Why emotion – not cuisine – was the biggest deciding factor?

A first-hand reflection on the trends, truths, and evolving behaviours that shaped the F&B industry in 2025.

- By Angad Chachra, Founder, The Bar Consultants

Working in hospitality consulting means you see the industry differently.

You’re not tied to one kitchen, one brand, or one neighbourhood. You move between restaurants that are launching, bars that are struggling, cafés that want to reinvent themselves, bakeries expanding too fast, and founders who swing between excitement and panic within the same sentence. You absorb hundreds of micro-patterns every month, and sometimes the real shifts aren’t loud they appear quietly during tastings, training sessions, P&L reviews, and conversations with guests and frontline teams.

2025 was a year where these patterns finally connected. The Indian F&B ecosystem didn’t just evolve; it reoriented itself in a way that shaped guest behaviour, business models, and the very definition of what makes a hospitality brand relevant. As someone who works on turnkey projects from concept to menu development, staff training, operational restructuring and guest experience design here’s what the year looked like from the inside.

Delivery Became a Core Identity, not a Side Channel

A few years ago, every founder would confidently say, “We're not focusing on delivery; we want to build an experience.”

But 2025 made it clear that delivery and dine-in are no longer two separate verticals they are two expressions of the same brand. I’ve re-engineered menus for fine-dine restaurants that never imagined their bestseller would be consumed out of a box, and I’ve seen cafés double their revenue simply by creating delivery-specific SKUs. Guests no longer judge the brand only when they walk in; they judge it when the bag arrives at their door. Whether owners like it or not, delivery has become a primary brand touchpoint. And the businesses that accepted this early are the ones that grew steadily this year.

India's Plant-Forward Shift Was Driven by Local Palates, Not Global Trends