Under the theme of "Paving the Way for Trends, Leading the Future", Future Menus 2026 offers forecasts for the culinary industry's future. Businesses, restaurants, and chefs can proactively embrace new trends, enhance operational capabilities, and optimize performance with strategic insights and technology support from the Unilever Food Solutions chef team.

Last year, the event attracted 350 experts, chefs, and operators, featuring unique culinary demonstrations.

Restaurant representatives and chefs attending Future Menus 2025. Photo: Unilever Food Solutions

Restaurant representatives and chefs attending Future Menus 2025. Photo: Unilever Food Solutions

According to event organizers, Vietnam's F&B market is constantly evolving. F&B professionals now face challenges: how to select trends suited to their business model, implement them effectively, and balance creativity, operations, and growth objectives.

Future Menus 2026 continues to update four culinary trends, expanding its platform to support chefs and restaurant owners in accessing and realizing business ideas.

The first trend is "The Beauty of Street Flavors", where familiar dishes are elevated with quality ingredients and refined presentation, while retaining their core flavors. Following this, "Cross-Border Cuisine" applies international techniques to refresh Vietnamese dishes, prioritizing harmony to appeal to diners' palates.

Returning to original values, the "Essence of Local Heritage" trend celebrates local ingredients and lesser-known traditional processing techniques from various regions. The final trend suggested by the organizers is "Personalized Menus", offering chefs the freedom to showcase their skills and create their unique flavor stories.

Chef Quach Hai Vinh, Executive Chef of UFS Vietnam. Photo: Unilever Food Solution

Chef Quach Hai Vinh, Executive Chef of UFS Vietnam. Photo: Unilever Food Solution

A key highlight of Future Menus 2026 is integrating trends into practical operational scenarios, thereby creating competitive business solutions for restaurants and chefs. The program aims to help F&B professionals operate more easily, enhance customer experience with every meal, and flexibly address evolving diner demands to create a unique mark on Vietnam's F&B map.

Notably, Future Menus 2026 marks the first integration of artificial intelligence (AI) as a tool to support chefs in their creative process and future demand understanding. This technological application is expected to help chefs more quickly update to new market movements, understand diners more deeply, and bridge the gap from idea to reality. This approach demonstrates that AI is gradually becoming a new supporting force, helping to build team capabilities and enhance customer experience.

According to event organizers, by providing market forecasts and practical solutions, Future Menus 2026 promises to be a pillar of support, helping business owners, restaurants, and chefs thrive in the F&B market in the coming period.

Yen Chi