What’s in your glass? Inside Gen Z’s fun café-drink orders  

Trust Gen Z to make ordering drinks at a café an exercise in personality extension. A usual tea, coffee, or hot chocolate alongside the conversation gets an upgrade. Today, the drink itself can be the conversation. It arrives in a glass worth photographing, comes with a flavour combination that needs explaining, and, if the algorithm approves, might just become the next thing everyone wants to try. Welcome to the new beverage universe, where the humble drink has acquired a rather impressive social life. 

For starters, you’ve got to find a version that feels distinctly yours. There is room for wellness, but nobody is suggesting that pleasure be taken off the menu. Functional ingredients might share the spotlight with a decadent matcha, while a familiar chocolate drink gets an unexpected fruit pairing. There is also the matter of aesthetics. A beautifully layered iced drink, a striking shade of purple, or an unexpected garnish can give things an unusual twist.

For Karreena Bulchandani, founder of Mokai, this appetite for discovery is central to the way younger consumers approach beverages. "Honestly, I think it’s all three, and that’s what makes this generation interesting. You don’t necessarily have to choose between a drink being indulgent and being good for you anymore. Someone might want a really decadent matcha one day and then add collagen or functional ingredients the next. But beyond that, I think Gen Z wants a drink to have a personality. It has to taste good, but it also has to feel like them. There’s an element of discovery, of trying something you haven’t had before, and even sharing that experience.”

The matcha made in heaven (and on your feed)

Matcha has become something of a cultural shorthand for contemporary drinking, occupying that sweet spot between ritual, wellness, and visual appeal. Its distinctive green hue certainly helps, but it also offers a recognisable base that can be reimagined through different milks, sweeteners, textures, and unexpected flavour additions. For a generation that likes to explore without necessarily abandoning familiarity, it is an ideal canvas.

Bulchandani sees the appeal in experimentation: "Like a matcha with a completely unexpected twist. It looks calm and put together from the outside, but there’s actually a lot going on underneath. It can be healthy, indulgent, experimental, aesthetic, functional, sometimes all at the same time. And I think that’s Gen Z in general. There isn’t really one personality anymore. You can be wellness obsessed and still want dessert at midnight. You can care about sustainability and still love luxury. You can be very traditional in one part of your life and completely experimental in another. That contradiction is actually what makes the generation so interesting, and honestly, it’s probably why matcha fits them so well."

The trick, however, is not to mistake customisation for the main event. Aaryan Gandhi, co-founder of Drnk, believes the fundamentals remain firmly in charge. "Flavour still wins. Most customisation today is milk, sweetness, maybe an extra shot. What Gen Z actually loves is experimenting until they figure out exactly what they like."

It is a useful distinction: having the freedom to adjust a drink matters, but the starting point must still deliver on taste. After all, the best beverage menus offer a strong signature alongside enough room for personal preference.

Chocolate gets a lighter touch

If chocolate once meant a thick, indulgent drink best reserved for a slow afternoon, today's interpretations are far more playful. Think fruit, alternative milks, brighter flavour profiles and textures that make a drink refreshing rather than overwhelmingly rich. At Manam Chocolate, this shift is reflected in creations which place craft chocolate in a lighter, more contemporary context.

Chef Ruby Islam, head of product and innovation at Manam Chocolate, explains, "I think Gen Z is really drawn to the texture, consistency, and overall drinkability of a beverage. With chocolate in particular, they are moving beyond the idea that it has to be dense and decadent. Drinks like Manam Chocolate’s blueberry oat ice chocolate or strawberry almond ice chocolate resonate with them because they are refreshing, layered, and easy on the palate, and most importantly, not dense. Even something like a water-based dark chocolate with orange is unexpected, but it still feels accessible. There is a growing curiosity around how far you can take chocolate beyond the traditional creamy, rich format. Gen Z doesn’t necessarily want to compromise on indulgence; they want to experience it in a lighter, more contemporary way, with flavours and textures that surprise them but are still easy to enjoy on the go." 

This is indulgence with a little more nuance, because chocolate can reveal different notes depending on the ingredients around it. Mulberry, for instance, lends hot chocolate a tart counterpoint, while orange can bring brightness to dark chocolate. Islam's personal favourite is the former. "I love the fact that it doesn’t try to reinvent hot chocolate completely. It takes something very familiar and introduces one unexpected note. For me, that is where the most interesting innovation often lies: not in changing a classic beyond recognition, but in making you experience it differently."

At Mokai, the same spirit of experimentation extends to chocolate with sea salt, chilli and spice, as well as Asian ingredients such as toasted sesame, miso and pandan. Bulchandani also points to the Milo tiramisu as an example of nostalgia being reworked into something playful. The appeal lies in the tension between the familiar and the unfamiliar: enough recognition to draw you in, with an unexpected detail to make the first sip–or bite–worth talking about.

Gandhi's preferred combination is quite straightforward: "Chocolate and cinnamon. Doesn’t need ten ingredients to be interesting."

Familiar flavours, unexpected plot twists 

For all the experimentation, Gen Z's beverage choices are not necessarily about seeking the most outlandish thing on the menu. The combinations that work best often have an intuitive logic: bitter against sweet, tart against creamy, or spice cutting through richness. The pleasure is in discovering how these contrasts come together.

"I think the interesting thing is that people are becoming much more open to combinations that, on paper, sound completely wrong," says Bulchandani. "Sweet and savoury, spicy and creamy, bitter and sweet, those contrasts are becoming much more exciting. Matcha with chilli, coffee with unexpected fruit, coconut with savoury or umami notes, people are willing to try things as long as there’s a logic behind the combination.”

The unexpected is not automatically better, of course. A drink still needs to taste considered rather than simply engineered for shock value. Gandhi believes some of the most interesting developments emerge from working with the basics in fresh ways. "Everything new still comes from the basics. The interesting part is how you play with them. Fruit jams are getting interesting. There’s a lot more coming there." Fruit-led additions offer an intriguing way to introduce texture, acidity, and sweetness to familiar coffee and tea formats without losing the underlying character of the drink.

An Indian flavour, with a new address 

One of the most interesting directions in contemporary beverage culture is the reinterpretation of Indian ingredients. Cardamom, rose, saffron, kokum, jaggery, chilli, and coconut offer a vocabulary of flavours that is both deeply familiar and remarkably adaptable. Their appeal is not simply rooted in nostalgia; it lies in the possibility of encountering them in formats that feel new.

For instance, at Manam Chocolate, Chakkarkeli banana iced chocolate and Guntur chilli milk chocolate bring regional ingredients into a craft-chocolate setting. "That is what makes Indian flavours exciting today–they can carry a strong sense of place and nostalgia, while still feeling contemporary. What excites the younger audience is that these ingredients are familiar yet presented in a completely new way. You can recognise the ingredient and still be surprised by what it becomes," says Islam.

Bulchandani echoes the sentiment, pointing to the opportunity to present ingredients that people already understand emotionally in a different context. Rose can move beyond a familiar syrup, kokum can lend a tart edge, and chilli can introduce heat where sweetness is expected.

The drink as a personality trait 

A beverage order can tell you something about a person's mood, preferences, and willingness to experiment, even if it is hardly a definitive personality test. The appeal of today's drink culture is that it allows for contradiction. One afternoon might call for a refreshing fruit-and-chocolate combination; another might demand something creamy, sweet, and entirely unapologetic. There is no blanket Gen Z signature other than the willingness to keep an open mind.

Islam sees that multiplicity in Manam Chocolate's blueberry oat ice chocolate. "Gen Z is curious, layered, and not particularly interested in being defined by one thing. That drink captures some of that personality for me. You have the tartness of blueberry, the texture of oat, and the depth of craft chocolate, but the overall experience is still light and refreshing. It is familiar but unexpected, indulgent but not heavy. There are several different notes coming together, but nothing feels forced. That drink captures their personality perfectly- layered, refreshing, and never predictable. It’s indulgent yet light, just like the way they approach life."

For Gandhi, the answer is a tiramisu latte. "Familiar, but definitely not basic. Classy underneath, slightly over the top on the surface, photographs ridiculously well and everybody thinks they discovered it first." 

Perhaps the real luxury of drinking today is not a staggering number of options, nor the promise that every cup will make you cooler, happier, or even more interesting. It is the freedom to choose what appeals to you, to be curious without being predictable, and to find pleasure in a familiar flavour that is presented in a new light.

Looks like the perfect Gen Z drink has a delicious range, and looks rather good on the table, too.

Lead image: Getty Images 

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