FoodNavigator has announced the winners of its annual Battle of the Trends competition for 2025. The trade publication runs the bracket-style contest each year to rank which food and beverage trends gained the most traction with industry readers.

The winners list itself is the story's core data, and the full results sit behind FoodNavigator's original announcement. Readers wanting the specific winning trends — and the voting margins that separated them — will find them there.

What is 'Battle of the Trends'?

It is FoodNavigator's yearly reader-voted tournament in which competing food and beverage trends are matched head-to-head until a winner emerges. The format rewards momentum: trends that dominate early rounds tend to be those already pulling sourcing dollars and menu slots.

For operators, the value of such a ranking is directional rather than prescriptive. A trend that wins a reader poll has, at minimum, captured industry attention; whether it translates into procurement shifts, menu engineering decisions or pricing power is a separate question the contest does not answer.

The 2025 edition closed with winners named across the bracket. FoodNavigator has not yet published follow-up analysis of what the results imply for next year's product development cycles, though its editors typically revisit the winning trends in subsequent coverage.

Watch the winning categories for signals on where ingredient sourcing and formulation budgets may move in 2026.