From the dawn of the frappé to the TikTok-famous whipped coffee, MONIN charts the rise of signature drinks and how they’ve revolutionised the coffee landscape.
Whether it’s a certain fit of jeans (skinny is out, wide leg is in), a haircut (Australia still isn’t over the mullet), or what we’re eating (pickles and cherries are 2025’s hot picks, apparently), almost every aspect of our lives is influenced by trends.
Often, it’s near impossible to track down the true origin of these fashions, but as the world becomes more interconnected, they are mushrooming faster, shifting quicker, and reaching more people than ever before. These trends are powerful tools for business owners, and in the world of coffee the signature drinks market is driving innovation and creating new revenue streams.
While the rise of social media over the past decade has fuelled the popularity of these creative menu additions, according to Danni Choy, Brand Ambassador of specialist syrup brand MONIN, signature drinks first came onto the scene in the late 1990s.
“They didn’t go under the guise of signature drinks, but ‘gourmet’ coffee options with additional flavours first gained popularity at chains such as Starbucks, and then that translated to Australia in places like Gloria Jean’s,” says Danni.
“This broadened their menus from just coffee, opening up their offering to a wider range of consumers. You would have frappés and blended drinks, often featuring flavours that were complementary to coffee such as vanilla, caramel, and hazelnut.”
These drinks not only introduced a new customer base, including younger consumers who didn’t yet have the palate for coffee, but also enabled cafés to charge more for specialist drinks. While at first much of the independent café scene in Australia stayed true to the third-wave coffee movement that was sweeping the country, favouring high-quality beans served simply to focus on the flavour of the coffee, the building momentum of the Barista Championships, which features a creative signature drink round, saw café owners take note.
“Coffee was becoming almost too structured on café menus in Australia. It was largely just flat whites, lattes, long blacks, cappuccinos, and pourovers – there wasn’t a lot of versatility,” says Danni.
“When barista competitions started to become very popular, we saw a surge in interest in signature drinks. Not caramel iced coffees, but drinks that pushed the boundaries of what consumers expected from a coffee. Independent cafés realised these drinks could add a point of difference to their menus.”
With the specialty sector prioritising quality and the origin of the coffees they served, flavour became a major focus of these creative concoctions.
“Baristas sought flavours that not only complemented but also contrasted the profile of the coffee they were matching them with. It was quite experimental. For example, pairing cherry with an espresso sounds a bit weird, but it actually brings out so much of the sweetness and jamminess of the coffee,” she says.
While French brand MONIN had long served the café market, providing quality syrups for lattes and other traditional coffee beverages, this concentration on flavour and signature drinks in the early 2010s is when the company saw an opportunity for innovation in the sector.
Originally founded by Georges Monin in 1912, MONIN started as a liqueur producer, adding flavoured syrups to its range in the late 1920s.
“After supplying bars for more than a decade, Georges and team realised consumers were also looking for non-alcoholic options. While the company largely supplied bars for the first 60 years, when syrups began to be added to coffee in the late 1980s, it was a natural progression for it to diversify into the café space,” says Danni.
“Today, MONIN is at the forefront of innovation. We have development hubs around the world, creating syrup flavours tailored to the tastes of individual markets. For example, our dragon fruit syrup is super popular in Europe, but in Malaysia where the fruit grows abundantly it’s not part of the range because café and bar owners have easy access to the fresh version.”
While many syrup brands have come and gone over the years, Danni believes MONIN’s longevity and success is down to the ingredients it prioritises and the constant development of its ranges.
“We have established ourselves as a premium brand and pride ourselves on using premium ingredients, such as raw cane sugar in all our syrups, which has a much richer flavour,” she says.
“We’re also continuously tracking trends to ensure we’re delivering the flavours our customers want. Our range is constantly expanding, responding to industry developments.”
MONIN’s research and development team are kept on their toes by the fast-paced nature of flavour trends. The signature drink market has skyrocketed over the past five years, something Danni attributes to a number of factors.
“Social media has had a huge influence on the trends we’re seeing in cafés. I often get clients coming to me saying they’ve seen something on TikTok and want to know how they can recreate their own version at their café. So many people have asked me how they can add cold foams to their menu since the viral whipped coffee trend,” she says.
“The aesthetic nature of the drinks means they’re very photogenic and people want to share them, and that can make a café go viral. There’s a new matcha place near me and the queue is always out the door. I spoke to a friend and they told me the owner is TikTok famous.”
What’s more, café owners are embracing the appetite for signature drinks and helping to build the market because it’s another revenue stream for them.
“It’s a challenging time for cafés at the moment. People are buying coffee less often, so owners need a way to entice customers in and encourage them to spend a little more,” she says.
Looking back at the drinks trends cafés have embraced over the past few decades, Danni admits there are some she would rather forget.
“I owned a little café in Queensland for a few years. It was right at the time that wellness lattes were popular and we served a turmeric version. Looking back, they were terrible,” she says.
“Freak shakes, with piles of doughnuts, fairy floss, and lollies were another. I remember seeing cafés serving them with syrup on the outside of the glass, thinking ‘how on earth can the customer pick that up?’.”
While there will always be trends we hope won’t be revived, Danni believes there are some novel ideas on the horizon and that creative baristas in Australia are looking to Asia for inspiration.
“I think Asian flavours are going to be huge in the signature drinks space in 2025. My hot pick is ube lattes, which I think we’ll start to see more widely this year,” she says.
“Ube is an Asian purple sweet potato that’s ground into a fine powder and blended with milk or hot water like you would matcha. It has a lovely rich, earthy flavour. The team at Nimbo in Melbourne already have it on their menu – I think it will be this year’s strawberry matcha latte.”
Another Asian-inspired flavour Danni expects we’ll see more of this year is mugwort – or ssuk as it’s known in Korea, where it’s quickly becoming a specialty café staple.
“I first tried it as an ice cream and thought ‘wow, this is delicious’. It was interesting and had a lot of depth. It can also be prepared as a latte, and because it’s low in caffeine I think it could become another popular alternative to coffee.”
Danni also thinks sparkling tonic creations will get a lot more airtime on café menus in 2025.
“People are shifting away from heavy, dense drinks and instead I think we’ll see more espresso tonics with a touch of flavour. They are super refreshing and easy to put together when you have the right ingredients,” she says.
“Strawberry matcha lattes are here to stay, but I think there’ll be a greater focus on the quality of the matcha and there’ll also be more interest in traditionally prepared matcha drinks.”
While many of these innovations are coming out of Asia, Danni believes Australia is still a trendsetter in the specialty scene. She highlights the Mont Blanc coffee, one of the biggest signature drink trends of 2023, which was created by the team at Good Measure in Carlton.
“The Mont Blanc took off around the world. Speaking to baristas in Europe, Australia is still very much an influence in the specialty scene. But, a lot of that innovation is influenced by other cultures and then made more accessible by baristas and café owners here,” she says.
At MONIN’s innovation studio in Brunswick, Melbourne, Danni works with cafés to fine tune their menus and add viral-worthy signature drinks to their offering. She recently collaborated with Queen Baker, a new café project in the city’s Queen Victoria Market.
“The team at Queen Baker came to us because they wanted to explore adding some house sodas to their menu. At the studio, we went through a series of flavour combinations, adding a touch of salt and citric acid to some of the drinks to elevate the result,” she says.
“They were super happy with the new additions to their menu, which were easy to recreate at the café with just a small number of ingredients.”
According to Danni, signature drinks are here to stay and will only get more popular as TikTok and other social media platforms continue to grow.
“It’s a trend that’s definitely going to last for another decade or two. I think people want that little bit of fun in their lives – they don’t want to take everything so seriously,” she says.
“Now, people want a unique experience every time they visit a café. People are making flat whites and long blacks at home, so the café is a place for baristas’ talents in crafting and concocting drinks to shine.”
For more information, visit stuartalexander.com.au/pages/monin
This article appears in the April/May 2025 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.
