Of all the food and drink trends lining up for 2027, the one you can already taste on the street is the easiest to explain. If you have eaten at a stall anywhere between Hanoi and Madrid, you already know the drinks Americans are discovering this year. Vietnamese iced coffee, cafe bombon, horchata lattes. They arrived separately, from different continents, and they share one ingredient.
Condensed milk is doing the work. According to Tastewise’s consumer panel, published in Tastewise’s 2027 forecast, the reasons Americans give for choosing a drink have reordered around texture, and condensed milk delivers three of the winning ones in a single pour.
Which food and drink trends define 2027?
Ten shifts, grouped under four pressures: control, realness, belonging and delight.
The drinks story below sits under realness, alongside a second shift about single ingredients being split and sold separately. Control covers agentic shopping, the end of the health promise and eating built around medication. Belonging covers the collapsing daypart clock and preservation moving into everyday ranges. Delight covers provenance fats, beauty ingredients arriving in food, and shoppers splitting one weekly shop across four retailers.
All ten are set out in full on the forecast page. This piece takes one of them.
Why are condensed milk coffees growing so fast?
They win on texture at a moment when texture is what American drinkers are asking for.
Over the past year, health as a stated reason for choosing a non-alcoholic drink reached 20% fewer US consumers. Creaminess reached 18% more. Smoothness gained 23%. Layered builds, meaning drinks with a visible band of colour, gained 42%, which makes them the fastest moving reason in the set.
Condensed milk hits creaminess, sweetness and a stable layer in one go. That is why a drink invented for a tropical climate and a different coffee tradition translates so cleanly onto an American counter.
What is a cafe bombon?
Cafe bombon is a Spanish drink made with equal parts espresso and sweetened condensed milk, served in a small glass so the two layers stay visible until stirred.
Vietnamese iced coffee works on the same principle with a different ratio, a darker roast and ice. Both are street drinks. Neither was designed for the specialty cafe, which is part of why they are spreading through home kitchens and small independents before the chains catch up.
Which direction is the travel going?
Latin American formats are gaining on Asian ones in America, and 2027 is the year the forecast expects them to pass.
That is a change worth noticing if you follow street food. Asian coffee formats had the head start, carried by Vietnamese cafes and the bubble tea infrastructure. The Latin American drinks are arriving through a different door. Horchata, dulce de leche and the dessert aisle carried them in, and they are picking up the same texture demand.
The full ranked list of which formats are moving fastest, and where, sits in the forecast.
What this means if you cook or sell street food
Three practical readings.
The first is that sweetness is doing less work than people assume. It gained 5% over the year, which is real and modest. Texture gained far more. A drink that is merely sweet is competing on the weakest of the available reasons.
The second is that the visible layer matters commercially. A drink that photographs as two distinct bands gets ordered more often, and layered builds are gaining consumers about twice as fast as creaminess alone.
The third is that health has stopped selling drinks. It still reaches more than twice as many US consumers as creaminess does, and it is shrinking while creaminess grows. A drink sold on what it does to you is swimming against the current.
Where the rest of this sits
This is one of ten shifts in the Tastewise Food and Beverage Forecast 2027, which covers the US market across consumer panel, menu and retail data. The coffee section names the specific formats, the regions they are moving through and the operators already carrying them.
You can download the whole thing from the forecast page, and it is free.
Frequently asked questions
What are the biggest food and drink trends for 2027?
Tastewise groups them into ten shifts across four pressures: control, realness, belonging and delight. They cover agentic shopping and health claims giving way to mechanisms. Also single ingredients sold as parts, travelling coffee formats and collapsing dayparts. Then everyday preservation, provenance fats and private label hopping.
How is Vietnamese iced coffee different from a latte?
Vietnamese iced coffee uses sweetened condensed milk and a dark roast, usually brewed through a small metal filter, then poured over ice. A latte uses steamed fresh milk and espresso. The condensed milk version is sweeter, thicker and holds a visible layer.
Is condensed milk coffee a 2027 trend or a passing one?
Tastewise consumer panel data shows the underlying demand is for texture, and no single drink owns it. Creaminess, smoothness and layered builds all gained consumers over the past year while health lost 20% of them, which suggests a durable shift.
What is replacing health claims on drinks?
Texture language. Creaminess gained 18% of US non-alcoholic beverage consumers year on year, smoothness gained 23% and layered builds gained 42%, while health as a stated reason reached 20% fewer people than the year before.
Figures in this article come from the Tastewise consumer panel, US, July 2025 to July 2026 against the prior year.