Are savory mushroom lattes the next big menu craze? Are you going to put banana dust on your next signature beverage? Is spilling beans during grinder cleaning now a thing of the past?
Every year, hundreds of exhibitors gather to showcase their latest products and innovations at the World of Coffee trade show (formerly known as the Specialty Coffee Expo). I have been covering new product launches at this event since 2019, and I’m always struck by the creativity and ingenuity of new products on display.
The menu staples we know and love—drip coffee, vanilla lattes, Earl Grey tea—aren’t going away. Still, a wide variety of new flavors, ingredients, and equipment innovations are aiming to earn a spot in coffee businesses.
Here are five products that I thought about as I left the show floor, got on the plane, and headed home—and that I’m still thinking about.
Soup Lattes Were The Talk of the Show—And They Were Tasty
Many coffee shops use powdered mixes, particularly chai concentrate, to make staple menu items. These drinks are simple to make: you drop a scoop of powder into a cup, mix it up with steamed milk, and your drink is ready to go. The team behind David Rio, a tea and beverage ingredient provider, took the concept—and we can only guess this is how it went— said to themselves, “We should do this with soup.”
Enter Soup Latte, a powdered soup mix designed to be combined with steamed milk to produce a savory latte with flavors you’re more likely to find in a crockpot than in a coffee mug. At the show, I tasted two of the brand’s signature flavors: truffle mushroom and coconut curry soups. Though the bits of mushroom pieces in my latte cup initially threw me for a bit of a sensory loop, these drinks tasted great.
“When you go to a cafe, there’s a menu board full of sugary stuff. It’s all sweet,” said Rio Miura, co-founder of David Rio and now Soup Latte. “I wanted to have something savory and warm and comfortable and cozy that provides you great nutrition.”
We think the popularity of soup lattes at World of Coffee—contributor Eric Grimm also mentioned the drinks in their show roundup—indicates a broader trend toward savory ingredients ending up on drink menus. We’ve seen this in past reporting as well. But is this what customers want? That part is unclear to me, but it’s something we’ll be watching closely. If you plan to serve up drinks made with Soup Latte, we’d love to hear from you.
We learned all about Soup Latte and made a video with there team here.
You Won’t Spill Any Beans with the La Marzocco Jay Grinder
La Marzocco, traditionally known as an espresso machine manufacturer, has been on a tear with grinder releases in the past few years. In 2023, they debuted their first in-house designed grinder, the Pico, and then came out with the Swan in 2024. In October 2025, La Marzocco announced the release of the Jay commercial grinder, which was on display at World of Coffee.
The grinder has 68mm flat burrs and can handle high volume. The burrs are set at a 45º angle, so grounds can flow through more easily, reducing retention. But what was most interesting to me was something minor, but ingenious: the hopper automatically closes and locks when removed from the grinder.
Seems small, but I’ve definitely (and more than once) removed the hopper from a grinder to clean the inside, forgot to close the hatch between the hopper and grinder, and ended up with beans all over the floor. I’m sure others have shared the same experience.
It’s not just the automatic lock that makes life easier. “The burrs are attached via magnet,” Keegan Kiral of La Marzocco said, so they can literally pop on and off the grinder instead of needing to be screwed in and out. “So it could not be faster and easier to get in here and clean this grinder when it’s the end of the shift, and all you want to do is get home.”
We made a video with Kiral explaining the Jay here.
Pixel Dust Is Food You Can Sprinkle on Drinks
We’ve seen many companies experiment with flavors and debut products that let cafes go beyond the typical lattes and cappuccinos. We’ve also seen shops embrace unexpected flavor combos and diversify their menus.
A new product called Pixel Dust spins off this idea—it’s a powder you can add to flavor drinks and uses dry, dehydrated ingredients made from real foods rather than formulated syrups.
Sadie Renée, the brand’s co-founder, explained that Pixel Dust can be used in a variety of ways, giving cafes more ways to experiment with flavor. One suggestion they had was to work the dust into the milk as you steam, then incorporate it into an espresso for a flavored latte. Another is to use the food dust as a batch syrup replacement by mixing 1:1 Pixel Dust with hot water.
Renée appeared most excited when they suggested using the food dust to make flavored cold foams, adding that the complexity of the flavor from Pixel Dust could elevate cold foams beyond what’s possible with standard syrups: “It’s kind of like a next-level cold foam elevation.”
The current lineup includes flavors like banana, strawberry, vanilla, caramel, horchata, and peanut butter and jelly. Check out video with Renée here.
Sanremo’s D8 One Challenges Expectations For A Single-Group Espresso Machine
The market for single-group commercial espresso machines is heating up, thanks largely to the impressive rise in mobile coffee businesses.
Espresso manufacturer Sanremo had its newest release, the D8 One, on the floor at World of Coffee for folks to check out. Last year, we interviewed the Sanremo team about their equipment lineup for Espresso Machine Hub, which is how I initially became familiar with the D8 espresso machine line. At the time, the brand offered these machines only in two- and three-group models.
The D8 One is a single-group machine and uses the same technology as its multi-group siblings; most notably, it features a proprietary thermohydraulic circuit, which means the single-boiler model can offer the temperature precision and control you’d expect from a multi-boiler machine, including the ability to set different temperatures for the steam wand and grouphead.
“It’s a machine perfect for all-purpose use,” said Alessio Troia, director of sales operations at Sanremo. “But it definitely will be a game changer in the industry for a compact machine.”
Sick of Burning Through Cartons of Alt Milk? Milkadamia Made Oat Milk into Sheets
Alternative milks continue to increase in popularity, but most come in 32-ounce containers—much smaller than the gallon jugs dairy milk comes in. With shops whizzing through oat, almond, and soy milk, they’re also tossing away more and more cartons.
Milkadamia said, “We’ve got something to say about that,” (again, we can only imagine this is how it went), and designed Oat Milk Slices.
These things are wild: they’re literally sheets made with dried oat pulp. Add water, blend, and you have oat milk.
The slices are packaged almost like cheese slices, and the brand claims the sheets use 72% less packaging and weigh 86% less compared to conventional cartons. “We refer to it as pre-cycling,” said Neil Cox, CEO of Milkadamia, “It’s not about recycling the cartons at the end, but about actually not even getting to the carton at the start of the process.”
When the Fresh Cup team tasted the oat milk, we found that it had a smooth, dairy-like flavor and a denser texture similar to other oat milks.
You guessed it: we made a video with Milkadamia here. You should definitely check this one out.
World of Coffee isn’t the end for us talking about soup lattes and banana dust—we anticipate cafes carrying many of these products soon, and we’ll keep reporting on the fascinating new product releases we see. We’ll be keeping an eye on these products as they roll out in cafes.
If you’re already using any of the products we talked about—or saw something at the show that deserves more attention—we’d love to hear about it. Drop us a note.
Cover photo by Phillip White
