Dubai chocolate, step aside. Watermelon is taking over
Dubai chocolate had its sweet, frenzied viral moment with consumers. Now, on to the next most-wanted flavor to grip our palate.
It may not be as exotic as pistachio cream mixed with finely-shredded crunchy pastry but it is something immediately familiar to us. It’s a fruit, and a flavor, that instantly evokes juicy sweetness and warm summer breezes.
Let’s get reacquainted with the humble watermelon.
After an intense love affair with the highly decadent Dubai chocolate dessert - and the flavor concept seeping into everything from iced matcha lattes, ice cream bars, donuts to even pizzas — tastemakers are now gushing over watermelon, a naturally-grown green ball of water (92%) with some natural sugar thrown in.
As a flavor profile, watermelon has erupted as the hottest thing in town. We’re definitely seeing it in beverages.
According to industry publication BeverageDaily, new watermelon-flavored launches are rapidly popping up in sports drinks, bottled tea offerings, sparkling water and alcohol brands.
Wendy’s WEN 0.00%↑ last month debuted a new lineup of watermelon-flavored beverages: Watermelon Lemonade, Watermelon Sparkling Energy, and Sprite Watermelon.
“With spring comes warmer weather and refreshing changes in routines, and we are seeing an appetite for bold flavors that mix comfort and discovery," Lindsay Radkoski, chief marketing officer with Wendy's, said in a statement.
Jumping on the watermelon wagon, McDonald’s MCD 0.00%↑ in April unveiled its first-ever lineup of refreshers and crafted sodas. Among the flavors - you guessed it - watermelon, or specifically, its Strawberry Watermelon Refresher, which blends strawberry and watermelon flavors with a lemonade base and freeze‑dried strawberries added in for “visual flair.”
Watermelon is appearing more frequently on restaurant menus.
The National Watermelon Promotion Board (the trade group representing more than 700 watermelon growers, shippers and importers nationwide) issued a research report earlier this year in conjunction with Menu Matters (a food and beverage consulting firm) that showed 16.3% of restaurants in the US added watermelon to their menus in 2025, up 30% from 2021.
Even non-food products, such as toothpaste, are embracing the fruit flavor. Mr. Bubble, the bath products brand, recently launched new spring products for kids at Walmart WMT 0.00%↑ that include a Walmart-exclusive watermelon bubble bath.
Tastewise, an artificial intelligence-powered consumer research platform that surfaces emerging food and beverage trends, noted that watermelon adoption is up about 8% year-over-year. It said Gen Z consumers are adopting watermelon about 1.4 times faster than the general US population, and are the cohort taking the fruit “into recovery, energy, and spicy/alcohol-free territory.”
“What is doing the work [of fueling this growth] is not the flavor itself but the functional story wrapped around it,” according to Tastewise’s analysis.
Its platform tracked functional “claims” tied to watermelon, such as “juicy,” “electrolytes,” “hydration,” and “refreshing” and found that about seven in 10 watermelon consumers tie the fruit to hydration, fitness, or wellness benefits, a higher health-claim density than nearly any other mature fruit signal in Tastewise’s database, the firm said.
“That is what is licensing watermelon’s expansion into categories where it historically did not belong. Watermelon now appears on menus from Smoothie King to Cracker Barrel, and Panda Express,” Tastewise said.
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