The signal: Kraft, Buldak and cheesy ramen
In October, Kraft Mac & Cheese, a brand nearly 90 years old, announced a cheesy ramen, its first move into a new category in almost 20 years. The ramen category is worth $2.7 billion in the US and is growing 9% a year, according to data cited by Kraft Heinz. The brand says the cheesy ramen segment has doubled in three years, driven by consumers who were already adding cheese themselves to tame the heat. The launch is part of a turnaround plan: Kraft Heinz raised its incremental investment to around $700 million for 2026, against a backdrop of volume pressure.
Kraft is not alone. In July, Unilever launched a Creamy Cheese version of Namdong, its Korean-inspired noodle brand, to capture the “cheesy ramen” trend on social media. The product is listed at Albert Heijn in the Netherlands and REWE in Germany.
The brand that built this market is Samyang. In Q2 2026, its European sales jumped 61% to 80.6 billion won, led by Germany and France. The range already extends to sauces, snacks and tteokbokki, and Buldak passed 10 billion units sold in May 2026.
Drinks are following the same path, with even more niche ingredients. Imbibe describes a 2027 shift towards deeper, earthier flavours inspired by Asian café culture, with ube, taro, pandan, black sesame and roasted grains (barley, rice) as emerging ingredients. According to Oatly, global searches for ube, pandan and hojicha have doubled since January 2022. Black sesame shows how these niches travel. In Korea, it is coming back through the “halmaenial” trend: young people embracing the food and pastimes of their grandparents’ generation. A Parisian barista interviewed by Oatly says he now puts it in everything, from lattes to cheesecake.
According to Mintel, a wave of premium Asian white spirits (sake, soju, baijiu) will reach the Western mainstream, carried by the growth of Asian food trends. In the UK, 73% of diners aged 18-34 enjoy trying world spirits with global cuisines. Over the two years to July 2026, online conversations about soju grew 22% in the UK, and about baijiu 17% (Black Swan Data). Western start-ups are leading the way with sake-based ready-to-drink cocktails. Kwenched combines sake, jalapeño and lime (8.4% ABV). Shogun offers a bitter lemon spritz made with sake brewed in London (5.5% ABV).
Finally, Asian brands are coming to Western markets themselves. By the end of 2025, Heytea had 35 stores in the US, up from two a year earlier. Chagee’s first store in Los Angeles exceeded $595,000 in gross merchandise value in its first month. Heytea has also entered France, and ChaBaiDao Spain.
What everyone says: just another TikTok trend
The dominant industry reading is the “flavour trend”: an ingredient takes off on TikTok, brands roll out a limited edition, then move on to the next one. In this view, Kraft’s cheesy ramen is a clever line extension, and ube is a seasonal colour.
What this really changes for brands: K-food and Chinese tea set the pace
What is at stake is who leads, not what people taste.
Three shifts, three consequences.
The Western icon becomes a follower. Kraft is industrialising a consumer habit popularised by a Korean brand. The cheese it “brings” to ramen arrived there 70 years ago. Budae jjigae was born after the Korean War, from surplus supplies from US military bases (sausages, baked beans, processed cheese slices...) combined with Korean staples such as kimchi and gochujang. Hybridisation is not a Western invention; it comes from Korea.
For brands: competitive monitoring can no longer stop at the usual competitors. In many categories, the brand setting the pace may already be Asian.
Authenticity is manufactured. Namdong is a Unilever brand with a Korean name, inspired by jjigae stews. It works because consumers buy a cultural story more than a provenance. According to Innova, what draws Gen Z to Asian food, and Korean food in particular, is flavour that comes with a cultural story, richer than novelty alone.
For brands: borrowing a flavour is no longer enough. You need the legitimacy to tell the story that comes with it, or a more credible brand will tell it instead. The line between borrowing and imitating becomes a brand issue, not just an R&D one.
Competition is no longer only on the shelf. Heytea, Chagee and Luckin are not exporting flavours, they are exporting a model: digital ordering, customisation, fast recipe rotation. In the US, K-café culture is built on customisation (base, topping, add-ins), with drinks such as Hojicha Latte, Black Sesame Latte or Sweet Potato Latte.
For brands: copying the recipe does not match the experience. The real gap lies in the speed of innovation and in how much room consumers are given to build their own product.
This movement echoes Mintel’s 2027 prediction, Products to Systems. Consumers are looking for specific outcomes, and brands need to carve out a clear role within the personal ecosystems people build around health, convenience and wellbeing. Asian café drinks already have that role: hojicha, for instance, is both a treat and a low-caffeine choice. For a brand, the question is no longer just “which flavour?” but “what role in my consumer’s day?”.
This shift could last. Mintel expects that by 2040, Asian comfort foods could overtake Western classics among younger consumers. In the UK, nearly half of Gen Z already say emerging cuisines have replaced more established ones in their regular meals. Brands waiting for the trend to be confirmed will arrive after the ones that created it.
The question for next week's board
The question is no longer which ingredient to add to your recipe, but why your brand would still be legitimate if it stopped defining itself by its Western roots. If you had to strip away all codes inherited from your historical heritage to adopt an Asian aesthetic, what would remain of your value proposition? The fear of losing identity is often the main obstacle to true cultural agility.
Stress test: your brand vs. Asia
Put your brand up against an Asian brand setting the pace in your category. See what holds.
- Name the challenger. Identify the Asian brand already setting the pace in your category, or likely to tomorrow: a Buldak, a Heytea.
- Separate flavour from culture. List what your brand sells. On one side, what can be copied: recipe, format, price. On the other, what can’t: a story, a ritual, a community.
- Flip the lens. Which part of your culture would a 20-year-old in Seoul or Shanghai want to remix, the way Korea did with American cheese?
- Test your legitimacy. If a group launched a brand “inspired by” your heritage tomorrow, as Namdong did with Korea, what would it have that is more credible than you?
- Measure the model gap. Compare your speed of innovation and the room you give consumers to build their own product with the challenger’s.
If most of what you sell can be copied, that is where to invest: in the story, the ritual or the community no one else can take over.