Nestlé Reveals Its 2025 Food Trends Predictions

There’s big business in little treats. And Nestlé, owner of such big-name grocery brands as DiGiorno, Stouffer’s, Starbucks at Home, and Abuelita, is looking ahead to the future, trying to guess how consumers might do all that consuming in 2025. The company has shared its insights with Food & Wine, and its predictions of what might be on trend in the coming months certainly make it sound like we’re in for a flavorful year.

‘Newstalgia’

If you haven’t yet heard the term “newstalgia,” it’s the blend of our old and familiar past with elements of the new and groundbreaking. This is an attempt by marketers to cater to elder millennials while also introducing Gen Z to something they might never have tasted before. Take White Castle, for example, which brought back its 1921 Slider — a recipe formulated to taste exactly like the burgers 100 years ago did — and then added ghost pepper cheese to it for a modern twist. Nestlé predicts that this trend will continue unabated into 2025 as brands try to keep multiple generations and demographics engaged with their products.

Little treats

We’ve talked about the rise in “little treat culture,” in which snack and beverage brands are catering to our desire to give ourselves a boost throughout the day with small, inexpensive luxuries. This explains the rise in many fun-size and on-the-go formats designed to encourage impulse buys — heck, even McDonald’s released the Mini McFlurry to cash in on the phenomenon. Nestlé notes that the “little treat” has also been taking the form of at-home coffee drinks with increasing frequency, and that in 2025, we can expect to see more products like ready-to-drink cold foam gain popularity as a result. Given that Nestlé is the owner of the Coffee-Mate brand, the company certainly wouldn’t mind if we all became aspiring baristas. 

Global and spicy flavors

Whereas the previous few years have seen snack brands layering on the spice, trying to out-do one another by dialing up the heat, Nestlé predicts that next year those spicy flavors will gain a greater degree of complexity, taking inspiration from global cuisine to surprise and delight consumers all over again. That’s why Nestlé has made strategic investments in both Asian and Mexican cuisine this year, launching a line of frozen foods under both the Tapatio and Mings brands. 

Home-cooked convenience

Everyone’s busy, everyone’s stressed, but no one wants to deal with excessive food delivery fees. Luckily, in 2024, the variety and quality of frozen and prepared foods is higher than it’s ever been, and the stigma of cooking with them has all but disappeared. Thus, in 2025, we might see a rise in what Nestlé refers to as “flavor done fast” — home cooking that relies on premade sauces, marinades, and prepped ingredients like cubed root veggies to create something comforting in as little time as possible. With restaurant prices being what they are, the prediction that more of us will cook at home is a safe bet.