What are the Coffee Trends that will concern us in 2024?
A year... full of coffee!
The end and beginning of each year is traditionally the best time for lists of all kinds. Lists of reviews, expectations, lists of best and worst, lists of predictions and estimates, lists upon lists. Faithful to tradition, this year we publish a... list summarizing the five main trends from the coffee sector that seem to shape the year that has just begun!
What are the Coffee Trends that will concern us in 2024?
Specialty Coffees will experience a boom: If until now, specialty coffees concerned a limited audience, in the last few years their breakthrough has begun and is visible to a wider mass of consumers. The increase in domestic coffee consumption during the coronavirus lockdowns has created a more informed and more demanding public that treats coffee as a haute cuisine product rather than a simple daily habit. Sophisticated origins such as Cuba, Congo and Myanmar, classic delicatessen coffees such as Jamaica Blue Mountain and Panama Gesha, sophisticated processing techniques such as Red Honey or anaerobic fermentation are some of the topics that will concern coffee lovers for in 2024.
Flavored coffees are back: The third wave of coffee and the omnipotence of espresso has pushed aside one of the "guilty" pleasures of past decades, flavored coffees. Caramel, Hazelnut, Vanilla, Chocolate, are coffees with a 90ies air and a sweet nostalgia that seem to be coming back, at least in the younger ages. Of course, today the range is greater, the methods of adding aromas are much better than in the past and the overall result can excite even those who like plain, dark roast espresso.
The advance of AI touches the coffee: If there is one concept that has occupied us in the past year, it is without a doubt Artificial Intelligence. Having a wide range of applications throughout human life, it is not long before it touches the coffee industry as well – positively and negatively. Many specialties will be affected, jobs will be lost, but at the same time coffee cultivation will become more efficient and more environmentally friendly. As far as our daily life is concerned, the time is near when we will be able to order drinks or blends cut and sewn to our tastes, through AI applications - maybe even within the year that begins.
Capsules are gaining more and more ground: On the opposite side of the search for rare specialty coffees, there is a trend that wants coffee capsules to conquer an ever greater share of the market, especially in terms of home consumption. The frenzied pace of life in the post-covid era, the increase in working from home and the expiration of patents have resulted in the market being flooded with compatible capsules for each machine, but also with new "closed" systems, forming a condition that does not seems to change easily.
Experimentation is the new normal: Every year experimental, innovative coffee products are launched, some of which create fads and trends and some of which quietly disappear, but the data shows that experimentation will be a dominant trend for the coming year. Bottled coffees, strange processing, plant-based substitutes, hand-made drinks, new flavors and combinations will come from everywhere, indicative of a "foul" era that wants to try everything before carving out its next norm.
Coffee from a capsule, anaerobically fermented coffee from a plantation in Nicaragua, Clear Coffee from an American start-up or a tailor made blend made from an app? The only thing that is certain is that 2024 will be a year with lots and lots of coffee!
