What grocery retailers can learn from restaurants about finding CPG’s next breakout flavor
Walk into almost any pizza or wing restaurant today and look at the menu. There’s a good chance you’ll find hot honey drizzled over pizza, tossed with wings or paired with fried chicken. McDonald’s introduced Hot Honey Sauce nationally this year, while Subway went even further by bringing hot honey back and creating an entire Hot Honey Signature Swicy Collection.
Why should a grocery retailer care about what’s happening at the pizza place down the street? Because that restaurant may be showing you what belongs on your shelves next. Hot honey provides a case study of how a flavor can move from restaurant discovery to mass foodservice and eventually become a multi-category CPG opportunity.
Hot Honey Didn’t Start in Grocery
The modern hot honey movement is closely associated with Mike Kurtz, founder of Mike’s Hot Honey, who helped popularize chile-infused honey on pizza at Paulie Gee’s in Brooklyn. It was remarkably simple: sweet honey, spicy chile and salty pizza. Consumers didn’t need an explanation to understand what they were getting.
Hot honey eventually moved from pizza to wings, chicken, sandwiches and breakfast. Datassential reports it now appears on more than 11% of U.S. restaurant menus, while consumer awareness has reached 75%. Then something even more important happened for retailers: hot honey followed consumers into grocery.
Five Times the Sales
One of my favorite examples is also one of my favorite potato chips. In 2023, Utz partnered with Mike’s Hot Honey to launch Utz Mike’s Hot Honey Potato Chips as a limited-time offering. Apparently, consumers agreed with me.
According to Utz, the product generated five times the dollar sales of the company’s previous best potato-chip LTO. Within three months, Utz moved the flavor into its permanent lineup. Hot honey had become more than a restaurant trend; it was a CPG case study.
Restaurants Are Doing Some of Your Research
Here’s where things get interesting for grocery retailers. A shopper tries hot honey wings, later orders a hot honey pizza and eventually encounters the flavor at McDonald’s or Subway. When that shopper sees Hot Honey potato chips in grocery, the package isn’t introducing an unfamiliar flavor anymore.
Foodservice has already done some of the trial work for the retailer. Publix added Hot Honey as an option for their very popular “Deli” sub menu. That’s why buyers should watch restaurant menus, QSR launches and social food trends alongside traditional sales data. Restaurants aren’t simply places where consumers eat; they’re flavor laboratories.
We’re watching another example right now with Chipotle. The chain recently introduced Chili Lime Chips as a limited-time offering, its first seasoned tortilla chip, after watching customers pair packaged seasoned chips with its food. Chipotle says social mentions of seasoned chips paired with its entrées have increased more than 1,500% since 2022.
One Flavor, Multiple Aisles
A great flavor doesn’t create just one SKU; it creates a platform. Hot honey can appear in condiments, chips, pretzels, frozen pizza, meat, cheese, deli and prepared foods. Finding that opportunity early can therefore be far more valuable than identifying one successful new item.
For buyers, the opportunity is to start looking outside traditional category data before the next assortment review. Monitor QSR launches, restaurant menus, food trucks and social food trends, then look for flavors repeatedly appearing across concepts, cuisines and eating occasions. Don’t chase every LTO; look for patterns.
So What’s Next?
If I were placing a bet today, spicy maple would be near the top of my list. Everyone understands maple and everyone understands spicy, giving it the same familiarity advantage that helped hot honey. Think Hot Maple Potato Chips, Spicy Maple BBQ Sauce, pretzels, nuts, chicken and jerky.
Add smoke and the opportunity becomes even more interesting. Smoky Hot Maple delivers sweet, spicy, salty and smoky flavors in one experience. Hot honey may have been sweet heat 1.0; hot maple could become sweet heat 2.0.
I’m also watching tropical heat, particularly Pineapple Jalapeño, Mango Habanero and Guava Chile. These combinations are easy to understand and can travel across snacks, salsa, sauces, beverages and prepared foods. Chili crisp deserves attention as well, combining heat with savory flavor, umami and texture.
Look Across the Street
Grocery retailers have tremendous amounts of data telling them what’s happening inside their stores. That data is essential, but it’s particularly good at telling us what has already happened. The next breakout flavor may become visible somewhere else first.
McDonald’s and Subway helped validate hot honey at mass scale, while Utz showed what could happen when that trend reached CPG. Now Chipotle is introducing Chili Lime Chips after observing how consumers were already eating seasoned chips. These aren’t isolated launches; they’re signals.
During your next assortment review, don’t just look down the aisle. Look across the street and pay attention to what consumers are ordering there. The restaurant next door may already be selling your next best-selling flavor.
