Unilever Food Solutions has released the fourth volume of its Future Menus trend series, outlining four key trends that reveal growing demand for condiments, ferments and native ingredients.
Unilever Food Solutions’ (UFS) Future Menus Vol. 4 outlines what it expects will shape eating through 2026-27 – culinary roots, street food couture, borderless cuisine and diner designed. The Australia and New Zealand edition localises a global research base of more than 1100 chefs across 20 countries, 88 in-depth interviews with chefs outside the business, search trend analysis, input from the company’s 250 in-house chefs and discussions with more than 200 Gen Z diners.
While the report is written for the hospitality industry, for manufacturers, it provides ingredient, cuisine and technique lists behind each trend, which offer a view of where flavour, format and processing demand is heading over the next 12 to 24 months.
UFS accounts for more than 20 per cent of Unilever’s Foods Business Group, the division being combined with McCormick & Company in a transaction valuing the business at $64.8 billion and scheduled to close by mid-2027.
McCormick has said the combined company will operate a Global Food Service division carrying roughly $4 billion in annual sales.
Culinary roots
UFS splits this trend into precision authenticity and third-culture cooking, a maturation on the longstanding consumer demand for provenance on what they are eating. The processing opportunities that come with the trend are comprehensive: koji curing, fermentation and pickling, culturing and preservation, brining, salt crusting, slow cooking and charcoal grilling.
The ingredient list runs to preserved lemon, date molasses, black tahini, freekeh, labneh, koji, calamansi and finger lime, with turmeric, black sesame, tamarind, tempeh and South American chillies (aji panca, aji rocoto and aji limo) singled out for closer attention.
On cuisines, Filipino, Levantine and regional Indian expressions including Bengali, Goan and Punjabi are marked as trending, with Burmese and Uyghur emerging. The report names Africa as the next area of discovery, and identifies Sri Lankan, Burmese and Turkish as the fastest growing on authenticity demand. Local sourcing is still a strong factor at play sits alongside this, for example Indigenous Australian and Māori foodways, wattleseed and kawakawa are cited as mainstreaming, echoing the supply chain consolidation now underway in the native ingredients category.
Street food couture
UFS says that in ANZ, elevated street food is being driven less by slow heritage technique and more by condiments and sauces that add premium cues to simple handheld formats.
Ingredients to watch are furikake, gochujang, chilli crisp, hot honey, yuzu koshō, black garlic, nam jim jaew, toum and pickled onions, ube, finger millet and drop peppers.
Finger millet is flagged for its functional profile and flavour because it’s naturally gluten free, high in fibre and a plant protein source. A sustainability sub-theme names finger millet, black turtle beans and orange tomatoes as high-impact swaps that fit existing street formats. Several of these have already crossed into retail, tracking with Kerry’s 2026 taste charts, which put comfort-plus-novelty at the centre of Australian flavour innovation.
Borderless cuisine
UFS describes borderless cuisine as the most established of the four trends and that ingredient substitution based on seasonal availability is a hallmark of local fusion creativity. Formulations built to tolerate substitution are an advantage in a market where supply is variable.
Southeast Asian flavours, particularly Filipino, Malaysian and Indonesian, are described as moving mainstream, with Latin American, Middle Eastern and native crossovers building influence. Chinese Peruvian (Chifa) is listed as emerging. That direction sits alongside third-culture cuisine as identified in Mintel’s APAC landscape work and the mainstreaming of Asian-inspired formats in the local market.
UFS reports that 70 per cent of Australian Gen Z find food recommendations on TikTok and 52 per cent have tried a venue based solely on positive social content, while around 30 per cent of Australians overall are eating out less. Nearly two-thirds of Gen Z globally treat eating out as a special occasion, which sets the expectation for what a product has to deliver when it is chosen.
Diner designed
UFS positions personalisation in ANZ as human-led rather than technology-led, meaning a base plus protein swaps, sauce choices, dressing options and toppings.
It means trending ingredients are small and additive, including pickled onions, kefalograviera, whipped feta, miso butter, finger lime, hot honey, chutney and gravy. Regionally, the report tracks limoncello, pistachio, chia seed, kombucha and lychee across the Middle East; hot honey, hickory smoke, peri peri and nduja across Europe; dill pickle, Biscoff, crispy onions and raw fish across North America; and beetroot, ube, maple and pistachio across South-East Asia.
Future Menus Vol. 4: the four trends at a glance
|
Trend |
Trending ingredients |
Techniques |
Manufacturing read |
|
Culinary roots |
Preserved lemon, date molasses, black tahini, freekeh, labneh, koji, wattleseed, finger lime, calamansi, sambal, pandan, aji amarillo |
Koji curing, fermentation and pickling, culturing and preservation, brining, salt crusting, slow cooking, charcoal and fire cooking, vessel cooking |
Fermentation and preservation capability; shelf-stable cultured bases; native ingredient supply security |
|
Street food couture |
Furikake, gochujang, chilli crisp, hot honey, yuzu koshō, black garlic, nam jim jaew, toum, pickled onions, sambal, pandan, aji amarillo |
Deep frying and crumbing, flat-top smash cooking, wok hei, skewer cooking, spit roasting, sauce finishing, smoking, live-fire grilling |
Condiments and sauces are the elevation vector; finger millet, black turtle beans and orange tomatoes flagged as sustainable inputs |
|
Borderless cuisine |
Harissa, calamansi, aji amarillo, wattleseed, toum, black tahini, cacioricotta, miso, tahini, banana ketchup, gochujang, hot honey, chilli crisp, yuzu koshō, sambal |
Open-fire and glaze cooking, wok hei, clay pot cooking, fermentation and culturing, pickling and preservation, saucing, brining and marination, compound buttering |
Substitution tolerance built into formulation; Southeast Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern pantry lines |
|
Diner designed |
Pickled onions, kefalograviera, whipped feta, miso butter, finger lime, hot honey, chutney, gravy |
Not technique led. Build-your-own formats, table-side finishing, sauce and side customisation, flexible dietary adaptation |
Component supply over finished dishes; larger stable-emulsion pack formats; shorter NPD cycles for rotating toppings |
