Gen Z is Drinking More Instant Coffee and Coffee Creamer

by

Editorial Policy

Published on

✉️ This story was featured in this week’s Coffee News Club
👋 Get the Coffee News Club newsletter in your inbox weekly—sign up.

Back in the day, taking your coffee with cream or drinking instant granules that magically became “coffee” when mixed with hot water was the norm. Instant coffee was cheap and easy, and adding cream made the often-poor-quality coffee taste good. Then, some pesky third-wave companies came along and convinced everyone to eschew those outdated norms.

However, instant coffee and creamers are trendy again—thanks to Gen Z.

As Anna-Louise Jackson reports for Fast Company, 85% of Gen Z coffee drinkers add creamer to their coffee, compared to 70% overall (side note: we at Coffee News Club were shocked to learn that 70% of all coffee drinkers use creamer. This clearly warrants further investigation). 

Companies like Nestlé, which owns Coffee-Mate, are leaning into this shift, bundling creamer products with their coffee offerings and bringing out new creamer flavors, like peanut butter and jelly and Thai iced coffee (inspired by the HBO show “The White Lotus”), and cold foam products.

Instant coffee is also seeing a rise in popularity. According to data from the National Coffee Association, instant coffee sales rose 31% between 2023 and 2024. Truth Headlam reports for Bloomberg that much of the growth was driven by younger consumers, who doubled their spending on instant in 2024 compared with 2022. 

Gen Z consumers, Headlam writes, are “leaning into the at-home barista trend and trying to replicate viral drink videos found on TikTok and Instagram.”

While big brands like Nestlé and J.M. Smucker (which makes Folgers) are seeing sales bumps from this focus on instant, specialty coffee companies are also getting in on the trend. 

“I think we’re in the phase where [instant is] now accepted by the most progressive, leading specialty coffee companies,” Nate Kaiser, founder of white-label instant manufacturer Swift Coffee, told Headlam. “It’s just assumed that if you’re going to be a roaster in 2025, it’s going to be on your retail offerings menu.”

Read the full story from Fast Company here.

Share This Article
Avatar photo

Fionn Pooler

Fionn Pooler is a coffee roaster and freelance writer currently based in the Scottish Highlands who has worked in the specialty coffee industry for over a decade. Since 2016 he has written the Pourover, a newsletter and blog that uses interviews and critical analysis to explore coffee’s place in the wider, changing world (and also yell at corporations).

Join 7,000+ coffee pros and get top stories, deals, and other industry goodies in your inbox each week.

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.


Other Articles You May Like

It Might Be Time to Fire Your Office Coffee

Depending on the type of machine your office has, your morning coffee may contain higher cholesterol-elevating substances than brewing it at home.
by Fionn Pooler | April 1, 2025

Coffee News Club: Week of March 31st

Click to find out what % of people put creamer in their coffee. Here’s a hint: it’s more than you think. That and more—here’s the news for the week of March 31st.
by Fionn Pooler | March 31, 2025

Climate Change has Drastically Impacted Arabica—Researchers See Promise in Stenophylla

Botanists at Kew have been investigating the commercial potential of stenophylla, a wild coffee species. They found that stenophylla shares similarities with arabica in terms of flavor.
by Fionn Pooler | March 31, 2025

Behind the Headlines: Starbucks Popularized the Term ‘Third Place,’ But What Does It Mean in 2025?

As part of Brian Niccol’s “Back to Starbucks” plan, which rolled out in September 2024, the newly appointed Starbucks CEO announced that one of his goals was making the multinational’s coffee shops “third places”…
by Amber Gibson | March 28, 2025