Andre Eiermann

During the Coffee Science and Education Summit we asked 20 coffee professionals to write down (in 60 seconds) what comes to mind when they think of Gen Z & coffee. The answers drew a surprisingly narrow, aesthetic-heavy persona: Iced. Colourful. Shareable. Fun first. Ritual later. This post aims to highlight the mental shortcuts we all might carry before designing for a generation that is far more complex than this first image suggests. This was the before. The real work started afterwards during the workshop at ZHAW Coffee Excellence Center.

In the last 24 hours, we received more than 100 survey responses. From Gen Z, and from this week’s Coffee Science & Education Summit workshop participants. We did a first quick comparison. 🌈 Some answers made us laugh out loud (I am sure you will find them). 🌈 Some surprised us. 🌈 Some showed very clearly where our blind spots still are. We realised: ☀️ We haven’t looked deeply enough at mental health Coffee Foundation ☀️ We underestimated formats without caffeine ☀️ We didn’t fully consider people joining coffee spaces without drinking coffee at all Before the workshops, we’ll do a proper comparison to understand how we compare to Gen Z: Sun Huang and Frédéric Lamon, you will need to do some more number crunching. Research - ONCE AGAIN! - did what it should do: CHALLENGE OUR ASSUMPTIONS! We still have so much to learn. Let’s learn, share and grow together. Looking forward to continuing this exploration at ZHAW Coffee Excellence Center.

World Barista Championship Analysis 2021 to 2025 What a journey it has been. From face masks in 2021 to Milan 2025: five years of watching, tasting, and above all documenting every competitor. This project started with a simple goal: Analyse all competitors, share the insights, and help our coffee community learn, share, and grow together. The full analysis is now out; from Panama Gesha espressos festivals to the evolution of milk beverages, origins, brew ratios, and post-harvest processing. And at the end, I share four pages from my book Inspire and Get Inspired. I hope it will serve you as a little helper for everyone who wants to experiment with espresso and milk recipes. Shall we? 1, 2, 3… let’s collaborate and learn together.

TDS Around The World - INSPIRE and GET INSPIRED! For a long time, coffee conversations around espresso extraction were often dominated by opinions, personal taste, and dogma. That’s exactly why we started TDS Around The World years ago to better understand what is actually happening in the cup across countries, coffee cultures, machine systems and extraction styles. But during discussions and workshops we recently noticed that many people were fascinated by our data… yet not everybody felt very comfortable reading statistical charts like boxplots. So for the first time, we decided to add a simple “How to Read a Boxplot” slide to our project. Because data only becomes powerful when people can actually understand and discuss it together. And honestly, boxplots are incredibly useful for espresso as they don’t just show averages. They also help us understand consistency, variation, spread and unusual extractions. The Germany & Switzerland comparison was especially interesting to us. Despite different coffee cultures and very different narratives around coffee, the TDS distributions across commercial coffee, specialty coffee, fully automatic machines and traditional espresso machines were surprisingly comparable. Coffee gets emotional very quickly. Measurements help us slow down and look at the extraction together, from a fact based perspective. A huge thank you also goes to Sun Huang, the main driver behind TDS Around The World. With her immensely rich coffee knowledge, curiosity, and deep connection to the global coffee community, she has become the key pillars behind this project and many of its international collaborations.

Oh! Found something in my inbox 🦖🌈🛵

THE SPRING INNOVATION LANDSCAPE: “Not all innovation is equal!” Across global menus in Spring 2026, we found a clear pattern: Innovation tends to cluster into a small number of repeatable formats. We identified six core territories: 1. Matcha and hybrid formats 2. Nut-based flavour extensions (pistachio, etc.) 3. Floral and botanical profiles 4. Cream foam and texture-led drinks 5. Functional beverages (protein, wellness) 6. Citrus and refreshing coffee formats These trends are structured responses to the same underlying behaviour. Each territory offers a different balance of: a) Familiarity, b) Novelty, and c) Perceived risk. The strongest concepts share ONE TRAIT: They build on something people already understand: ☀️ Latte TO Pistachio Latte ☀️ Cold brew TO Coconut Cold Brew Not new categories. I would rather call them NEW LAYERS. Therefore, we say: “Innovation doesn’t need to be radical. It needs to be recognisable!” In the next and last post about Spring Menus 2026 we will share the methodology we applied before moving straight into the Summer Menu Items 2026. We have no time to rest, yet: The Gen Z Coffee Intelligence STUDIO is supporting us - fully fact based AI 🌈 . #RECOGNISABLE #GenZ #Coffee #TEDTalk

Gen Z chooses drinks based on how far they want to step away from the familiar: CONTROLLED EXPLORATION. So if Gen Z doesn’t explore randomly… How do they actually choose? After mapping global menu innovation and validating behaviour across 45+ countries a clear structure emerged. Gen Z drink choices are driven by how the choice feels. We identified four behavioural archetypes: 1. EXPRESSIVE REFRESH “Feels fresh. Looks good. Fits the moment.” - High Gen Z skew - Visual, seasonal, shareable 2. SAFE EXPLORATION “Something new, but still safe.” - The “centre of gravity” - Familiar base + small twist 3. FUNCTIONAL INDULGENCE “Feels purposeful, but still enjoyable.” - Justified treats (protein, wellness, etc.) 4. COMFORT FAMILIAR “I know this. This works.” - The world of “Just my regular” Gen Z moves between adjacent comfort zones. From familiar TO slightly new, and not from familiar TO completely unknown. That’s why: a) Radical innovation struggles, and b) Controlled upgrades win. We call this behaviour: Controlled Exploration

We asked Gen Z what they actually chose. The result surprised us: “Just my regular” is the #1 choice. 42% Let that sink in. In a market full of strawberry matcha, pistachio lattes, ube varietions, or cold foam options. The dominant choice is still… THE USUAL. Even more interesting: - 38% chose Peach Cream Foam Tea - 33% chose Strawberry Matcha - 33% chose Pistachio Latte Innovation performs. Yet it does not replace habit. This might be a mistake many brands make: They design menus as if Gen Z is constantly exploring. Gen Z is not! They explore on top of a strong routine base And that is exactly what we saw across 45+ countries. The real question is not simply: “What’s new?” It is: “What feels safe enough to try?” #ConsumerCentricity #ConsumerInsights #TheFutureOfCoffee

We expected Gen Z to chase the newest drinks. Yet, they did not. After analysing spring menu launches across global coffee shop chains and specialty cafés… and validating it with Gen Z consumers across 45+ countries… a very different pattern emerged: Most choices are not driven by novelty. They are driven by how safe the exploration feels. When you map drinks based on: a) how new they feel, and b) why people choose them You get this structure: 1. Functional drinks sit in one corner 2. Highly expressive drinks in another 3. But the majority? The majority is clustered right in the middle This is where Gen Z (and older cohorts) plays. It lead to one key idea: Gen Z explores within boundaries. We call this: Controlled Exploration More on that in the next post. #ControlledExploration #GenZ #BeverageInnovation

It started with one simple question. At Deloitte, during a conversation about the future of coffee, Daniel asked: “Generation Alpha will start drinking coffee in the next years. How do you think this generation will consume coffee differently than previous generations?” I paused for a moment and my brain started to spin. Because everything we have built so far has been about Gen Z: ☀️ How they changed coffee ☀️ How they fragmented the system ☀️ How coffee became about identity, usage, and expression But Generation Alpha? That question was even a bit RADICAL for me (for a moment) and now I am all in. I went home that evening and started working on something new: I call it... THE GEN ALPHA COFFEE INTELLIGENCE LAB 🌈 This slide is the first output. My current hypothesis: ☀️ Gen Alpha will not adopt coffee. ☀️ They will expect coffee to adapt to them. 1. I believe the entry point is no longer through “learning to like coffee” 2. Consumption becomes modular and need/mood-based 3. Coffee shifts from product to STATE/MOOD management system We will see a move from HABIT & ROUTINE to SYSTEM & MOOD As much as I liked the idea to think 5-10 years ahead, I much more enjoy thinking about the next 10-20 years. Living in the future has always be my thing. I will go deeper. After Gen Z, it’s time to understand WHAT COMES NEXT. To the FUTURE future of coffee ☕️ #genalpha

The future of coffee x Gen Z [MENTAL HEALTH] We keep hearing people joke about the “Gen Z stare”. Instead of making fun of it, we tried to understand it. So we spoke to psychologists and added a mental health section to our research. Across 46 countries 69% of Gen Z report high mental overload vs. 44% of older generations! We also see clear differences in how coffee drinkers cope: Gen Z is more likely to 💫 spend time alone (69%) 💫 treat themselves (46%) 💫 avoid tasks (31%) Older generations are more likely to 💫 exercise (38% vs 15% Gen Z) 💫 show a more balanced stress distribution overall Coffee plays a role in both groups, especially as a source of CONFORT (54% in both). If that’s the case, it also raises a different question: What should a coffee experience look like, if people come not just for coffee, but to COPE, RESET or take a BREAK? It likely goes beyond the product itself. 💫 store design 💫 menu structure 💫 and especially the role of the barista We’ve been discussing how the role of the barista is shifting from purely operational to something more situational: someone who reads the moment and adapts to it. Still exploring this 🧭 curious how others working with Gen Z see this. A special shoutout to Coffee Foundation ☀️! #MentalHealth

MOST PEOPLE BELIEVE THE FUTURE OF COFFEE IS MAINLY ABOUT FLAVOURS We would argue it is NOT! It is rather about structure. Over the past months, we have been looking at two things in parallel: 1. How coffee culture is EVOLVING GLOBALLY 2. How coffee is actually EXTRACTED (TDS levels across systems) Something interesting happens when we connected both. Coffee has recently gone through a clear cultural shift: ☀️ From status & sophistication (espresso, black, pure) ☀️ To comfort & indulgence (milk, foam, texture) ☀️ To lifestyle & expression (iced, layered, flavoured, social drinks) Same product. Completely different role! Here is the big challenge: Most capsule systems were built for espresso culture (some 40 years ago). But Gen Z coffee is no longer straight pure espresso culture. It is about: 🥰 Iced drinks 🥰 Milk-heavy formats (including alternatives) 🥰 Layered beverages including foam toppings 🥰 Even coffee cocktails (mixology with or without alcohol) These formats require something very specific: Higher TDS (the RACE is already REAL!). When we measured coffee systems globally: 🌈 Capsule systems TDS ≈ ca. 3% 🌈 Global coffee chains TDS ≈ ca. 6 - 8% That is not a small gap. That is a completely different coffee-base beverage architecture. What this means (keep 4F Daily Gen Z Coffee Rythm in mind): You cannot build “fun & freedom beverages” on top of a system designed for “classic espresso”. And this is where it gets interesting (and we are getting excited): Some systems are starting to adapt. For example: ☀️ New approaches increase dose-in and reduce yield ☀️ Resulting in higher TDS for milk-based drinks They are not changing the product per se. They are simply changing the extraction logic (adjusting to what a modern barista would do). So the fundamental question is not: “Which brand has better coffee?” But: Which systems are actually built for the next cultural role of coffee? Because if coffee today is about expression… Then the infrastructure behind it needs to evolve as well. We’ve been exploring this intersection between culture and extraction using our latest AI Tool: Gen Z Intelligence Lab (Capsule Edition).