The thing to know about Gen Z’s beverage and snack preferences… is that they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want sweet familiar flavors, but without much sugar and with healthier ingredients overall. Oh, and they love it to look very colorful and with other standout visual characteristics.
Major brands are trying to tap into Gen Z’s preferences by offering a variety of sweet, though not sugary drinks and snacks that also offer either nutrition benefits, energy, or some experiential excitement.
Bold and Boring?
While Gen Z wants novel-looking drinks they also tend toward familiar but strong flavors. According to Restaurant Dive:
Although Gen Z is keen on visual novelty — the kind that invites lots of Instagram posts — these consumers are mostly interested in flavors they already know, according to Robert Byrne, principal at Technomic.
“Just 12% of Gen Z say that they actively seek out new flavors,” Byrne said. “Many of them are only recently coming into adulthood and out of childhood; their preferences skew sweet and spicy.”…
“Bold and boring is a way to look at it,” Byrne said. “Fruity and sweet flavor preferences find a natural home on a beverage menu, specifically.”
Coffee? OK But Not Hot and Not in the Afternoon
Gen Z appears to prefer cold-brewed or flavored coffees as opposed to traditional hot coffee. They would rather get their caffeine from sweeter energy drinks based on soda water or lemonade for instance. They want a cold sweeter drink in the afternoon in particular. Fruity flavors and things like frappuccinos.
At the recent 2024 National Restaurant Association Show,
The combination of bold and boring flavors was in evidence at the Coca-Cola booth and elsewhere on the showfloor, like the Frappes at Ghirardelli’s booth, and off the show floor at CosMc’s. McDonald’s, looking to balance the margins beverages traditionally offer against the operational complexity of customized drinks, is testing a whole host of boldly boring beverages a forty-minute drive from downtown Chicago, including its highly caffeinated Churro Cold Brew Frappe, one of the best-selling items at CosMc’s. 1.
Healthy-ish
While having a strong desire for sweet and decadent, they also want to feel as though there is some health-redeeming quality to what they are consuming. It may be something like zero-calories, or some added “natural” fruit. What’s not in a beverage can be equally important. For the most part, Gen Z isn’t as interested in alcohol, so non-alcoholic or low-alcohol beverages find more enthusiasm.
Snacks and Eating Are All About the Car and Convenience
If you know a Gen Z’er you know that they like to spend a lot of time sitting in their car. Snack options that are convenient are very popular. That’s part of Subway’s new “Sidekicks and Dippers” snacking menu.
Subway’s Sidekicks menu, which includes a Footlong Cookie, Auntie Anne’s, Footlong Pretzel, and Cinnabon Footlong Churro, has been particularly successful for the chain. During the first two weeks of the launch, Subway sold over 3.5 million Sidekick items. Its Footlong Cookie was so popular that the company had to take it off its app and third-party sites due to supply issues. The chain brought it back on the menu in May across all channels and restaurants. Between January and May, it sold 5 million Footlong Cookies. 2.
They recently introduced three-footlong “dippers” to the menu. Dippers are flatbreads rolled with either pepperoni & cheese, chicken & cheese, or double cheese. Subway has created 11 sauces to dip them in and they have proven to be very popular.
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