular a food, beverage, or flavor trend is, adjusting for growth differences between platforms so the two data sources can be compared fairly.

Which food and beverage category is growing fastest?

Among the categories tracked in the report, Meals showed the strongest year-over-year popularity growth, followed by Dairy Alternatives and Snacks, based on combined Google Search and TikTok data.

Is TikTok or Google Search a better indicator of flavor trends?

Neither on its own, the report shows that TikTok and Google Search play different roles: TikTok tends to reflect cultural buzz and discovery, while Google Search reflects more concrete purchase or recipe intent. Combining both gives a fuller, more reliable trend signal.

How is pistachio trending in food and beverage?

Pistachio is one of the fastest-growing snack flavors in the report, closely tied to the viral pistachio (Dubai-style) chocolate bar trend, with popularity in the snacks category growing over 1,000% year-over-year.

Who created this flavor trend report?

This flavor trend report was produced by Spate, a trend intelligence platform that analyzes Google Search and TikTok data, in collaboration with Bell Flavors & Fragrances.

Is the Flavor Trends Decoded report free to download?

Yes, the full report is available as a free download and includes detailed category breakdowns, flavor rankings, and flavor spotlight data not covered in this summary.