Proactive Practices: Sustainability food trends 2025

For 34% of consumers, locally sourced products were the most important aspects of sustainability when it came to choosing an eating out venue, according to CGA by Nielsen in their 2023 Brandtrack survey. We don’t see this trend receding, because consumers equate provenance with quality, freshness and flavour (see our 2024 Rustic and Rural trend here).

In our survey this year*, we found that it’s not just food and drink local to where they live that consumers are interested in. In fact, 43% of the consumers we surveyed said they would like to try Scottish, Welsh and or Irish cuisines out of home in the next 1 to 2 years, and 36% said they were already eating them.

Reducing packaging and plastic waste, cutting our emissions, and seasonality have been a focus for consumers and businesses for some time, as has reduction in emissions and food waste. However, as we become more aware of the ways that our food and drink supply chain impacts the environment, topics like regenerative agriculture and lower carbon options are becoming more current.

Encouragingly, we’ve also seen this year that more than half of are happy to choose dishes that are from would be wasted ingredients.

Sustainable farming practices have been in place for thousands of years, and there have been a number of organic control bodies in the UK certifying products for many years. For example, The Soil Association which launched its Soil Association certification scheme in 1973.

Over the last couple of years, however, regenerative agriculture has been a buzzword that has started to emerge, as it’s seen as a lever for improving environmental outcomes in a number of areas: regeneration of soil, land and biodiversity. With the increased realisation that intensive farming practices can degrade soil quality and quantity and result in higher greenhouse gas emissions, amongst other impacts, the holistic approach of regenerative farming looks to be an area of growing interest.

Interested in finding out more? Take a look at our fact sheet on Regenerative Farming here 

Target, measure and act are a key start point when it comes to reducing food waste in any business. If you don’t know how much food you are wasting, then you can’t set a target and measure your progress against it. And, if we don’t join together as an industry we can’t see what progress we’re making overall and share best practice. Wrap offer some great tools as part of their Food Waste Reduction Roadmap which you can sign up to. They also offer some great free tools and resources to help you which are available here. Too Good to Go is an app that many business are now using to sell off would-be wasted food on a daily basis.

Some of the findings from our survey this year have pointed to consumers finding appealing dishes that are low in carbon, made from would-be wasted ingredients, seasonal produce, locally sourced ingredients and locally caught or sustainable fish and seafood options.* There is also broader interest in regenerative farming practices and plant-based dishes, as well as certifications such as Fairtrade, Red tractor, British Lion Eggs.

Whilst there’s a lot of innovation in the area of sustainable solutions right now, there’s a big gap between our expectations and what’s possible that only further research and development can close.

It’s also increasingly important to be able to validate any claims you make. It is difficult for consumers to make sense of the many certifications and claims about the environmental performance of food, drink, services and companies. Some claims have been found to be unreliable which has meant that consumers trust in them can be low. So, there’s some key legislation that businesses need to take into account when making any claims – the UK Green Claims code- find out more here.

However, it’s important to remember sustainability often makes good business sense. Cutting food waste, reducing your energy, and offering more plant-based choices on menus are examples of this. And we learned from our survey this year that consumers are often happy to pay more too: 45% said that they would be “willing to pay more for food and drink when out, if they knew it was coming from sustainable sources”*.

Consumers are interested in the story behind dishes, information about where the ingredients are sourced from, how it is grown or caught, any information about whether it is a meat-free option, a low carbon option, a seasonal option, regenerative farming practices involved, whether the product or ingredient carries any certifications, is made from would-be wasted ingredients. So make sure you include details in your dish descriptions, being sure to validate any information or claims you do reference in line with the UK Green Claims code.

Promoting sustainable choices can be done with a little ‘nudging’. For example, by placing more sustainable choices at the top or bottom of menu list, in a box or featuring a photograph of the dish.