> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.onthepassconsultancy.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Food Trends 2027 UK: Worth It or Just Hype? - URL: https://www.onthepassconsultancy.com/food-trends-2027-uk/ - Published: 2026-11-09T08:30:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-09T08:29:59.000Z - Description: Food trends 2027 UK for cafés, bars and restaurants. Which ones will earn a place on your menu, which are hype? An honest verdict from 35 years on the pass. - Author: René Chapman - Tags: Traditional Cooking & Trends, Food Trends 2027 Every autumn the trend reports land, one after another. Supermarkets, wholesalers, delivery apps and drinks brands all tell you what everyone will be eating next year. Most of them are written to sell something. Some are written for UK grocery shoppers. Very few are written for someone running 60 covers on a Saturday night with two chefs and a commis who started on Tuesday. So I have read through the main food trends 2027 UK operators will be shown this winter and checked them against what people in the UK are actually searching for. Then I put each one through the same test. Does it make you money? Can your team deliver it on a busy service? Does it need kit you don't have? Some trends pass. Some don't. Here is the honest version for restaurants, cafés and bars. ## Where these 2027 trends actually come from It helps to know who is talking. Every figure in this post comes from UK sources, because the only trends worth your attention are the ones customers of UK catering businesses are actually paying for. Where a trend rests on UK search data rather than a trade report, I say so. The most useful source is the Bidfood 2027 Food and Drinks Trends report, reported by The Morning Advertiser on the 1st of October 2026\. Bidfood supplies UK foodservice. Its report draws on UK consumer research from Yonder, Mintel, Lumina Intelligence and CGA by NIQ, as well as Tastewise UK data. For drinks, the best evidence comes from NIQ, powered by CGA Intelligence, which tracks the UK on-trade. For cafés, it's Allegra World Coffee Portal. The search figures come from Google Trends for the UK, comparing the last 13 weeks with the same weeks a year earlier. Google Trends shows relative interest, not search volumes, so treat those figures as direction of travel rather than a headcount. ## The test every trend has to pass Before anything goes on a menu, I ask four questions. The first is gross profit. A trend that drags your GP below target is a hobby, not a menu item. The second is labour. If it adds ten minutes of prep per portion, someone is paying for those ten minutes. The third is kit. Anything that needs a new piece of equipment has to earn back the cost of that equipment. The fourth is service. Will it survive a full pass on a Saturday, or does it only work when the kitchen is quiet? Hold every trend below against those four. That's the filter. ## Restaurant trends 2027: smaller, shared and flexible This is the strongest trend for 2027\. It is also the one with the best evidence behind it. Bidfood calls it Mini and Mighty. Bowls, sliders, snack pots and grazing plates. Bidfood found 73 per cent of consumers said they were more likely to try a new cuisine if it came as a small plate. Its sister trend, Standout Sharers, points to breakfast and brunch boards, globally inspired platters and sharing desserts. Mintel's Behaviours towards Licensed Restaurants 2025 report, quoted by Bidfood, found 51 per cent of diners preferred sharing dishes to an individual main. There is a newer reason behind it too. Bidfood estimates around 2.8 million UK adults are taking GLP-1 weight-loss medication. My reading is simple. Those guests still go out. They just want less on the plate. UK search backs this up. Interest in "small plates" is up roughly a fifth on last year. **Verdict: worth it, with one condition.** Smaller portions only work if the price is honest. CGA by NIQ asked diners how venues should handle rising costs. The most popular answer, from 35 per cent, was keep the quality and raise the price. Close behind, 30 per cent said keep the quality and cut the portion. Only 13 per cent wanted the quality cut. If you shrink the plate, keep the ingredients good and price it as a proper dish, not a cheaper version of a main. Small plates are also kind to your GP when they are built properly, because you control the protein weight on every one. I wrote about this in [three trending small plate ideas for UK menus](https://www.onthepassconsultancy.com/3-trending-small-plate-ideas-for-uk-menus-to-help-drive-gp/). ## Japanese comfort food, beans and regional cooking Japanese comfort food is already in UK kitchens through katsu curry. Think tonkatsu, Japanese curry rice and katsu sandos. No UK trade report names it for 2027 yet, but the search data says it is still growing. UK interest in "Japanese curry" is up by roughly 45 per cent on the same period last year. Beans are the other mover in UK search. Brothy butter beans, bean stews and lentil bowls sit happily in the centre of the plate. UK searches for "butter beans" are up by a similar margin, close to half again on last year. Bidfood adds a regional angle. It calls it Flavours Less Travelled, covering Vietnamese and Middle Eastern food as well as regional dishes within cuisines your guests already know, such as Italian, Chinese and Indian. Tastewise UK data quoted in the report shows mentions of "authentic regional cuisine" up 39 per cent year on year. **Verdict: worth it.** A katsu curry sauce is a batch job. A pot of brothy butter beans with good stock, garlic and greens costs pennies per portion and holds beautifully in a bain-marie. Neither needs new kit. Both sit comfortably on a pub, café or restaurant menu. That is about as safe as a trend gets. ## Flavours to watch: black garlic, tahini and ferments Bidfood's FastForward Flavours list names black garlic, tamarind, tahini, flavoured honeys, savoury matcha, guava, citrus and botanicals. In its survey, 26 per cent of consumers said an ingredient they hadn't tried would push them to order a new dish. Of those, black garlic stands out in UK search, up by roughly a third on last year. Fermented food is still climbing on menus. Bidfood's Function and Ferment trend quotes Tastewise UK data showing fermented items up 6 per cent on restaurant menus and 9 per cent in social mentions. Kimchi, kefir, tempeh, sauerkraut and kombucha. **Verdict: worth it as a finishing touch, not as a concept.** A black garlic butter, a spoon of kimchi or a tahini dressing adds a new word to the menu description for very little cost. That word is what sells the dish. Be careful with health claims, though. UK searches for "kefir" are down by roughly 30 per cent on last year. Interest in "gut health" is flat. Functional food is real, but it is not a reason to rewrite your menu around it. ## Café trends 2027 UK: iced, protein and texture The UK branded coffee shop market is still growing. Allegra World Coffee Portal's Project Café UK 2026 report puts it at £6.8bn across 12,313 outlets, with 420 net new sites over the year. It names iced drinks and matcha as two of the trends reshaping the market. Greggs has launched matcha and now has more coffee shop sites than Costa. When Greggs sells it, it is no longer niche. The search data adds some detail. UK interest in "iced latte" is up by roughly a fifth on the same weeks last year. That is in autumn, not summer. "Protein coffee" is the fastest mover in this group, up by more than half. "Matcha latte" is down by about 10 per cent on the same weeks last year. It isn't disappearing. It just isn't new any more. Texture is the other thread. Bidfood's A Touch of Texture trend points to cold foams, crunchy toppings and creamy centres. It suggests menu words like crispy, silky, fudgy and crunchy, because they tell the customer what they are getting before they order. **Verdict: iced drinks and cold foam, yes. Protein coffee, test it. Matcha, keep it but don't build around it.** Iced drinks carry good margin and very little labour once the station is set up. The catch is ice. If your café has one undersized ice machine, a busy afternoon of iced lattes will find that out for you. Plan the ice supply before you print the menu. Protein coffee is worth a trial on the board before it goes on the printed menu. If it sells, keep it. If not, you've lost a few cartons of protein milk. ## Bar trends 2027: spritz, lower strength and premium tequila The cocktail is no longer something only cocktail bars do. NIQ's Mixed Drinks Report puts the on-trade cocktail market at £733m for the 12 months to March 2026, up 3 per cent. Pernod Ricard, citing CGA market monitor data, says 14 per cent of GB on-trade outlets have closed since Covid, while the number of cocktail bars grew by 40 per cent. The spritz is leading it. Katie Lawton of NIQ told The Morning Advertiser in October 2026 that the spritz is now the leading cocktail style in the GB on-premise. UK searches for "Hugo spritz" have roughly doubled on last year. Searches for "espresso martini" are slightly down. Strength is the bigger story. NIQ found 64 per cent of spirits drinkers want more low or medium strength options, rising to 73 per cent among 18 to 34 year olds. Alcohol-free cocktails are getting a second order too, with 51 per cent of people who have tried one saying they would order it again. But 34 per cent of spirits drinkers don't see the added value of a non-alcoholic spirit. At the premium end, tequila keeps growing. Margaritas and palomas are the best sellers across Mr Fogg's bars. Mangrove Global describes ultra-premium tequila as the part of the category still moving. **Verdict: the spritz is the best trend on this whole list for GP.** It is three ingredients, built in the glass, quick to serve and easy to train. It suits drinkers who are watching both their units and their wallet. If you run a pub or a restaurant bar and you only add one drink in 2027, make it a properly made spritz. My [classic Aperol spritz recipe](https://www.onthepassconsultancy.com/classic-christmas-aperol-spritz-recipe-festive-twist-for-2025/) is a good starting point. Alcohol-free cocktails need more thought. Price them as a drink, not a soft drink with a garnish. If a guest pays cocktail money, the glass, the ice and the build need to look like a cocktail. Otherwise you are part of that 34 per cent problem. ## What I'd leave alone in 2027 Not everything on these lists belongs on a UK menu. Mash-up dishes that cross two cuisines in one bowl make great social media. They also add new components, new stock lines and new training to a kitchen that is probably already short-staffed. Unless your whole concept is built on novelty, one well-made classic will outsell a clever hybrid. In my view, food sold on health benefits works better in a shop than on a menu. Menu claims about health effects also bring you closer to what you can and can't legally say about food. Leave that to the supplement aisle. Single-estate and named-origin ingredients are lovely. If your guests will pay for a named farm on the menu, use it. If they won't, you're paying a premium nobody sees. ## The honest takeaway The best food trends 2027 has to offer are not the flashiest ones. They are the trends that fit how your kitchen already works. Smaller plates priced honestly. Batch-friendly comfort food. A good spritz. An iced drink with a cold foam. A new flavour used as a finish, not a whole new concept. That's not a trend strategy. That's menu engineering with better timing. This is the first post in a short series on 2027\. The restaurant and pub menu post follows, then bars and cafés. [Read the rest of the 2027 trends series](https://www.onthepassconsultancy.com/tag/food-trends-2027/) as each one goes live. If you want to check whether your current menu is actually earning its keep before you add anything new, start with [is your menu actually making you money?](https://www.onthepassconsultancy.com/is-your-menu-actually-making-you-money/) and last year's [trends in the catering industry for 2026](https://www.onthepassconsultancy.com/trends-in-the-catering-industry-for-2026-in-the-uk/). *If you'd like to talk through which of these trends suit your café, bar or restaurant, book a free initial consultation with On The Pass Consultancy. No obligation, no hard sell, just an honest conversation. If there's nothing I can add, I'll tell you that too.*