Food businesses rarely need to reinvent an entire menu to respond to changing tastes. In many cases, the more practical opportunity lies in recognizing what diners already value and turning that idea into something customers can enjoy.
Such premise shaped Unilever Food Solutions’ Future Menus 2026: Food Trends Adventure, held Aug. 9 at Foro de Intramuros, where food trends moved into an experience built around various concepts and dining formats.
Throughout the food crawl, guests sampled creations from Backyard BBQ, Bigby’s, Bun Run, Caerus, Chotto Matcha, Fiasfud, H Proper, Itamessy, Mezmars & Mau’s, OnlyPans, Poppy’s Halo Halo, Rebel Bakehouse, Sama Sama, Shawarma Ko and Soriano’s.
Among the dishes was Itamessy’s Arancini Takoyaki, which combines Italian and Japanese dishes through fried risotto balls prepared in a takoyaki style and finished with pistachio pesto and balsamic reduction.
For drinks, H Proper Coffee Roasters presented specialty coffee, including its Cold White Brew, while Chotto Matcha presented its Banana Pudding Matcha Latte.
Dessert also became part of the crawl, with Poppy’s Halo Halo presenting Halo Halo and Mais Con Yelo through careful preparation and considered ingredients. The familiar merienda favorites retained their nostalgic appeal to the audience while taking on a more contemporary presentation.
The one-day event presented four food trends identified by Unilever Food Solutions: Street Food Couture, Borderless Cuisine, Culinary Roots and Diner Designed. Rather than treating the four categories as formulas, Future Menus 2026 presented them as directions that food operators can interpret according to their own concepts and customers.
The experience included a food crawl that allowed diners to taste how those ideas could take shape on a menu. Hands-on food moments, immersive installations, and social-first activities were also intended to make the event interactive.
For Kat Huang, country marketing head of Unilever Food Solutions, the value of Future Menus lies in the research and industry experience behind the trends.
“There’s not only one food trend that [food businesses] need to choose from because all four food trends that we are featuring in Future Menus have been a consolidation of over 300 chefs globally in our food network, rigorous insights, and data consolidation,” Ms. Huang told BusinessWorld.
The result, according to her, was intended to give food businesses a framework for deciding how emerging dining behaviors could translate into their own menus.
“These trends are really applicable for every single type of food customer. It’s something people can really resonate with and apply to their menu,” she added.
The approach also recognizes that innovation does not necessarily require a big change in a restaurant’s menu. For food businesses operating in a competitive market, smaller changes in format, flavor, customization, or presentation can create new reasons for customers to visit without requiring major investments.
The four trends cover different aspects of the modern dining experience, from the ingredients and culinary techniques used in a dish to the way customers participate in choosing and experiencing their food.
Street Food Couture
Street Food Couture puts value on culinary skill and technique. It focuses on how operators can use artistry to give familiar street food a different presentation or experience. The appeal comes partly from the accessibility of street food across different demographics and income groups. Street food also forms part of a country’s culture and food heritage, giving operators a familiar foundation from which they can create new interpretations.
Borderless Cuisine
Borderless Cuisine, on the other hand, looks outward, drawing from the wider exposure diners now have to food from different countries and cultures. Fusion food has become visible in the market, which blends dishes that allow food operators to create something that carries their own creative perspective.
Diner Designed
In addition, Diner Designed puts the customer directly into the menu decision. This trend responds to diners who want greater control over what they eat, including their taste preferences and personal choices. The framework presents a simpler form of customization that gives customers a meaningful sense of choice without creating a complicated process for the kitchen.
Culinary Roots
Meanwhile, Culinary Roots turns back to local food traditions, ingredients, and regional cuisines. This trend has a particular relevance in the Philippines because the country’s regions carry distinct culinary traditions and ingredients. Cuisines from different places have gained more visibility, which brings less familiar Filipino dishes into conversations about the country’s food culture.
Turning trends into workable menus
A food trend becomes useful to an operator only when it can work inside the realities of a kitchen.
Chef Pipo Aluning, senior sous chef at Unilever Food Solutions Philippines, said operators must consider whether ingredients are readily available, whether staff can be trained to execute the dish, and whether the concept can serve a sufficiently broad target market.
“A dish can succeed from a culinary standpoint but still fail as a business proposition if it requires too many components, difficult-to-source ingredients, or even complicated kitchen procedures,” he explained.
For Chef Aluning, such distinction makes business sense just as important as culinary creativity.
Chef Brando Santos, senior sous chef at Unilever Food Solutions Philippines, similarly described a future-ready menu as one that fits the restaurant’s concept, remains relevant to its customers, works within the business, and generates returns.
“It can either be Borderless Cuisine, Diner Design, Culinary Roots and Street Food Couture,” Chef Santos said. “You can do research, apply the idea into your operations, and think of what can be followed or used to accelerate innovation on menu offerings.”
Likewise, the four Future Menus trends provide operators with a structure for that assessment, allowing them to determine which direction best fits their concept and how the idea can be adapted.
“Operators can use this as a blueprint. It can serve as an inspiration to be trendy, innovative, and relevant in this day and age where there are a lot of choices of restaurants to choose from,” Chef Santos added.
Ms. Huang also noted that operators do not need to undertake a complete overhaul of their menus or spend heavily on expensive ingredients simply to respond to a trend. Instead, businesses can introduce changes that fit their existing menu and customer base.
“Our four food trends are enabling operators to be inspired that they don’t need to cut down on their margins to grow and flourish in the industry. Embrace innovation and embrace trends because they’re actually not just trends; they’re really core insights into the food industry,” Ms. Huang said.
While price remains an important part of the dining decision, the Future Menus discussions point to a bigger interpretation of value. Chef Santos described this as creating “value for many,” rather than focusing solely on value for money.
“A successful restaurant concept should serve operational needs while also giving customers a reason to return. When diners feel that an experience was worth the money they spent, the business can reach a wider market and build a stronger case for repeat visits,” he explained.
In introducing a new menu, Chef Aluning recommended using limited-time offers as a testing ground. A business can keep its core menu while introducing new items, which allows chefs to test new flavors without committing the entire business to an untested idea.
“It doesn’t mean if it doesn’t work it’s not right. Like any other concept, it takes time,” he noted. “If customers respond well, the item can become part of the permanent menu. If it does not perform as expected, the operator can develop another concept.”
Research also has a place before a new concept reaches the customer.
“Operators should research the concept they want to pursue, assess whether ingredients are available, and consider price. The target market also matters because a concept must fit the purchasing capacity of the customers the business intends to serve,” Chef Aluning added.
From global trends to Filipino table
Future Menus is Unilever Food Solutions’ annual global food trends platform, drawing on research and insights from chefs around the world. Its 2026 iteration brought those ideas into a Philippine setting through food businesses and dishes that diners could experience directly.
Particularly for Filipino operators, localization matters because trends do not operate in isolation from the markets where they appear. A concept still has to make sense to the people who will order it, at the price they are willing to pay and within the resources available to the business.
While all trends show different paths forward, they all point to the same foundation that operators need to understand their consumers, research their ideas, work with ingredients they can source, and consider the market’s expectations. Future Menus 2026 showed that the most useful trend may be the one that helps a business make a familiar menu more interesting and gives customers another reason to visit.
Explore further the four food trends and discover how they can be applied to your own menus with the Future Menus 2026 Report, available online at https://www.ufs.com/ph/en-ph/inspiration/future-menus-4/.
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