"Consumers are embracing less sweet flavours, excitingly challenging flavour profiles and multi-sensory experiences, creating new white space for innovation."
Emma Clifford, Associate Director - Food and Drink
Consumer acceptance of even unappealing flavours – when soft drinks deliver sufficiently compelling nutritional benefits – challenges the “taste is king” paradigm. As a result, NPD that deprioritises immediate enjoyability holds untapped potential, reflecting consumers’ willingness to push their taste boundaries for longer-term health rewards.
Less sweet flavours present a significant opportunity within soft drinks. Despite aligning with consumer trends around health, naturalness, palate training, refreshment and alcohol moderation, they remain underexplored in the UK market. Planned tightening of HFSS and SDIL regulations makes exploring this space particularly timely. Ranging from less sweet interpretations of familiar fruity profiles to more adventurous herbal, vegetable or umami flavours, NPD in this area has potential to appeal across age groups.
Weak consumer confidence and renewed pressure on household budgets in 2026 are likely to inhibit experimentation with new soft drink flavours, particularly more adventurous profiles. This will constrain the development of emerging flavour trends. However, soft drinks’ increasingly important role as a low-cost way to elevate evenings in and replace alcohol is expected to sustain demand for sophisticated flavours.
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