Financial Times: Ube food trend

The Financial Times contacts Harris and Hayes for our take on the ube trend, after Costa and Starbucks launched their Spring 2026 ube drinks.

Ube is a purple tuber that’s central to Filipino food, so it’s not a new ingredient by any means. Filipino food has been a touted as an emerging food trend in the UK since about 2015, with excellent restaurants serving ube and other dishes in London for several years.

Whilst these iced drinks might feel new, ube has been around a lot longer as ice cream in the UK. Mamasons Dirty Ice Cream, was London's first Filipino ice cream parlour, which opened in Kentish Town and Chinatown in 2017-18, and Kasa and Kin opened in 2021 including a recent ube soft serve collab with Jollibee (the McDonald's of Philippines). More recently, Araw launched in lockdown with their incredible ube halaya soft serve with sustainable sourcing.

Ube iced drinks are most popular amongst the younger demographic, who are more flavour and format-curious. Anything that’s ‘not coffee’ and iced is having a boom right now; cold drinks accounted for 75% of Starbucks’ beverage sales last year (CNBC) and UK coffee shop 200 Degrees reports that 1 in 4 lattes sold are now iced (5th Wave).

We explained how brands seek out innovative new formats and speciality flavours like ube especially when consumer spending is under pressure. Read the full piece in the Financial Times here