June 19, 2025 – Over the past five years, global food and beverage sweet flavors have shown stable growth. Growth is modest in food but speeding up in beverages. The food and beverage industry is facing a big challenge – consumers prefer sweet flavors, but consumers and governments demand products with reduced sugar. Opportunity exists for companies, but success will depend on moving from the concept of sweetness from sugar to flavor and also considering health.
Sweet Flavors are Growing
Sweet flavors are growing in beverages because they allow companies to substitute flavor for sugar. In fact, the growth rate of sweet flavors used in beverage exceeded the growth rates of both other beverage flavors and sweet flavors in food product launches. Leading beverage subcategories for sweet flavors are carbonated soft drinks, followed by iced tea and coffee, sports drinks, and drinking yogurt and fermented beverages. It is no surprise that chocolate – including milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and white chocolate – is the top sweet flavor. Other sweet flavors are a new flavor category that is small but growing rapidly. Sweet and salty flavor combinations, even when not distinctly identified, tend to support product growth. Although the growth rate is less robust for sweet flavors in food launches, it still is modest and is led by bakery launches.
Generation Z and Millennials are Important Targets
The desires of Generation Z and Millennials, as the two younger generations, are driving food and beverage product flavor innovation. Flavor trends reveal that Gen Z is particularly drawn to the mood-enhancing quality of flavors. Gen Z and Millennials are behind the rise of alcoholic beverage cocktails with their sweet flavors. Millennials also think that food and beverage products can have functional benefits for mental health. This suggests that food and beverage flavors will continue to evolve.
Sweet Tastes and Brown Flavors
Sweet tastes and brown flavors are driving new flavor trends, and innovating around flavor trends will help attract consumers. Sweet tastes are especially appealing in several key categories of sweets. New flavors in 2024 included variations of caramel such as caramelized and salted caramel, along with roasted flavors and a sweet taste. Viral TikTok posts and generative AI helped move these trends forward.
Sweet goes beyond traditional fruit flavors. Fruit flavors are highly popular and represent over half of drink launches and one-quarter of food launches. Also, they continue to grow in both beverage and food launches. However, they are not the only sweet flavors and consumers seek other sweet flavors beyond fruit flavors in foods and beverages. That is why companies who are innovating with flavor in food and beverage launches should consider other sweet flavors in addition to fruit flavors.
Sweet but Less Sugar
Flavor trends are moving away from sugary launches and toward products that are sweet without too much sugar. This provides companies with the opportunity to create innovative flavors that are sweet but are not necessarily fruit-based. Opportunities for flavor innovation include fusions of flavors, flavor mash-ups, especially if they are unusual or unexpected, nostalgic, floral, roasted or toasted, or caramelized. These various flavors can satisfy the consumer’s cravings for sweets while also using less sugar. Governments and consumers are demanding less sugar, and companies are responding with greater use of sweet flavors.
Innova Market Insights is tracking the faster launch rates of beverages with sweet flavors compared to other flavors. In beverages, sweet flavors show solid growth in sweet-flavored soft drinks, namely carbonates, and in iced coffee drinks. Smaller share beverages subcategories with growth in sweet flavors include sports nutrition and drinking yogurt.
Flavors Deliver Broader Benefits
Many flavor trends also deliver broader benefits. These can include emotional wellness, comfort, adventures in taste, health benefits, luxury, and indulgence in real life and on-line. Sweet flavors are especially tied to improving mood. Most consumers agree that food and beverage products play a role in improving mental health.
One of the megatrends tracked by Innova pertains to shifts in demographic groups. Boomers, who were the dominant generation, are being replaced by Generation Z, a generation that is categorized as open-minded and anxious. Flavor trends indicate that the Gen Z consumer also is more open to a combination of traditional medicine and modern medicine. Millennials in particular believe in the power of products with functional benefits to improve mood.
Gen Z leads other generations in recognizing the importance of mood enhancement from flavors. In a global consumer trends research, Innova asked consumers to associate tastes with four moods. These included happy, calm, comforted, and indulgent, all mood states that consumers associated with sweet tastes. Gen Z is a perfect target for products that connect sweet flavor with desired mood.
What’s Next in Sweet Flavor Trends?
Innova predicts several trends in sweet flavors. The first is that sweet flavors with less sugar will continue to grow. Also watch for flavor fusions that connect sweet and spicy, sweet and sour, sweet and salty, or sweet and savory. Fresh and floral is another sweet combination. Sweet flavors can be featured in cross-category mash-ups that combine sweet dessert or soft drink flavors with foods from other food and drink categories. Innova expects to see more opportunities to connect sweet flavors with various mood states, and this is likely to appeal to younger generations. Functional ingredients that are connected with mood would bring added appeal. Attract Gen Z with new tastes that promise pleasure and enjoyment. One option is flavors that evoke the outdoors or taste travel to other regions of the world. Nostalgia can be another direction as sweet flavors bring back memories of past pleasures. And brands increasingly are expected to use AI to create new and unusual sweet flavors and combinations.
This article is based on Innova’s Sweet Flavors in Food & Beverage – Global report. This report is available to purchase or with an Innova Reports subscription. Reach out to find out more
