From pickle everything to rat cakes, expect these food trends in 2025

Article content

Brace yourself for big flavours this year. According to Pinterest Predicts 2025, pickle fries, pickle dip, pickle margaritas, pickle de gallo and many more creative ways with pickles, homemade soda and silly confections — rat cake, anyone? — will be on the menu in 2025.

The social media platform analyzes billions of searches to identify future trends. In the new report, authenticity and boldness reign. According to Sydney Stanback, senior manager of brand research at Pinterest, their projections reflect the underlying consumer sentiment heading into 2025.

Article content

“People have just become more daring and maximalist. That’s definitely coming through in our food trends,” says Stanback, who has worked on Pinterest Predicts every year since it launched in 2020 (with an 80 per cent accuracy rate on predictions). “These are some of the most maximalist trends I’ve seen. There always were a handful in the report, but now it’s the vast majority.”

Gen Z’s influence also shines in the report, driving 65 per cent of 2025’s trends. “That speaks to how this audience, which happens to be Pinterest’s fastest-growing audience, is leaving a footprint on trends — not just on Pinterest, but out in the world.”

Stanback believes Gen Z’s hunger for maximalism stems from the pandemic. They experienced many pivotal life moments virtually, from high school graduation to attending university. Now that they’re no longer physically isolated, they want to express themselves in bold new ways. She says it may be a bit of escapism, but they’re expressing a desire to be their most authentic selves and exploring how to do that on the platform.

Because people use Pinterest to plan their “next big thing,” they have unique insight into what’s coming, highlights Stanback. “We have a powerful audience use case specific to our platform. You can’t really curate your life like you can, elsewhere on the internet.”

Article content

Article content

Of the 20 emerging trends for 2025 across categories, including travel, home and fashion, these three specifically relate to food and beverage: Chaos Cakes, Pickle Fix and Rebel Floats.

Chaos Cakes

Forget “Pinterest-perfect” piping and traditional cake decor. Chaos Cakes are anything but. Elegant, opulent cakes do show up in this year’s report, especially in the Rococo Revival celebration trend. “But this is about baking a cake however you want to bake that cake. If you want to bake a rat cake — I don’t know what would entice you to do that — but if you want to do that, you can do that. If you want to make a silly cake for your friends, you can do that,” says Stanback.

Wacky and weird confections are especially compelling for boomers and Gen X. Among the trending searches, “rat cake” surged by 170 per cent, “silly cake” increased by 115 per cent, and “funny cakes for friends” grew by 45 per cent.

“There’s a lot of silliness in this report. There’s a lot of desire for joy and laughter. If someone ever presented me with a rat cake or any of the cakes listed in this trend, I would laugh. It would bring me happiness. Finding those moments of joy through expression, through celebration, through food — this is just an expression of that.”

Article content

Pickle Fix

Stanback thinks of Pickle Fix as solely a food and beverage trend, but it has seeped into other areas of life. In fashion, she’s seen it expressed in pickle sweatshirts, which wasn’t surprising because of the cross-category way people use Pinterest.

“They want to build out an aesthetic that aligns with their personality, and often that involves food in probably very unexpected ways.”

The report forecasts that Generation X and millennials will go all in on tangy pickled foods, cocktails and even cakes in 2025. Trending search terms include pickle margarita (+100 per cent), pickle fries (+ 50 per cent), pickle de gallo (+65 per cent), pickle cake (+45 per cent) and fried pickle dip (+80 per cent).

Rebel Floats

The Rebel Floats trend quenches a growing thirst for creative carbonated alcohol alternatives. Stanback says Gen Z and millennials are exploring that creativity at the soda fountain, drawn to the “cream soda aesthetic” (+105 per cent) and “root beer aesthetic” (+40 per cent) and searching for “fruit soda” (+185 per cent), “homemade soda” (+40 per cent) and “soda drinks recipes” (+90 per cent).

Article content

“Anything can be an aesthetic if you think hard enough about it on Pinterest,” says Stanback, laughing. “Gen Z really loves nostalgia and reinterpreting eras in time — modernizing them in a way that’s relevant for their generation.”

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our cookbook and recipe newsletter, Cook This, here.

Article content