Something quiet but consequential has been happening across restaurant dining rooms in America. Items that once drove traffic, filled Instagram feeds, and defined a certain era of modern dining are getting ordered less and less. Chefs are noticing. Some are surprised. Others saw it coming but held on too long anyway. What dazzles diners one year can quietly fade into irrelevance the next, and according to a Menu Matters survey of consumers, the overriding need for 2025 was simply “just give me something new” – a restlessness that is reshaping what lands on tables and what quietly disappears from menus. The shift is real, data-backed, and in several cases, financially painful for restaurants that built identities around these dishes.
1. Plant-Based Burgers: From Unstoppable to Stalled
SPINS data analyzed by the Good Food Institute shows that US retail sales of most plant-based categories were down in 2024 against a backdrop of rising sales for conventional meat. Sales of plant-based meat and seafood specifically dropped 7% to $1.2 billion, with unit sales falling an even steeper 11%. The restaurant sector tells a similar story. According to Circana data, plant-based proteins were worth $289 million in broadline distributor foodservice sales in 2024, with dollar sales falling five percent and pound sales falling four percent over the year.
A December 2024 survey conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of the Good Food Institute found that among consumers who had tried plant-based meat but not eaten it in the past year, 29 percent said price was a top reason – and beyond price, taste not meeting expectations remains among the top drivers of consumers leaving the category. The brand-level numbers are even more telling. Plant-based meat is not as popular in the U.S. as it once was, with Beyond Meat’s annual sales declining in 2025 to $273.5 million – nearing 2019 levels when the category first went mainstream – and its net revenue falling 13.3% in the third quarter of 2025 alone. Restaurants that once featured these burgers prominently have been quietly pulling them from the menu or repositioning them as niche options.
2. Avocado Toast: A Cultural Punchline That Became a Pricing Problem
Avocado toast had one of the most remarkable runs in modern food culture. It went from health-café curiosity to restaurant staple to cultural punchline in under a decade. Now, even chefs are questioning its staying power. The backlash has grown less subtle over time. Chefs and diners alike are turning away from elaborate $20 avocado toast creations topped with everything from edible flowers to gold leaf, recognizing them as overpriced gimmicks rather than genuine culinary experiences.
The popularity of avocado toast is also part of a wider trend being challenged, as restaurants and diners seek out alternative toast toppings to the environmentally problematic avocado, with chefs showing that other ingredients needn’t be boring. The shift is leading to a broader trend of smashed vegetables and pulses, as restaurants and diners seek out alternatives, with chefs demonstrating that beans needn’t mean boring. The move away from avocado toast isn’t just aesthetic – it’s financial and environmental, and diners have picked up on all of it.
3. Kale Everything: Menu Fatigue Hits the Superfood
For years, kale was the poster vegetable of the health-conscious restaurant movement. It showed up in salads, smoothies, sides, and grain bowls with relentless enthusiasm. Now it signals menu fatigue more than culinary creativity. The problem isn’t the vegetable itself – it’s the repetition. Diners have seen kale reinvented so many times that the reinventions no longer feel inventive at all. Industry insiders warn against offering the same foods everyone else is offering – citing kale salads as a prime example – and advise chefs to get away from the single ingredient or dish that’s become ubiquitous.
According to insight gathered by booking platform Resy, today’s diners have “discerning palates” and look for quality, transparency, and uniqueness in their meals. A predictable kale salad dressed in lemon vinaigrette checks none of those boxes anymore. Consumers have started seeking different and unique dining experiences, and the kale salad, stripped of its novelty, simply no longer delivers that surprise. Restaurants that continue to anchor their health sections in kale-heavy dishes risk being read as outdated rather than nutritious.
4. Lengthy Tasting Menus: Too Many Courses, Too Much Money
A fresh approach to tasting menus is underway, suggesting we are entering a new era of fine dining in which the diner is empowered to choose a shorter, more casual experience. Chef Brian Kim of Manhattan’s bōm admits, “I rarely find myself wanting to sit through an extensive three-plus-hour dinner. The enjoyment derived from these dinners diminishes as the number of courses increases.” The economics have made things worse. According to the US Consumer Price Index, “food away from home” rose about 6 percent from January 2024 to September 2025, driven by rising labor, rent, and ingredient costs.
Restaurant editors have lamented the dogged persistence of the tasting menu despite sustained criticism, noting that it can feel more like bait for a Michelin star than anything with a diner in mind. There is so much to do in major cities that many diners simply don’t want to devote three to four hours to dinner, and in an era of increasingly fleeting attention spans, a longer tasting menu is arguably a harder sell. Several notable fine dining establishments have already trimmed their course counts or pivoted to à la carte formats in direct response to flagging demand.
5. QR Code Menus: The Pandemic Experiment Nobody Wants to Repeat
A sweeping 90% of Americans prefer physical printed menus over QR code-based digital menus when they eat at a restaurant – a preference that actually increased since 2023, when about 76% overall favored physical menus. It appears many diners across all ages tried scannable QR code menus during the 2020 pandemic and found them lacking. The rejection spans generations more broadly than many operators expected. In 2024, even tech-savvy Gen Z showed a strong preference for tangible menus, with around 90% favoring print, up from 69% the prior year, while older generations are overwhelmingly pro-paper, with 95% of Boomers preferring physical menus, up from 86%.
The novelty of QR code menus has given way to a desire for the familiar ease of a printed menu in hand – no Wi-Fi or phone juggling required. Restaurants may have taken note, with some that introduced digital-only menus reverting to physical ones or a hybrid approach, given that a majority of consumers still prefer the low-tech, human-centric dining experience. What restaurants pitched as a modern upgrade turned out to feel, to most diners, like a removal of hospitality rather than an improvement on it.
6. Oversized Value Menus: When Discounts Undercut the Whole Operation
The emphasis on value meals, particularly at specific price points, was a major trend in 2024 and 2025, as lower-income consumers began to reduce their restaurant spending. But the race to offer the cheapest deal has hit a wall. Consumers are demanding value in return for the hard-earned money they spend at restaurants, and according to Technomic’s 2025 annual outlook, 72% of consumers wish more restaurants would offer value meals. The tension is that value, offered carelessly, damages the brand and the bottom line simultaneously. For consumers, the value equation can involve much more than price, with expectations about quality and the overall experience playing equally important roles. Industry consultant Mike Kostyo puts it bluntly: “Operators who go all in on value pricing shoot themselves in the foot.”
Spending growth in both full-service and limited-service restaurants has declined at roughly twice the rate of transaction growth in the last two years, indicating that diners are still showing up to restaurants but, when they do, they’re trading down. Turbulent trade policies could raise food costs when many diners are already tightening their discretionary spending, and BTIG analyst Peter Saleh wrote in his December 2025 forecast that “restaurants are set for a humbling year,” citing consumer price sensitivity and strategy overhauls. Restaurants that leaned hardest into deal-driven menus are now grappling with customers who have been trained to expect discounts and resist paying full price for anything on the menu.
