Or watch the video as Andrew Freeman, Candace MacDonald, and Leith Steel sat down to review the hits and the misses from this year’s report, along with some personal takes and some predictions for the future.

Keeping up with food trends used to mean dining out. Today, it also means spending an alarming amount of time watching strangers eat in their cars, chop pickles, and enthusiastically explain why this recipe or that product is going to change your life.

At Carbonate, we keep one eye on restaurant menus and the other firmly glued to social media, looking for the ideas that have the potential to evolve from viral curiosity into menu innovation with staying power. Will “Girl Dinner” please go away? Will dot cakes be the next Dubai Chocolate? No, but…

Sandwiched between the Banana Bread Lattes and swirly cinnamon rolls, other viral food and drink trends are emerging and taking over our social media feeds.

Here are some of the top viral trends we’re seeing online so far this year.

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Today, however, that model is under pressure.

According to Silicon Valley Bank’s 2026 Direct-to-Consumer Wine Report, tasting room visitation continues to decline, while wine club membership is shrinking. Report author Rob McMillan argues that the model “was built for a different consumer generation” and cautions wineries against “doubling down on a diminishing opportunity.” Instead, he suggests wineries begin searching for a “second act”—new ways to reach consumers beyond the tasting room.

While off-premise events still represent a relatively small share of sales, they’re becoming an increasingly important customer acquisition strategy. The report found that high-performing wineries are taking their brands into the market through traveling tastings, community events, and intimate experiences designed to build relationships beyond the tasting room.

Rather than asking, “how do we get more people to the winery?” wineries may need to start asking, “how do we bring the winery to more people?”

Borrow Existing Audiences

1. Show your style with fashion or jewelry trunk shows

Partner with a luxury boutique or jewelry store to sponsor or host a trunk show. Have the store promote the event to their top clients, and bring the wine for people to enjoy while they shop.

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Across New York City, a new generation of frozen yogurt shops are attracting lines that stretch down the block, with wait times of over an hour. Brands like Myka, Mimi’s, Madison Fare, Go Greek, and Birdie’s are transforming froyo from a diet dessert into a lifestyle product, pairing tart Greek yogurt with globally inspired toppings, design-forward interiors, and premium positioning more reminiscent of a specialty coffee shop than a suburban strip mall dessert chain.

The current buzz may be centered in New York, but all signs point to frozen yogurt soon becoming a nationwide obsession.

For hospitality brands looking for the next platform for creativity, collaboration, and incremental revenue, frozen yogurt isn’t just a dessert trend—it’s a strategic opportunity.

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Six months into the year, some forecasts have accelerated faster than we anticipated, others have taken unexpected turns, and a few simply haven’t materialized—at least not yet!

Read on for the hits and the misses. And if interested in seeing the full report, we’re offering 50% off our 2026 Hospitality Trends Report. Use the code HALFWAYTHERE.

Purchase the Report

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Check out the live conversation with Andrew Freeman (Founder of af&co. and Co-Founder of Carbonate), Candace MacDonald (Founder & Managing Director, Carbonate), and Leith Steel (Head of Insights, Carbonate) where they sit down for a candid mid-year review of our 2026 Hospitality Trends Report. Join us as they revisit the trends that took off, unpack the ones that missed, and explore the emerging ideas still gaining momentum. Think of it as a live report card on the future of hospitality, food and beverage.

As a bonus, for a limited time we’re offering 50% off our full 2026 Hospitality Trends Report —featuring many more emerging trends and insights than we could cover in a single conversation. Use the code HALFWAYTHERE.

Purchase The Report

Here’s what Gen Z is increasingly NOT doing: opening a new tab to book something they discovered on social. Sending an email invitation to their next party. Watching their favorite show’s season-defining moment alone on their couch.

This month, we’re breaking down TikTok’s push to make travel content bookable, Gen Z’s favorite way to plan a party taking on event ticketing, and the return and evolution of appointment TV as restaurants, bars, theaters, and brands realize the best way to compete with staying home is giving people a better reason to show up together.

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A few years ago, mango sticky rice had its social media moment. Videos showcasing the classic Thai dessert—made with ripe mango and coconut-infused sweet sticky rice—introduced many people to the dish for the first time, generating widespread curiosity and conversation online.

Now, it’s back in the spotl…

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Every day brings a new contradiction.

Look at this incredible new tool!
Wait — the AI hallucinated again.
Agencies are dead.
Creative has never mattered more!

The truth, of course, lives somewhere in the middle.

There’s no question this is an exciting moment. Creative and marketing teams have access to more tools, more data, and more production capabilities than ever before. Timelines that once stretched for months can now happen in days, or even hours. Ideas move from spark to execution at remarkable speed.

At the same time, the pressure has intensified. Expectations are higher. Content volumes are exploding. “AI slop” is everywhere. And because so much mediocre work can now be generated instantly, the value of truly differentiated creative has actually increased.

It’s reminiscent of the early promises of email. Remember when email was supposed to make work dramatically more efficient and save everyone time? Now think about how many conversations you’ve had this week about overflowing inboxes and communication overload. Entire generations still reminisce about when coming back to the office with five voicemails felt stressful.

Technology rarely removes work entirely. More often, it changes how the work happens — and raises expectations in the process.

That’s especially true for marketers today.

AI-powered tools are now embedded across nearly every platform: Adobe, Canva, Sprout, Shopify, Google Workspace, social scheduling tools, presentation software, research platforms, and countless startups racing to automate creative execution. Tasks that once automatically required an agency partner can now often be handled internally.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

In many ways, this shift empowers internal teams. It allows marketers to move faster, test more ideas, and execute routine creative work without waiting on outside support. But it’s also happening in an environment where expectations continue to rise while budgets often do not. Marketing leaders are still being asked to do more — much more — with less.

So the question becomes less about whether to use AI and more about how to use it strategically.

Where does AI genuinely create efficiency?

Where does outside expertise still matter?

And perhaps most importantly: where does DIY actually create more risk than value?

We spoke with marketing leaders across hospitality, retail, food & beverage, and consumer brands to better understand how they’re navigating this new landscape. Here’s what we learned.

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The Corner Store is one of the toughest reservations in NYC — widely known for its celebrity clientele and near-impossible tables. But for a limited time last spring, anyone could order its signature French Dip through DoorDash. And now, if you’re lucky (or a Dashpass member!) you may be able to book a table on the platform too.

DoorDash, the largest delivery platform in the U.S., is rapidly expanding into restaurant reservations. The move began with its $1.2 billion acquisition of reservation and guest experience platform SevenRooms in June 2025. By October, DoorDash launched reservations in Miami, partnering with sceney hotspot Casadonna, before expanding to New York in November where they signed launch partner The Corner Store and numerous other high-profile establishments.

Las Vegas followed, then Chicago in March 2026. In May, the platform expanded to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston, signaling an aggressive rollout strategy.

The irony is hard to ignore: DoorDash, the company built on bringing food to everyone, is now becoming a gatekeeper to some of the country’s hardest-to-get reservations. But the equally valid counterpoint is that they are extending the ways consumers can experience these restaurants.

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Back in March, the Carbonate team presented our eighteenth annual Hospitality Trends Report at the New York Restaurant Show, and had the chance to sit in on a number of fascinating talks and panels. One discussion about “Elevating the Dining Experience” brought together the likes of Marcus Samuelsson (Marcus Samuelsson Group), Ayesha Nurdjaja (Shuka and Shukette), Eugene Remm (Catch Hospitality Group), and Simon Kim (Gracious Hospitality Management) who spoke about strategies for engaging today’s diners. One comment in particular caught our attention…

It came from Simon Kim, the Founder & CEO of Gracious Hospitality Management, whose concepts include the buzzy Michelin-starred Korean steakhouse COTE, with locations in New York, Miami, Singapore, and Vegas; Coqodaq, a glitzy temple of Champagne and Korean fried chicken (including their infamous caviar-topped nuggets); and the splashly new Bar Chimera, a Midtown Manhattan brasserie with a dedicated martini bar, whiskey bar, and wine bar.

Upon first glance, “value” isn’t a word one would associate with any of his concepts. They’re high-design, the menus are laden with luxury ingredients, and they’re perpetual celebrity hot-spots. Yet during this panel discussion, Kim commented that almost everyone orders COTE’s $82/pp “Butcher’s Feast” or “The Bucket List” at Coqodaq for $52/pp. Both are a prix-fixe meal that include a variety of small dishes, banchan, sides, the main event (a selection of grilled meats at COTE or two types of Korean fried chicken at Coqodaq), plus a paper cup of their house soft serve served with a nostalgic wooden paddle spoon.

The Psychology of the Prix-Fixe

What makes these prix-fixe formats so smart is that they solve a tension many restaurants are currently facing: how do you offer value in a market obsessed with affordability without eroding the sense of aspiration that made people want to dine with you in the first place?

This is a key question we’ve been exploring for the past year. We first noted the rising importance of value perception last November in our 2026 Hospitality Trends Report, and recently dove into the topic of designing value in our article “The New Value Equation.” The most successful restaurants are using curation over discounting; The Butcher’s Feast and The Bucket List are perfect examples of this.

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Influencer marketing has become one of the most effective ways for restaurants to build awareness and stay relevant online. It’s not just about chasing viral moments or paying someone to post a pretty plate of pasta. The right creator partnership can put your restaurant in front of thousands of potential guests in your community and drive traffic through your doors. When done correctly, influencer marketing feels less like advertising and more like a trusted recommendation from a friend.

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In-room record players had their first hotel moment roughly 20 years ago, when turntables became shorthand for an edgy, youth-focused boutique hotel at the height of the hipster era. Today, they’ve returned with a very different meaning: part nostalgia, pa…

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Wellness has moved from niche to necessity. For many travelers, it’s a lifestyle that shapes how and where they book. According to Hilton, “rest and recharge” is the #1 reason people plan to travel in 2026, surpassing both adventure and cultural ex…

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We live in an attention economy where every platform, app, brand, email, text, notification, streaming service and algorithm is competing for our focus. Google Trends data shows searches for “feel overwhelmed” and “feel stressed” are higher than ever this year, while “stress relief”, “burnout at work”, and even “burnout from life” are also at record levels in 2026.

In this hyper-stimulating environment, the ability to choose where we direct our attention — or to turn it off entirely — is becoming a luxury. People are now actively seeking it out. Where being “busy” was once a sign of importance, being unreachable is now the ultimate flex.

Hotels & Travel: Checking-In to Check-Out

The biggest buzzwords in travel right now are rest, recharge, and reset. The goal: disconnect (from devices) and connect (with ourselves and others.)

Research from Hilton’s 2026 Trends Report found that the number one motivation for travel this year is “to rest and recharge,” followed closely by improving mental health, and spending time in nature.

“Digital detox” is driving headlines as well with countless articles like:

• “11 Global Luxury Resorts For A True Digital Detox” (Forbes)

• “Is Being Offline the Latest Luxury? Here Are 11 Stunning Resorts Where You Can Digital Detox” (Vogue)

• “Want a Real Vacation? Leave Your Phone at Home.” (T: The New York Times Style Magazine).

Hotels and travel operators are rising to the occasion with experiences designed to meet this need.

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A few years ago, it felt like umami was everywhere. Loosely translating to “deliciousness” the term was first coined in Japan in 1908, and has long been recognized in Japanese culinary lexicon as the elusive “fifth taste.” Over the past decades, the term broke into mainstream Western food writing and consumer vocabulary as shorthand for savory, depth, richness, and craveability. It provided a new way to talk about flavor; a new lens to understand why a dish resonates.

Now we’re seeing a similar obsession take hold, but this time it’s not about taste. It’s about texture.

Chefs, of course, have always known this. Texture has long been one of the quiet levers of great cooking—something that adds intrigue and contrast to a dish. Pastry chefs, in particular, are adept at utilizing texture: crisp against creamy, airy against dense, molten against crunchy. The kind of interplay that turns something good into something memorable.

What’s changed is that consumers are now actively seeking multi-sensory eating experiences. They’re more open to textures that once felt unfamiliar, even polarizing. Chewy, gelatinous, bouncy, foamy—textures that used to live on the margins are moving into the mainstream. And they’re not just noticing texture on the plate; they’re looking for it everywhere, from beverages, to snacks, to fast casual formats.

If umami expanded how we think about flavor, texture is broadening how we experience food altogether—adding a new dimension that’s just as critical to what’s considered craveable, memorable, and increasingly, shareable today. In a feed-driven world, that stretch, crackle, and pull resonates.

From Flavor to Feeling

What’s driving excitement—and attention—today is how food feels. The contrast of crispy and creamy. The pull of melted cheese. The bounce of a chewy bite. The crack, the stretch, the crunch. It’s not just about what something tastes like; it’s about what happens when you bite into it. It’s visual, it’s visceral, and it gives people something to react to.

According to Purato’s 2026 Global Taste Tomorrow Report—built on insights from over 23,000 consumers in 56 countries—71% of consumers say texture drives enjoyment, while 67% are actively seeking “novelty through new formats or unexpected mouthfeels.” The report also cites “texture mash-ups” as the second-fastest-growing trend in the bakery category today.

This shift is showing up everywhere—from menus, to marketing language, to the way people engage with food online.

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A Food Festival That Was All The Rave

The most Gen Z–coded food festival just returned for its third year. It’s bigger than ever and it’s continuing to grow each time—offering a clear blueprint for what younger consumers actually want.

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