2025 has arrived, bringing with it an opportunity to explore new ways to engage with your audience. The best place to start is by understanding their passions and priorities. We’ve curated a list of five consumer trends, along with ideas on how to leverage them.
Interest in micro-communities
It’s fair to say that 2024 was the year of the running club, and it looks like this will continue in 2025.
A way to build a sense of belonging, running clubs (and other community-led groups) are perfect spaces for interesting brand activations.
In its 25 for 2025 report, drinks agency Sweet & Chilli explains that running clubs are ideal settings for “serialised IRL brand events and activations that curate experiences relevant to micro-communities that share values and lifestyles”.
Alcohol free beer brand Lucky Saint is already in on the action in Brighton – a partnership with Run & Rave sees the company offer 10% off its beers after a Friday night run along the seafront.
Tapping into health-based clubs will be especially effective for drink brands that are part of the wellness sphere.
Kombucha, for example, is experiencing an increase in interest from 18–25-year-olds, according to insight company Vypr’s Future of the Alcoholic Drinks Industry 2025 report.
For non-wellness-based drinks, there is also an opportunity to tap into micro-communities.
As Bacardi notes in its Cocktail Trends Report, a powerful way of achieving this is through fandom culture and sporting events, both of which bring together like-minded people.
For instance, Brewdog plans to sell a Lord’s Cricket Ground themed lager to fans in 2025.
Staying home
Consumers have been prioritising social occasions at home and the trend is set to continue this year.
Vypr suggests this shift offers an ideal environment for premiumisation in drinks. Drawing from data spanning 80,000 consumers, the report found that in 2024, 41% of respondents preferred consuming premium alcohol at home, up from 38% in 2023.
The same data showed a decline in regular wine consumption – from 69% in 2023 to 57% in 2024 – while premium wine consumption increased. Premium beer and premium spirits also experienced slight growth.
Sweet & Chilli suggests that brands focus their marketing on more intimate social occasions, such as home parties and supper clubs.
The agency says: “We expect that visionary brands will tap into this trend and embrace the art of hosting by sponsoring in-home experiences or open-home tours.”
The consumer as curator
Luxury remains a strong trend, but a fresh way to approach it is to position the consumer as a curator.
Today’s consumers don’t just want to buy a product—they want to understand it. The luxury lies in knowledge.
As Bacardi notes in its cocktail report: “Shifting consumer mindsets are set to enable longer-term premiumisation. That’s because today’s consumers are moving away from being consumers of products to curators.”
The report further emphasises the need for brands to move from a focus on “show” to a focus on “know”.
The growth of low and no
The drinks trade is in universal agreement that the low and no-alcohol trend will continue to grow in popularity in 2025.
The Waitrose Food and Drink Report 2024–25 highlights the rising trend of zebra-striping among consumers – swapping between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.
Similarly, Mintel’s 2025 Global Food and Drink Trends report predicts an increase in health-conscious consumers, many of whom are likely to be drawn to low and no-alcohol options.
Recent data from the IWSR corroborates this: “Across 10 key markets, the combined no/low-alcohol market is expected to expand by +4% volume CAGR through 2028, with no-alcohol driving the majority of this growth, at +7% volume CAGR.”
Producers and retailers are therefore encouraged to continue innovating in this space.
However, the Vypr report found an interesting outlier: While only 11% of consumers reported an increase in their alcohol consumption overall, younger men aged 25–44 stood out, with 24% indicating they are drinking more than last year.
Geopolitical consumption
Mintel reports that consumers are gaining a growing “awareness of how distant world events can affect their meal plans” and this will “test the trust which people have in food and drink companies”.
Consumers are calling for brands to be transparent in their ethics and to start conversations about it.
The report from Mintel notes the success of the Swedish-based company Palestine Drinks which donates money to charities working in Gaza.
Likewise, when it comes to sustainability, Bacardi says consumers are “wise to greenwashing practices”. Instead, they want real sustainable focus beyond “large-scale gimmicks and one-time activations”.
There is a call for genuine accountability and engagement.
