Trends vs. Fads: How to Build a Beverage Menu That Lasts

During the pandemic, Dalgona coffee had a brief craze, and Oregon Fruit did a photoshoot of our Dragon Fruit Mango Pourable Fruit styled to look like the whipped coffee everyone was making at home. The photo was eye-catching, but can you imagine actually drinking a dragon fruit mango Dalgona coffee? Woof.

That's a fad for you. It looks great for a few weeks, then it's gone. Datassential uses the Dalgona moment as an example of a fad that pointed somewhere real: cold foam, and a lasting interest in beverage texture.

Most of my week is spent with chefs, culinary directors, beverage directors, and supply chain managers at national chains. Almost every conversation comes back to two things: getting guests through the door, and protecting margin. Fads rarely help with either, but trends usually do. 

Not every fad is wasted. Some teach the industry something.

Dragon fruit taught us how much color matters. Fifteen years ago, coffee menus were brown and tan. Now they're pink, blue, and orange. That shift has spilled over to the food side too. I don't think ube would be having a moment if dragon fruit hadn't gone first.

Sriracha did the same thing for heat. It opened the door for gochujang and chili crisp.

Sometimes a fad even becomes a trend. I thought pumpkin spice would last a couple of seasons. Twenty-some years later, it's basically a national treasure. Still, I'd rather let something prove itself before it goes on a menu board. 

The first problem is that you won't stand out. You're doing what everyone else is doing. Sometimes you think you're using an ingredient that's everywhere, but you end up explaining to guests what you're serving them, which is a bad place to be.

The second problem is time. Some chains plan LTOs 12 to 18 months out. Others are working three to four months ahead. A brief for a custom product often comes in with a six-month launch date. That's six months to develop the product, order ingredients and labels, make it, ship it, and move it through the supply chain. That's just our side. The chain still has its own planning to do; photography, menu boards, a marketing campaign, employee training, etc..

Off-the-shelf products shorten that, but it's still three to four months if nothing goes wrong. If you're chasing a summer fad, you may miss summer.

The third problem is inventory. I have a customer right now sitting on extra cases from an LTO that didn't sell the way anyone expected. The options aren't great:

• Extend the LTO nationally to sell through.
• Extend it in certain markets until it runs out.
• Plan a second LTO later to clean up what's left.

Nobody feels good about it. Not the operator, not the vendor, and not the distributor holding product longer than anyone planned.

The smarter play is to follow macrotrends, not microtrends. Pejibaye is a tropical fruit also called palm peach. It's interesting. It's also a lot of guest education. Tropical flavors, on the other hand, are a macrotrend. Passion fruit lives inside it, and it has grown steadily because Millennials and Gen Z both love tropical flavors. At one cash-and-carry chain we sell into, passion fruit is our second-highest seller behind strawberry, even though it costs more. Its bold tartness and bright yellow color are also something syrups do a poor job of copying.

Function is the loudest signal in beverage right now. Tastewise says calm and clean energy are leading it, followed by sleep aids or stress reducers. Uppers and downers. Very American.

Some of it is a trend. Caffeine is a functional ingredient, and energy drinks aren't going anywhere. A lot of the rest looks like a fad to me. Protein is already turning into fiber. Some days it feels like we're putting multivitamins in drinks. Why not just take the multivitamin?

There's a risk side too. Most drinks don't say how much of an added ingredient they contain, and some of these ingredients aren't a good fit for everyone, depending on their health or the medications they take. That's a conversation for your legal and regulatory team before it's a conversation for marketing.

Real fruit skips all of that. I don't have to explain why blueberries are good for you. A guest orders a sparkling water with real blueberries in it and already feels like they made a slightly better choice. 

The first thing I ask a brand team is what they want the drink to do. Going viral and driving repeat traffic are different jobs. A unicorn drink gets photographed once. A layered matcha gets reordered.

If a restaurant can't make something consistently, it shouldn't be on the menu. Consistency is what builds a chain's reputation. The drink has to taste the same in every store, in March and in October.

Labor makes that hard. Chain beverage stations aren't staffed by trained chefs. They're staffed by teenagers trying to make a few bucks. When I build a drink, I think about what I was like at 16. And then I simplify it more. At the end of the day, it has to taste good or nobody is going to walk through that door to buy it.

It's also why fresh fruit in a chain drink makes me nervous. Fresh fruit is wonderful, but it's never consistent from store to store or season to season.

Then there's storage. Freezer space is the number one concern I hear about. Every inch is spoken for. A growing number of chains also run freezer-free kitchens on purpose. For them, shelf stable is the only option. One of the largest QSR chains in the country we were working with was worried enough about the extra step of thawing a frozen mango product that it could have killed the project. A shelf-stable version took that off the table. Frozen products also cost more to store and ship, and distributors pass that cost along. 

The drinks that stick around tend to flex. Lemonade, iced tea, sparkling water, and energy drinks keep the same base and swap the fruit for the season or the LTO. The base is the trend. The fruit on top is where you get to play.

Lemonade is the obvious example. It's delicious, easy, inexpensive, and it's been on American menus forever. Any operator using lemonade only as lemonade is leaving money on the table. One fruit puree can run as a seasonal lemonade, a seasonal Arnold Palmer, and a seasonal sparkling lemonade. Three LTOs from one sku.

Refreshers are another. People ask me all the time what a refresher actually is. It's a cold, non-alcoholic drink with fruit in it. Fruited lemonades, iced teas, aguas frescas, sparkling drinks, and energy drinks can all count. Starbucks created the category to bring in afternoon guests who wanted a lift without a full cup of coffee. The name does a lot of the work. It's exactly what someone wants at 2pm.

That occasion is real. The National Restaurant Association's 2026 Beverage Trends report found that 37% of consumers buy a drink on its own at least weekly, including half of Gen Z adults and 47% of Millennials, and the afternoon is the most popular time to do it. Refreshers didn't take over overnight. They spread one concept at a time because they met a need guests already had. That's what a trend looks like. Today, they're one of the fastest-growing beverage trends out there because of the proven consumer demand.

The version that lasts always comes back to the ingredient. Guests judge value by quality more than quantity now. If they're going to spend the money, they want it to be on something good. 

My favorite thing to do on a sales call is a side-by-side tasting against whatever a customer is using now. I have them taste ours first. They barely react. "Yep, that's peach." Then they taste theirs. They make a face every time, then go back to ours to clear their palate.

Next to real fruit, artificial flavor is easy to spot. Dark fruits are the worst. Berry and cherry syrups tend to taste like cough syrup. Nobody wants to put that in their own mouth. So why serve it to guests?

There’s a few calls I'd make today. Texture in drinks is here to stay, and I expect a lot more development in what we add to a cup to make it interesting to drink. Prebiotic soda, I'm on the fence. It tastes pretty good. But diet fads are like buses. Another one comes along every fifteen minutes.

Texture passes my speed test. It didn't show up overnight. Dalgona pointed at it. Cold foam carried it. Then layered matcha, fruit pieces you can pull up a straw, toppers on slushies. Each one picked it up from the last. That's a trend building.

Prebiotic soda has the opposite problem. Its staying power is tied to a health claim, and health claims don't last. The flavor might outlast the fiber.

So here's where I'd spend a quarter. Hold your beverage menu up against the macrotrends that keep proving themselves: tropical flavors, color, texture, and real ingredients. Then look at whatever is chasing the microtrend of the month, and decide if it's earning its spot on the menu board.

While you're at it, shop your ingredients the way you shop your car insurance. Don't buy on price alone. A cheap syrup is no deal if nobody orders the drink twice. And don't let analysis paralysis eat the quarter. Waffling doesn't put dollars in anyone's pocket.

Last thing: ask what's already in your pantry. A condiment, a spice, an herb. Add it to a cup of fruited lemonade or tea and you have a signature drink nobody else has. No fad required. 

If you want a second opinion on your beverage program, connect with a Fruit Expert and we'll send a sample kit. Bring your current syrup. I'll bring the fruit.