Customisation and rapid product development are changing the face of coffee shop menus around the world. Tobias Pearce uncovers the trends that are delivering a quantum leap in beverage innovation
What makes a great coffee shop experience? For many, it’s the skill of the barista. Some insist on a choice of origins. For others, it’s the deftly poured latte art.
In 2026, many of the colourful and functional beverages served in coffee shops skip the espresso machine entirely. Instead, powders, syrups, pre-prepared concentrates and ice deliver a new universe of flavours, textures and promoted health benefits.
It’s an unexpected turn for coffee market development. The specialty movement of the 2000s and 2010s shunned syrups and flavour additions as an inauthentic distraction. It prized coffee at its most elemental and luxuriated in extensive narratives around origin, terroir, varieties and agronomy.
For over a decade, these principles seemed like the direction of travel for beverage innovation.
But many coffee consumers, particularly Gen Z, now view this approach as passé, and even austere. The meteoric rise of matcha, functional and flavoured beverages in coffee shops shows many of the coffee industry’s long-held assumptions about craft and premium drinks no longer hold water.
“What we are seeing now is likely only the beginning”
– Tugdual de Lambilly, Innovation Director EMEA at MONIN Europe
In this new era of beverage innovation, experimentation is the name of the game. For a growing number of coffee operators, that means unshackling coffee from established norms and broadening menus with entirely new beverage categories.
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