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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 Then, some pesky third-wave companies came along and convinced everyone to eschew those outdated norms.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.
