With a dirty chai in one hand and a mochi croissant in the other, we stride fully-fuelled into the café and bakery channels to find out what's hot and what's not in formats, flavours, ingredients and techniques across the vibrant and highly creative contemporary Café & Bakery landscape.
Here are a few takeouts from our 2025 menuwatching report:
- Shifting Spaces – Cafés and bakeries are diversifying from their traditional foodservice roles to cross into other hospitality spaces. Daytime bakeries double-up as evening cocktail bars, brunch spots moonlight as beat poetry pop-ups, and premises are taken over by third party caterers in a sort-of restaurant rental space agreement. Financially motivated in part (as business rentals rocket operators need to maximise productivity), this is also about standing out from the crowd and creating a 'third space' for local communities; while, during 'normal' operating hours, the goods on offer also shift – as bakeries become pizza joints, gelaterias and artisanal coffee roasters.
- Swavoury As Standard – The sweet-savoury flavour profile is now a standard component of the bakery and café repertoire, emboldened by the rise of all-day eating culture. Breakfast items, in particular, are made for anytime enjoyment, blending buttery croissant doughs with smoked meats, vegetables, eggs and sweet-tinged sauces and glazes. This carries over to porridges and yoghurt bowls, QSR-inspired "Mcsandwich" dupes and unashamedly indulgent dessert-aligned pastries, all of which take the mantra of "salt, fat , acid, heat", add a deft dose of sugar… and run with it.
- Playing To The Senses – Highly emotive, aesthetically pleasing ingredients and techniques have become de rigueur within the café and bakery spaces. Candy floss, foams, popping candy and mochi are go-to ingredients for creating textural engagement, found in (and on) everything from coffees to croissants, French toast to soft serve, and often as constituent parts of contrasting layers that bring texture and visual appeal together in one super-sensory package. With nods to nostalgia and delivering a certain child-like glee, these formats blend precision craft with pure, unadulterated fun to create edible escapism from the daily grind.
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