Why Is Ube Suddenly Everywhere? The Purple Yam Trend Explained

In March 2026, Starbucks put an iced ube coconut macchiato on menus. Costa launched ube drinks in the UK. Pret ran an ube iced latte across the US and Europe. Within months, a Filipino purple yam that most people outside the Philippines had never heard of was the most talked about ingredient in cafes.

It did not actually happen that fast. But the last twelve months are when a decade of slow build finally tipped.

The numbers

Ube appearances on US restaurant menus have grown by around 230%, now showing up at roughly 95 major chains. Datassential has projected continued menu growth of nearly 50% through 2027. The flavour house T.Hasegawa named ube its Flavour of the Year back in 2024, well before the mainstream caught up.

Google search interest for ube hit exceptional levels globally in March 2026, sustained across multiple weeks rather than spiking and collapsing the way a single viral moment does. The LA County UbeFest drew around 100,000 people across two days.

Market forecasts put ube's growth at roughly 7% compound annual growth through 2035, which is close to what analysts project for matcha over a similar horizon. That is worth sitting with. The comparison being made is not to a passing novelty, it is to matcha.

How it actually got here

The origin story most people point to is 2016, when ube doughnuts from Manila Social Club in New York went viral. That was the moment the ingredient escaped Filipino communities and entered the general food internet.

From there it followed a familiar path: diaspora food culture plus social media reach. Filipino owned bakeries and cafes in Los Angeles, London, and New York had been serving ube for years, in some cases decades. Mamasons in London was doing ube ice cream nearly ten years ago, when customers would reportedly walk out on seeing purple ice cream. What changed was not the ingredient. What changed was that the wider market caught up to it.

By 2020 it was on cafe menus in the US. By 2024 it had reached Australia and Europe. By 2026 the big chains moved, and once Starbucks moves, the trend stops being a trend and becomes a category.

Why this one stuck

Plenty of photogenic ingredients get a season and disappear. A few things make ube different.

The colour is real. Butterfly pea flower and dragonfruit had their moments, but ube's purple survives cooking, baking, freezing, and milling. You can build a whole product line on it without a colour additive, at a moment when customers are actively suspicious of artificial dye.

Almost nobody dislikes it. This is underrated. Matcha requires acclimatisation, its bitterness and vegetal edge are a genuine barrier for a chunk of customers. Ube's mild vanilla and nut profile has effectively no learning curve. That widens the addressable customer base enormously.

It works everywhere. One ingredient covers hot lattes, iced drinks, soft serve, ice cream, cheesecake, cookies, pastries, milkshakes, and cocktails. From an operator's perspective, a single SKU that unlocks a dozen menu items is a very different proposition to a single use ingredient.

It is caffeine free. Most cafes have a genuine gap in their menu after mid afternoon, and few options that feel premium. Ube fills it.

There is a story. Ube is not a lab flavour or a marketing invention. It is a staple with centuries of Filipino agricultural and culinary history behind it. Trends with real provenance tend to have longer legs than trends without.

The matcha comparison

Every article about ube calls it the next matcha, and the framing is doing a lot of work.

There is something to it. Both are naturally coloured powders, both photograph well, both moved from a specific national food culture into global cafe menus, both are supply constrained. The growth rates are comparable.

But they are not competitors in the way the framing implies. Matcha is a caffeinated tea with a bitter, umami driven profile. Ube is a caffeine free root with a sweet, dessert leaning one. A customer choosing between them is not really making a substitution, they are making completely different decisions about what they want from a drink.

The cafes handling this best are running both. Matcha for the morning and the caffeine, hojicha for the roasted and lower caffeine slot, ube for the afternoon and the customers who want something sweeter. They serve different slots in the day and different people. If you already stock matcha and hojicha, ube extends the range rather than cannibalising it.

The supply problem

Here is the part the trend pieces mostly skip.

Purple yam production in the Philippines has been declining while global demand has been climbing. Volumes went from around 14,150 metric tons in 2021 to roughly 13,381 in 2024 and about 12,483 in 2025. Climate volatility is making harvests less predictable, and access to quality planting material is limiting how fast farmers can scale.

Demand up, supply down. The consequences are entirely predictable: prices rise, and the incentive to pass off dyed purple sweet potato as ube gets stronger. We have watched exactly this dynamic play out in the matcha shortage, where tight supply produced a wave of products that were not what the label claimed.

If you are sourcing ube, knowing how to tell it apart from taro and purple sweet potato is not a nice to have.

Where India sits

Behind, and that is the opportunity.

Ube is still new on Indian cafe menus. A handful of chains and independents in the bigger cities have run it as limited editions and specials. It has not become a fixture the way matcha has over the last few years.

Which means the window is open. India's cafe scene tends to follow global trends with a lag, and matcha's trajectory here is the obvious template: early adopters put it on menus, customers found it, and within a few years it went from novelty to standard. Ube is at the front of that curve right now rather than the middle.

Does it last?

Honest answer: probably, but not at this intensity.

The case for durability is that ube has the things short trends lack. Real cultural roots. Broad flavour appeal. Format versatility. Natural colour at a moment when that matters. Industry analysts are grouping it with pandan and yuzu as a defining flavour rather than a novelty.

The case for caution is supply. If prices climb far enough, ube risks becoming a premium limited edition rather than a standing menu item, and the market fills with cheaper imitations that damage customer trust in the real thing.

Either way, the operators who move now get to establish themselves before the category is crowded. If you are weighing it up, we cover how to actually put ube on a menu separately.

If you are thinking about it, our ube powder is Philippine purple yam with no added colour, available wholesale in 250g, 500g, and 1kg with orders starting small enough to test a menu before committing.