Want to know which flavors are trendy right now? We have your flavor and food trends forecast for 2024 based on what culinary thought leaders, including chefs, flavor experts, and others predict will be on trend in 2024. These forecasts come out in late 2023 and early 2024. We’ve read lots of forecasts and identified the common themes that are relevant for froyo.
Focus on Sour Flavors
Sour flavors and pickled and fermented foods were mentioned in several flavor forecasts. The predicted popularity of sour flavors and fermented foods bodes well for frozen yogurt, but remember that consumers are looking for flavors that are interesting, layered, and complex rather than straight-up sour.
McCormick calls this trend Sour Power and cites pickled and fermented foods, citrus, vinegar, and other sour flavors, including McCormick’s flavor of the year, tamarind. Tamarind, a tropical fruit that’s indigenous to Africa but associated with Indian cuisine, is sweet and sour, with a flavor that’s been described as a combination of lemon, dates, and apricot. YaYa Best Tex Mex Yogurt, a froyo shop in Dallas, Texas that closed in 2020, created a tart-based tamarind froyo years ago. We’ve also seen spicy tamarind candy straws at some Yogurtland and Tutti Frutti locations. Mangonadas, which can be made with or without froyo, and Dole Whip floats are often served with chamoy and tamarind straws. Chamoy, a Mexican condiment, is a spicy, sweet, sour, salty sauce that can be made with tamarind.
McCormick also provides recipes that capture the trend, including Brazilian lime sherbet, tamarind lemon pepper lemonade, and passion fruit posset with guava jelly. We’ve seen lime, lemonade, passion fruit, and guava frozen yogurt flavors.
The National Restaurant Association’s What’s Hot 2024 report is based on the opinions of 1,500 culinary professionals. The 2024 report names several ingredients as on trend, including hibiscus, calamansi, and Tajin.
Fruit flavors have been the most popular type of froyo flavor introduced these past few years. They accounted for 50% of the new froyo flavors that we found in 2023. Sour fruits like kumquat, sour cherries, sour (Seville) oranges, grapefruit, calamansi, yuzu, and of course tamarind, would work well as froyo flavors. Orange marmalade creamsicle, tamarind iced tea, and tamarind peach or mango lassi froyo would capture several of this year’s flavor trends.
Childhood Comfort Foods with a Twist
Monin, a leading flavor house, has a team of internal flavor experts and consumer insights specialists. The team calls elevated childhood comfort food the Timeless Temptations trend. According to Mintel, 72% of consumers enjoy things that remind them of their childhood. These items should be reinterpreted for modern, more sophisticated palates. Monin’s Timeless Temptations recipes include cereal milk ice cream, cinnamon rolled iced coffee, and birthday cupcake shake.
Flavor house T. Hasegawa predicts a Return to Comfort trend, with consumers seeking comfort foods for their sense of nostalgia and familiarity.
National Restaurant Association’s What’s Hot 2024 report names classic comfort foods with unique flavors and ingredients from other regions as a top trend. While they mostly talk about comforting soups and stews, some desserts can clearly fall in the comfort food category. For example, comfort food desserts and sweets include apple pie, banana splits, ice cream sundaes, S’mores, jello, Hostess cupcakes, mini donuts, sugar cookies, brownies, Pop Tarts, rice krispie treats, churros, confetti cake, cinnamon rolls, rocky road, pudding pops, Pixy Stix, Laffy Taffy, etc. The trick is to add an appealing but not too crazy twist, like churros stuffed with dulce de leche, matcha mini donuts, or jello cookies. For example, Menchie’s just introduced a new vegan rocky road flavor in January 2024.
Interesting Regional/Global Flavor Combinations
McCormick calls this trend Thoughtfully Borrowed, describing the trend as one that emphasizes regional cuisine and well-thought-out cultural combinations. Their Thoughtfully Borrowed recipes include churros with pineapple gochujang sauce, hojicha polvorones, and buko horchata with mango-melon cold foam.
For T. Hasegawa, the “Glocal Adventures” trend fuses global and local flavors, while Monin calls this trend a Flavor Journey. Monin predicts that the bold, authentic flavors of Southeast Asia and Central America will be popular. These flavors include matcha, Thai tea, miso, Mexcal, tepache, and falernum. Think smoky, spicy, and tangy flavors.
Interestingly, T. Hasegawa named ube, the purple yam from the Philippines, as the flavor of the year. They note that ube is already popular with foodies and culinary influencers on social media, due to its striking purple color. Pinkberry’s first flavor of 2024 is Ube Honey, a non-tart frozen yogurt that takes a regional flavor and twists it by adding honey.
Small Luxuries
Whole Foods Trends Council, which is made up of WF buyers, foragers, and culinary experts, predicts that consumers will seek “Little Luxuries“. This will involve smaller packages of luxurious ingredients. The smaller packages help to keep the items affordable. We’d be happy to see smaller portions of froyo from counter-serve shops and small amounts of luxurious toppings like honeycomb, caviar, edible gold leaf, chocolate truffles, and macarons.
Viral Food Trends
National Restaurant Association’s What’s Hot 2024 report predicts that social media trends will impact menus (e.g., the Barbie movie was accompanied by pink food craze). Monin’s team recognized the continued importance of social media on food trends, calling the trend Under the Influenc(er). With 72% of consumers wanting to try dishes, foods, and flavors they’ve seen online, it’s clear that social media trends are shaping what people want to eat. And they want to share what they’ve had, so think bright colors and buzzworthy mashups.
We’ve already seen TikTok’s impact on froyo. Menchie’s introduced Whipped Lemonade froyo flavor last year, inspired by the viral TikTok trend. Also, Enlightened just launched frozen yogurt bark. Frozen yogurt bark recipes have gone viral on TikTok and Instagram in 2022 and 2023.
Some recent viral food trends include girl dinners, fruit roll up ice cream, lemon Sprite tea, and Brazilian lemonade.
Outer Space
For something different, consider Torani’s 2024 flavor of the year, Puremade Galaxy Syrup. Based on years of market research and data analysis, the new flavor was inspired by consumers’ desire for escapism and all things outer space. The unique flavor was based on a study on the molecular composition of dust clouds in space which “uncovered a compound amidst the molecular cloud Sagittarius B2 that also exists on earth and is known for giving raspberries their distinct taste with an aroma reminiscent of rum, according to Torani. The syrup incorporates both flavors.” It’s Torani’s first fantasy flavor.
We look forward to seeing all the new froyo flavors and toppings that come out this year!
