If you want to host a modern, successful event in 2023, food and beverage trends need to be top of mind.
The key to any memorable event experience is a great menu — from classic dishes with a modern twist to vegan options.
Eventbrite has worked with professional event planners for over a decade, and has the insight to share how food and beverage trends are changing right now.
Here, we’ll explore the latest trends in food and beverage for event planners in 2024 (yes, they’ve evolved quite a bit from food and beverage trends in 2023!), and show you how professional organizers can incorporate these trends into their events.
Let’s take a look.
1. Food halls are on the rise
A food hall is a great way to offer guests at your event the chance to experience different cuisines and flavors without having to move around the venue. This trend is growing in popularity, driven by a desire for convenience and variety. With food halls, guests can choose from multiple vendors offering a variety of delicious dishes.
Restaurant consulting firm Baum and Whiteman has predicted that 2023 will see the food hall trend move in an interesting new direction: food halls will grow into centers for increasingly varied social events for consumers. There will be more varied entertainment options at food halls, as well as organized, food hall-centric events.
One example of this trend is Mercadito Sunday at Alton Food Hall. Alton Food Hall offers Miami Beach residents delicious, varied food options every day of the week. But on Sundays, visitors can also buy crafts from local artisans while they grab a bite.
Events like the Mercadito Sunday give guests the opportunity to explore their local scene and discover new artists, products, and foods.
Food halls are becoming a vibrant part of many communities. More than just a place to grab lunch, they can be hubs for social gathering and cultural exploration.
Event organizer tip: To take advantage of the food hall format, consider organizing a series of special events. These could be classes, cooking demonstrations, live performances, tastings, art displays — anything that would provide visitors with an interesting experience and encourage them to come back again and again. Consider partnering with local businesses or artists to make your events even more memorable.
2. Mushrooms
Mushrooms have been getting more popular for a while, but now less common mushroom varieties are on the rise. They’re favored by many as a healthy meat alternative, and they’re even gaining media attention as prominent ingredients in fine dining.
The Mushroom Council noted a dozen instances of prominent food publications highlighting the increasing popularity of mushrooms in 2023. Many of them, such as Datassential, called out less common varieties of mushrooms that will grow in popularity, such as lion’s mane. Morton Williams Supermarkets even noted that oyster mushrooms have already doubled in popularity.
Why are mushrooms so popular? From meat alternative to mushroom coffee — their unique savory flavor profile renders them extremely versatile and makes them a perfect culinary choice for a wide range of dishes. Mushrooms are also a hot topic due to their alleged health benefits as adaptogens and their rejuvenating antioxidant content. While mushrooms aren’t technically a plant-based food — they’re fungi — they’re similarly appealing to vegetarians.
All this buzz has inspired exciting events built around mushrooms. The International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) even hosted a Food Trends talk to discuss the growing trend of cooking with mushrooms.
Event organizer tip: Consider hosting a mushroom foraging excursion before you show your attendees how to cook them up. Just make sure everyone is trained and led by a mushroom expert to avoid picking up anything that isn’t edible.
3. Part-time vegetarianism
Vegetarianism has been growing quite a bit in recent years, but other, related diets are becoming increasingly popular as well. The proportion of Americans who are vegetarians and vegans has quintupled in the last thirty years. But they aren’t the only growing dietary demographic.
A few of the increasingly popular vegetarian diets are:
- Reducetarians: Where vegetarians try to stick to a strictly non-meat diet, reducetarians take a looser approach, reducing the amount of meat and dairy products they eat, but not fully eliminating these foods from their diets.
- Pescatarians: Coming from the Greek word for fish, pescatarians will eat fish and seafood but not land animals. Many are technically ovo-pescetarian, since they consume eggs as well.
- Flexitarians: While a reducetarian makes a conscious effort to reduce animal products, a flexitarian is more like a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat and fish.
Many people don’t know how to prepare tasty, healthy vegetarian food. That’s why a popular genre for vegetarian-themed events is how to prepare food without animal products. For that reason, Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street offered a workshop on how to use spices with vegetarian food.
Event organizer tip: In summer 2023, 69% of attendees will be looking for events that offer meaningful and transformative experiences. Partial vegetarianism is a great way to offer omnivores a chance to make a substantive change in their lives that they might fall in love with. Just be sure to make your events accessible to everyone.
4. Fully-automated restaurants
As it turns out, automation isn’t just for art design and chatting. This exciting new technology is also helping bring food to people in new and exciting ways. The popular salad chain Sweetgreen is launching two fully-automated restaurants, and more restaurants could soon follow suit.
Interestingly, Eventbrite recently found that almost a third of event organizers and attendees are introverts, so automated restaurants could help you target this audience. Not all introverts are shy, of course, but by minimizing social interaction with strangers (like staff), an event at an automated restaurant could both take advantage of a cutting-edge trend and cater to introverted attendees.
Some event organizers are already hopping on the trend, with technology companies like Computools hosting a learning session on hospitality automation. Events like these are the first step in understanding the advantages of restaurant automation. The next step could be hosting an event in an automated restaurant yourself!
Event organizer tip: If you don’t have any fully-automated restaurant locations nearby, consider demonstrating a piece of automation technology for your attendees. A demonstration of machines like White Castle’s burger-flipping robot would add a unique feature to your event.
5. Food is heating up
Spicy food is widely popular in the US. 74% of Americans use hot sauce, according to a survey by Instacart. The taste of spicy food can range from mild to burning your tongue off — a spectrum of culinary experiences that’s becoming increasingly more popular among all kinds of diners. But beyond that, spicy food is having a broader cultural moment in 2023 in particular.
Salty, spicy snacks are growing rapidly in popularity, with sales increasing 12% over four years. At the same time, events built around enjoying spicy food are growing as well. That means people are getting more creative about incorporating hot spices into different events.
Some spicy-themed events are intuitive. Chefs like Fraser Fitzgerald teach classes on how to make your own hot sauce. These events often come with a hot sauce tasting session for people who want to enjoy, not just make, the burn.
But others get even more creative. Hot Pepper Hamlet, hosted by Museum of Old Newbury, is a unique take on one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, with a twist: actors eat a spicy pepper before beginning their performances. Events like Hot Pepper Hamlet highlight the wide range of creativity possible with the rising trend of spicy food.
Event organizer tip: If you create an event that revolves around spicy food, don’t assume that everyone is ready for the same amount of spice. Even among pepper aficionados, tolerance levels vary widely. That means you need to be ready to cater to a wide range of tastes.
6. Private dining clubs
Private dining clubs are becoming increasingly popular for those looking for a unique dining experience. The prices of these clubs can vary widely. But whether it’s a $250,000 membership fee in London or a mere $165 fee in Portland, they make the same promise: exclusive access to luxurious dinners and networking opportunities with like-minded individuals.
Sometimes, private dining clubs host special events where non-members are allowed to visit and get a taste of the sweet life. That’s what Czen offers with its private dining experiences. This event offers a (relatively) reasonable price for a one-time private dining experience.
Event organizer tip: To take advantage of this trend, make it accessible to a wider audience. Pay a chef who has worked for a private dining club to cook for a larger number of guests, or rent out the space a private dining club uses for a more accessible dining experience.
7. Alcohol alternatives
Alcohol and soda aren’t the only drinks in town any more. A variety of non-alcoholic drinks are shaking up the beverage industry, especially with Gen Z, according to industry research firm WGSN. For event organizers, this opens up a whole new world of possibilities.
An increasingly popular option is to offer mocktails and other non-alcoholic beverages alongside the alcoholic ones. Not only does it provide more options for those who don’t drink, but offering mocktails gives your event an air of sophistication that may attract more guests.
But some people are trying mind-affecting drinks other than alcohol as well. Cannabis-infused beverages are more popular than ever before, with an almost $1 billion market expected to grow over 50% by 2028.
Some event organizers are going even further afield in offering their attendees new products and beverage experiences. The Official Afterparty with The Orchestrator, a Colorado-based musical act, offered psychedelic water (a mix of kava extract, damiana extract, and green tea) in place of alcohol.
Event organizer tip: Alcohol alternatives are a great way to include more people in your event. The best way to keep that trend up is by offering a wide variety of drinks so people can be sure to have an option that appeals to them.
8. Microtrends
In addition to these larger trends, microtrends can pop up any day and disappear as quickly as they arrived. Take advantage of these microtrends by quickly pivoting to events that capitalize on the popularity of certain food trends.
Microtrends are hard to predict and can be prompted by any otherwise-forgettable piece of pop culture. For example, an interview between House of the Dragon stars Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cook went viral when they expressed their love for negronis — specifically, “a Negroni Sbagliato… with prosecco in it.”
Eventbrite’s research shows that web searches for “Negroni Sbagliato” went from under 2,000 a month to almost 500,000. Just a couple of weeks later, enterprising event organizers at the Wine Press held a Negroni Sbagliato tasting. It’s a good thing they reacted so quickly, too — this microtrend dropped to under 20,000 searches a month just a few months later.
Event organizer tip: At a minimum, stay tuned to emerging trends and be ready to respond nimbly as they change. But it’s not always enough to be able to host an event quickly.
You also need to get the word out about it just as fast. Try using a professional event marketing platform like Eventbrite’s, to quickly set up your event page and start selling tickets, ensuring you can host an event while the microtrend is still in fashion.
How to keep up with food and beverage industry trends
The trick to keeping up with current food and beverage trends is to stay on your toes, react quickly, and learn how to market your events in line with the cultural moment.
But responding to this many new trends may seem overwhelming — how are you supposed to keep up? Fortunately, you have the tools you need at your fingertips: you can keep up with trends using information like the 2023 Eventbrite Trends Report.
Eventbrite can also help you keep up by giving you the most user-friendly and robust platform for event creation. Whether you want to make social media ads to draw attention to your event as quickly as possible, or just enjoy an easy way to sell tickets to everyone who comes through the door, Eventbrite has a solution for you.
