Phase or Forever? Toby’s Trends 2025 Mega Recap

0:28The best B2B marketing gets wasted on the wrong people. good morning bird daily show i'm neil freiman and i'm toby howell today what were the kids up to this year i'll tell you in a supersized version of toby's trends it's tuesday december 30th let's ride now everyone's second favorite segment on the podcast behind neil's numbers is toby's trends It's where I take a deep dive in the business world and emerge with a trend that will have your grandparents going, now how did you get so smart? For this special holiday week episode, the team and I went back and combed through every trend we talked about this year.

1:12Some of them are random, six, seven. Some of them fit into a broader theme, but all of them will make you feel smart if you bring them up in front of your friends. So, Neil, are you ready to have your mind blown? Let's do it. But first, a word from our sponsor, Public. Neil, I have to talk to you about something. Toby, for the last time, I do not want to hear about your golf trip last weekend. No, no, no, no. It's public. Before on public, you could build a multi-asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, and crypto. But now, in addition to that, they have generated assets, which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI.

1:47You can type in any prompt like AI-powered supply chain companies with positive free cash flow or defense tech companies growing revenue 25 % year over year. Okay. That's legitimately cool. So with generated assets, you can create investable indexes, kind of like ETFs, but they are your own ideas. Yep. Completely customizable, just like my golf swing. Get started at public.com slash morning brew and earn a uncapped 1 % bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com slash morning brew. Paid for by public investing, full disclosures in podcast description. Now, I tell you what, I must have been hungry picking some of these trends because a lot of them are food related.

2:28And when it comes to your guts, maybe the definitive trend of the year was creatine coming back with a force. The powder has had a glow up since your meathead friends were ripping it in between classes in high school. It's now one of the most popular and widely studied supplements in the world with links to improve cognition and memory benefits in addition to giving you the energy and strength to train harder and recover faster. Sales of the supplement at Vitamin Shop surged 320 % from 2019 to today. I don't know who was running PR for creatine this year, but suddenly it felt like it was everywhere.

2:59And the customer base has expanded beyond the gym bros that it's typically been associated with. At GNC, women now account for 30 % of all creatine purchases, up from 18 % in 2020. There's a whole lot of research going into the mental health benefits of this supplement, as well as specific uses for women with dealing with menopause and things like that. So the customer base has widened, and there doesn't seem to be anything truly wrong with creatine. We've read up a lot of it. There's been an increase in studies 7 % year over year for the last five years. So this is one of the most widely studied supplements on the market.

3:35And, you know, everyone I know is taking creatine. I started taking it. I had a little tub on my desk this whole year. I actually ran out. And then my fiance started taking it. So you're right. It is completely – can you imagine going back to high school and remembering which kids kind of gravitated towards creatine now. And then now seeing like who's taking it in this day and age, it has been a glow up. It's just the word that I like to use because also the form factor has changed. It's not just a dubious white powder sitting in a tub. There's little gummies now. You can put it in drinks. So I definitely think that it's had a good PR rebrand, which is why it's come back into the mainstream.

4:12Okay, so phase or forever for creatine. Are we going to see this trend continue into the next few years? I mean, as you said, most studied supplement, I think there's nothing that is going to slow its role now. I think we're only going to see more form factors going forward and more, you know, maybe yossified brands of creatine. So I think it's a forever thing, Phaser Forever for you. Yeah, I'm with you. I think it does come down to also these influencers, whether they continue to promote it. It has been heavily promoted by huge podcasters, Andrew Huberman, Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, people that seem to know like what they're talking about when it comes to health, at least in terms of Andrew Huberman on that particular list.

4:47So yes, I see this as something that's more of a permanent trend than just a one trick, Sally. Our next trend moves us up in the world of dining. We're talking about slimy, briny caviar. Caviar is having a bit of a moment, finding itself on dishes far beyond the scope of creme fraiche and crackers, mostly because it got a lot more affordable. Up-to-date data is a little bit hard to come by, but the price for a kilogram of imported caviar was around$240 in 2020, down from about$440 in 2014. The big reason for this, it's China. Today, most of the little fish balls that cross your lips come to the U.S.

5:23from farms in China, where government support, plentiful waterways, and cheap labor have pushed down for prices. But thanks to this flood of cheaper eggs, restaurants have started doing some crazy things with the ingredient. Kokodak, a Korean fried chicken restaurant in New York City puts a dollop on top of a McDonald's-style chicken nugget, while you can get a$68 sour cream and onion dip in Nashville adorned with the fancy orbs. Neil, this used to be an unattainable symbol of luxury, but now it's entered the mainstream dining experience. I think the foundation for the caviar boom was laid down back in 2020 and 2021 during lockdowns when these caviar companies, as well as fine dining restaurants, they were closed and they needed a way to reach consumers.

6:06So what they did was go direct to consumer and sell it to you directly online. So people were bringing caviar into their homes and then doing quote unquote caviar bumps. And that was a huge thing on social media. It spread widely on the internet and people were seeing caviar as a way to have a little fun and be a little indulgent at a time when you are at home. And then all these restaurants, once they opened back up, hopped on the trend and they can because caviar got a lot cheaper because of the flood in from China. I think that restaurants are treating it as a loss leader in a lot of ways where people will post them doing bumps on social media.

6:43You know, having caviar on social media because it's a very, you know, luxury item that people like to document. So some restaurateurs literally said it's more like our Costco rotisserie chicken, which is, you know, the famous chicken to get people in the doors. It doesn't necessarily make money off it, but it gets you in the restaurant. It gets you sitting down in the seat because, you know, everyone wants to try a little caviar on a chicken nugget. Okay, Neil, phase or forever? Phase. I think caviar is a phase. It's going to be too expensive for most people to try it. So even at these places, they are$60,$70, these caviar dishes.

7:17I don't see this lasting. Neither do I. I'm totally with you. Our next food trend is more of a crunchy, creamy variety. It's Dubai chocolate. I'm not sure how you could have missed it, but if you've been living under a rock, Dubai chocolate is a sweet treat that consists of a milk chocolate bar stuffed with a creamy green pistachio filling and a shredded pastry known as katafi. First made by an Emirati chocolatier, it initially debuted to modest success back in 2021, but that totally changed after the smashing success of one TikTok. A video posted in December of 2023 that featured a girl just eating Dubai chocolate in her car.

7:52The ASMR vibes combined with the clearly delicious looking treat racked up 120 million views and put it on the map. Also, it put some strain on one key ingredient. One nut trader told the Financial Times that the pistachio world is basically tapped out at the moment with the craze pushing prices to over$10 a pound, a 34 % rise in just a year. Neil, after doing this story back in April, you literally could not escape Dubai chocolate. It felt like the little boo-boo of the confectionary world. You could not escape a trader. Joe's sells a Dubai chocolate bar. IHOP did a limited time Dubai pancake stack, which sounds absolutely incredible.

8:30Baskin Robbins had an ice cream flavor for Dubai, chocolate, Costco, Walmart, QVC, Lint. You go down the line and every single brand that sells anything remotely connected to chocolate or confections or candy or even pancakes was hopping on this trend. And even Hershey's earlier this month came out with its own Dubai-inspired chocolate bar. And when Hershey's buys into this, I think there's the idea that this is not just a flash in the pan, but something that's a little more lasting here. So I already gave you my answer. I think Dubai chocolate is going to be lasting. It has the right texture and it has that creamy filling that I think will make it a popular confection for years to come.

9:07Spoken like someone who has tried it, which we did try it. We did a little video about it and we were both pretty presently surprised. It's got the crunch. The crunch is what makes it. It is probably a little too sweet, especially if you're not someone who's into sweet tooth. But I do think that the textural aspect of it is something that will keep it around for a long time. Finally, we'll give your gut a rest, but not before we destroy it. with one last trend, which is restaurants going all in on spicy foods. Restaurant trains tripled down on hot foods that younger consumers love this year. Chipotle rolled out a spicy adobo ranch.

9:39In May, Taco Bell debuted its Mike's Hot Honey Diablo sauce. And not to be left behind, Wendy's released a Takis Fuego meal, while the usually mild Mediterranean chain Kava launched hot Harissa pita chips in April. In total, U.S. restaurant chains launched 76 new spicy menu items from March to June, bringing the total number of restaurants that offer at least one spicy item on their menu to 95%, according to analysis by Data Essential. So Neil, if you wanted to create buzz both online and in customers' mouths this year, the best way to make a new hot food item was to make that food item hot. One of the TikTok challenges that sparked the spicy food craze was people eating bulldog ramen.

10:20It's called the fire noodle challenge. Now, this has various grades of spiciness from not spicy at all to like 4X spice. I tried 2X spice once. I can tolerate spice. Like, I can have a lot of spicy things. I'm just stating a fact. I tried this. It was so spicy. I couldn't stomach it. But people were filming themselves eating this type of ramen, spicy ramen, as well as a bunch of other spicy foods. And people just love the reactions. And I think that is one of the inspirations for why people are so obsessed with spicy food right now. There are obviously different grades of spice. I think people are, you know, who knows what spice tolerance most people have.

11:02It's probably not 2X, 3X, 4X for this ramen, but it does seem to be like a huge wave. No, you're right. Mukbang, which are just live stream broadcasts of people eating spicy foods, is an enduring trend of the Internet. As long as the Internet is around, I think we'll still have Mukbangs because it is just compelling content. but also the business case, Dave's Hot Chicken, was started just a few years ago. A PE steak originally bought a part in that company, valuing it at a billion dollars. So clearly this is just the thing that's resonating in the restaurant industry right now. If you want to go viral on social media, you have to have a little spice in it because young people just love this stuff.

11:38I could not be more opposed to this trend. I can do - It's vanilla. I love. Literally, I mean, you said one X spice. I'm like half an X spice. So I'm a little bit of more. I've been getting better though. You know, I can do sriracha at this point. I think people just want to feel things. Yeah, that is true. The youth want to feel some. I do think it's enduring though, because you know, spice is a, it's a great, it's a great trend. Okay. We've talked about what food you were all eating, but now it's time for a little night out on the town. What were the trends that dominated going out with friends this year?

12:07Perhaps nothing was more divisive than this trend about bar tabs. There is a growing cohort of Gen Z bar goers who simply refuse to open a tab. Their version was the subject of a New York Times article that chronicled how many 20-somethings were opting to close out after every single overpriced Allogast White rather than keep their bar tab running. One explanation for their tab trepidation is that younger drinkers consume less alcohol, so they're fine with one-and-done transactions. Manly, though, they just don't like carrying the mental weight. It increases anxiety in me when I leave a tab open, a 26-year-old beer sales rep told The Times.

12:44Neil, what the heck is going on here? What do you think about this shift in bar etiquette? Maybe it's the 34-year-old in me, but I hate this trend. I think you should leave a tab open because one of life's great satisfactions is you're at a table with all your friends and someone goes, hey, can I have another round? Or like, I'm going to go up to the bar. Does anyone want anything? And then you just say, yeah, I got a tab open. Just put it on my tablet. That is the best feeling in the world. And this could not be more annoying for bartenders or people who own bars. Because one of the hidden major costs of bars, other than labor and rent, is credit card swipe fees.

13:19Those are substantial. So every time you're swiping a card that you don't have to because someone didn't leave a tab open, that is more money coming out of your bank account, let alone all the time it takes to do that every single time while you're trying to serve others who are lined up at the bar two, three, four deep. So I'm totally against this trend. I completely understand why they're doing it. But I think you should just try it once, leave a bar tab open, and see how good it feels when you can say, put it on my tab. The other business angle of this is that Gen Z is drinking less than previous generations.

13:50A Gallup poll in 2023 found a 10-point decline over the past two decades in the share of 18 to 34-year-olds who report consuming alcohol. This has been something that we've talked about a lot over the past year is that people are drinking less. and one way to monitor your drinking is to not have a tab open, is to say, every time I go up to get a drink, I have to do the motion of tapping my card. It makes you just more perceptive of what's going on. So I think you're totally right, though. This was one of the defining trends of the year, though. Probably, we got hundreds of comments, hundreds of emails on both sides of the equation, honestly.

14:25It truly seems to be a generational divide. Some bartenders are like, just buck up, people. Like, I don't want to see you every five minutes It's just open the tab. Exactly what you're describing right now. Some people said that literally, respectfully, someone has to bully these people. These are bartenders saying this. And I think that probably you're right. I do think it's enduring though. Like people are in the tap to pay era right now. The other weird thing that young people are doing when they go out is sitting next to each other. Communal tables have alternated between popularity and dining room pariah, but they are so back right now.

14:59New data from Resi showed that 90 % of Gen Z diners say they enjoy communal seating compared to just 60 % of boomers. A lot of people report meeting friends or dates at these long banquet setups. They see it as a low-pressure way to share plates, save a little money, join conversations, and feel plugged into something going around them. Neil, I think this is still polarizing, though. Would you want to break bread with strangers at the table? All I'll say is that whenever communal dining makes a comeback, and it's very cyclical, it's not good news for the rest of the world. So if you talk to restaurateurs or people in the hospitality industry, they point to certain years and times when communal dining was big.

15:40One of those was after 9-11 in 2001 in New York. People wanted to be together. And so, you know, nothing great was going on. Then same thing happened in 2008 after the financial crisis. People were down on their luck. They wanted to be together. Communal dining rose. And then if you go all the way back to the Second World War, there were a huge amount of communal dining in the U.K. hey, this was promoted by Winston Churchill as a way of promoting togetherness during tough times. So the bottom line is, I think whenever it's, it may be a recession indicator when you see communal dining on the rise.

16:12And for that reason, I'm going to say this is a total phase and it's not something that's more permanent. The only time I think communal dining is fun is on the ski mountain. Like everyone comes in, there's no space for everyone. You just gotta sit down and say, hey, how was it out there? That's the only time I can remember consciously saying, oh yeah, it's totally fine. to Sinex of Strangers, but I don't know what other scenario I would do it in, like a beer hall or something like that. Yeah, I guess it goes back to the other trend. Gen Z is drinking less, so maybe they're not showing up in beer halls.

16:38So some conflicting data points there because, yeah, people want to hang out and yet they're trepidatious about, you know, drinking and going out. So I think you are right. It shifts. You know, sometimes it's bowling alone. Sometimes it's dining out with friends. It just ebbs and flows as society changes. So we all know you guys were eating with each other and not starting tabs. What were you up to when you were on your own time? What hobbies were in vogue this year? And I hate to break it to you, but y 'all some grandmas. A growing portion of young Americans are taking up grandma hobbies, skipping middle age entirely, as the Wall Street Journal put it, and embracing main character in a cozy British miniseries vibes.

17:17Grandma hobbies or granny core includes doing things like joining a knitting circle, junk journaling, or really anything low tech that requires less scrolling and more slip stitches. In a survey of 2 ,000 US adults, the research firm Mintel found that 86 % of Gen Z identifies as crafters. The market is catching on too. Shopify reported in May alone that sales of cross-stitch patterns jumped 89 % year over year, while embroidered canvas sales climbed 88%. You know, I think for a lot of people, It's just nice to make something that isn't made up of pixels. So many of your trends, I think we need to talk about in the context of we just had a global pandemic, right?

17:58Like just four or five years ago, everyone was inside their homes. There was no socialization. There was a lot of isolation. I think a lot of the trends that we've been talking about are born straight from the pandemic, specifically among Gen Z, who had their college careers cut short and they had to do Zoom classes. And they're just looking for a way to be with each other at a time of, you know, screens are everywhere and they weren't able to socialize with each other during extremely formative years. So I think this is one way this granny core granny skills and crafting is one way for people to be together at a time when they were they had all these things cut short for them.

18:35I also noticed that people say this with with a bunch of pride, like low key pride. They're like, yeah, I have a lot of granny hobbies. And they say it in a way that seems to be self-demeaning. But you can tell inside they are actually really proud of it. Because you're learning a skill. You're making something. I totally love this trend. It's cool to know how to knit. It's cool to know how to make something. I don't know how to do any of those things. I recently just started painting watercolor again, though. I don't know if that constitutes as a granny hobby. We're just kind of applying the label to anything that isn't on your phones at this point.

19:08But it's fun. Yeah. analog stuff is so in. You're right. If we had to put a overarching trend on a lot of these things, it is just ditching digital, getting back to in-person, doing more analog stuff. So I think you're right. It is a forever trend. All right. We're going to take a quick break and come back with more trends right after this. Neil, how can a brand inspire enough loyalty in their customers that they won't switch to something new? Well, my suggestion of including clips of my beautiful singing voice before every podcast got rejected. Yeah. Imagine that. Telecom brands know all about this though.

19:40They sit at the intersection of current subscribers and new prospects. Amazon ads can reach these audiences together across Prime Video, Fire TV, Twitch, Alexa, and more, helping telecom brands show up where connection truly happens. With Amazon ads first-party insights spanning streaming, browsing, and shopping signals, telecom marketers can reach valuable audiences. This enables smarter acquisition, cross-sell, and loyalty strategies grounded in performance. To learn more, visit advertising.amazon.com. That's advertising.amazon.com. All right, so you guys weren't sitting scrolling on your phones, good for you, but something else you may not have been doing is reading, specifically if you're a dude.

20:23If you're a guy and read a fiction book in the last year, you're a rare unicorn in today's literary landscape. The New York Times published a big piece this year titled, Why Did the Novel Reading Man Disappear? In it, they noted that the book industry skews heavily female with a 2023 study from Lee and Lo finding that 71 % of publishing's workforce are women. There is also the famous stat cited in many an op-ed that men account for only 20 % of the fiction market compared to 80 % for women. But it turns out that that stat is basically made up according to Vox and the gap is not nearly as yawning as you might think.

20:57The closest thing they could find was a 2017 survey from the UK that found women bought 63 % of fiction while men bought 37%. So women probably do read a little bit more than men and probably read more fiction, but nothing crazy. Neil, this was one of my murkier trends, the great case of the mysterious novel reading men, and I can't wait to talk to a novel reading man about it. Well, it seems like we do need more performative males out there, at least carrying a book around to make it look like you are. I'm gonna defend my fellow men here and just say that nobody is reading anymore, male or female.

21:32Reading for pleasure in the United States has fallen by more than 40 % over the past two decades. That's according to an analysis of the US government's American Time Use Survey, which tracks how people spend their time. The proportion of people in America who read for pleasure on an average day fell from 28 % in 2003 to just 16 % in 2023. So whether you're a guy or a girl, it seems like no one is reading much. at all anymore. I'm glad you mentioned performative males and performative reading, though. That is something that the New York Times article talked about, about why people may not be reading as much anymore, because they're afraid of looking like a performative person, you know, in public, as it's been dubbed on social media.

22:14So there are some accounts fully dedicated to this, where it's pictures of performative males usually reading a book that is conspicuously something that might appeal to the opposite sex in a very public setting. So there are truly some performative people out there, but sometimes you just wanna grow up and read actual good books. So you are right though. This is a trend that is not confined to a single gender. It is just something that is happening in our very social media obsessed world. It's hard to find time to read anymore. I've been in a little bit of a reading drought recently. What was the last book you read?

22:48I read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but I don't even know if that counts necessarily because that's like a classic. So I'm kind of making my way through there, but nothing modern these days. You are a big reader. I can see something is in your eye right now. You can drop whatever book you want to drop. I don't read that many books. I try to have a book on my nightstand. The one I am reading right now, I'm almost done with, is called The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. And it's just considered one of the best books of the year. So whenever I see books like that, and it's like this big family saga about immigrants from India and a love story, I'm like, that's for me.

23:18So I am reading it right now. It's quite excellent. I remember the first time we talked about this trend, And we spoke about the idea of a Morning Brew Daily book club. So I'm going to ask people to weigh in one more time. Should we start a book club going forward in 2026? It seems like a good idea to me. At least a performative idea. Exactly. All right. Trends by nature are cyclical, which means something is either dying or on the comeback trail. So this section is dedicated to revivals, those trends that things were so over for but are now so back. And let's start with braces. suddenly jaw hardware became the hottest new status symbol amongst the youth and adults alike orthodontists have reported a rise in interest in the once uncool og metal braces as wearers embrace their imperfections to flash metallic smiles with pride part of the appeal is undeniably tied to price tag braces can range from three thousand dollars to ten thousand dollars and are often not covered by insurance so rocking 10 bands on your face is just the latest way to flex Neil, as a former brace face myself, I am happy to see this narrative shifting, but it's a little bit baffling at the same time.

24:24It is baffling. I'm not so, I'm not so, I guess I don't really care one way or the other. I don't think it's going to last though. I'm an Invisalign user. Well, actually, okay. I had braces and then I didn't wear my retainer. And then a couple of years ago I did Invisalign during the pandemic. So I guess I can speak from both sides of the equation. Let's just hear from the people themselves who are getting these braces and why they say they're doing it. One of them said, I get that Invisalign is for individuals who are shy about showing others they're working on themselves, but I'm bold, loud, and proud about my journey of improvement and individuality.