Toast is a point of sale system used to manage transactions, mainly in retail outlets such as cafes and restaurants. In the United States alone, over 160,000 food and beverage producers exploit the platform, giving them quite a huge pool of data from which they can identify consumer trends every year. They did exactly the same thing with coffee. In the latest coffee edition of the report on restaurant trendsToast examines which drinks are gaining in popularity and which are falling in popularity, according to consumer data.
Released on Thursday, March 12voldata comes from Toast’s transactions between January 2024 and December 2025 with U.S. restaurants and cafes to determine the state of caffeinated beverages in 2026. It is vital to note that this report covers both cafes and restaurants, so the findings should not necessarily be considered specific to cafes.
The largest sales declines in 2024-2025 in relation to classic coffee drinks are: green tea (-4.9%), black tea (-3.4%), drip coffee (-3.3%) and chilly brew (-2.2%). Meanwhile, beverages such as lattes, espressos and Americanos saw overall growth of 4%, 3.3% and 1.4% respectively.
Smaller espresso-based drinks saw moderate movement. Cappuccino lost 0.4% and macchiato gained 0.6%.
Non-coffee caffeinated options, such as energy drinks and diet drinks, saw the biggest growth, increasing 8.7% and 7.4% year-over-year, respectively. Caffeine-free herbal teas also increased by 8.6%.
One potential explanation for the shift in how coffee is purchased is less about what people drink, but where. All the beverages that have lost market share – black and green tea, drip coffee and chilly brew – can be easily made at home, while espresso-based drinks, which require more and more exorbitant equipment, can facilitate keep retail mighty in the category. The trend towards preparing coffee at home may be further increased by market uncertainty, in particular due to price increases due to tariffs.
It’s strenuous to guess too much from the data; The world as a whole is constantly changing along a million different axes, making it almost impossible to pinpoint any single driving force behind change. However, as more years are added, trends, if any, will become clearer.
