Flavored butters and spreads are growing at five to seven times the rate of regular dairy. Flavored butter use on restaurant menus grew 25% between 2020 and 2024. And your customers? They’re craving it.
Each year, the Butterball® Farms, Inc. Research & Development team digs into food trends, menu data, and consumer behavior to put together a Flavor Guide built for restaurant chains, food manufacturers, meal kit providers, and more. The 2026 edition is here. Let’s dive in.
Butter Is a Flavor Multiplier
Butter amplifies everything around it, which is why restaurant chains, hotels, and universities are leaning into flavored butters as a low-labor, high-impact way to build dishes that people remember.
Some of the flavors with the strongest momentum heading into 2026:
- Garlic & Herb: A perennial crowd-pleaser, now trending upward with predicted menu growth of 7.6% over the next four years.
- Black Garlic & Rosemary: Bold, earthy, and deeply aromatic; black garlic has grown on 7% of restaurant menus in the past year alone.
- Roasted Garlic & Parmesan: Warm, savory, and instantly recognizable as a premium touch.
- Smoky Chipotle & Lime: Bright heat with a citrus lift that lands perfectly across proteins and grains.
- Honey Cinnamon: Sweet, warm, and endlessly versatile from morning pastry service to dinner rolls.
- Pesto Basil: Fresh and herbal, with a Mediterranean sensibility that works across multiple dayparts.
Butterball® Farms can also build a custom flavored butter around your signature profile. Pre-portioned flavored butter dollops come ready to use, cut labor time, and deliver consistent flavor from location one to location five hundred.
Protein Is the Word for 2026 (and Butter Is Its Best Friend)
A whopping 59% of consumers say they crave animal protein, even if they don’t regularly eat it. Protein is projected to grow 49% on menus by 2029. Butterball® Farms’ R&D team built out their Top 5 Butter Flavors for Protein pairings with exactly that in mind:
| Protein | Flavored Butter | Why We Love It |
| Grilled Chicken | Roasted Garlic, Basil & Parmesan | Bold and aromatic with Italian Mediterranean appeal. |
| Filet Mignon | Black Garlic, Red Wine & Thyme | Rich, umami-forward depth that makes an already luxurious cut feel truly extraordinary. |
| Salmon | Honey-Citrus Calabrian Chili | Bright, modern sweet heat that balances salmon’s richness and keeps things feeling fresh. |
| Pork | Apple Cider Dijon & Sage | Comforting and savory with just enough fruity acidity to wake up the whole plate. |
| Bacon | Black Garlic, Espresso & Chili Molasses | Sweet, smoky umami that adds another dimension to bacon’s already irresistible cured richness. |
Every one of these can be produced as a custom flavored butter dollop, pre-portioned and ready to drop straight from freezer to plate.
Spreads and Cream Cheese Are Having a Moment
Cream cheese applications grew 31% in a single year. Aiolis are projected to grow another 11% by 2029. For restaurant chains running breakfast, lunch, and fast casual menus, these numbers translate directly into menu opportunity.
Butterball® Farms can craft custom flavored sandwich spreads and cream cheeses in tubs or chef rolls. Here are five of the formats the R&D team is most excited about heading into 2026:
- Brined Pickle & Olive Aioli: Tart, creamy, savory, and riding a brined flavor wave that is up 18% in menu mentions and projected to grow another 21% by 2029.
- Brown Sugar Cinnamon Toast Cheesecake Cream Cheese: Dessert-for-breakfast is exploding across QSR and bakery cafés. This one hits like cinnamon toast meets cheesecake frosting.
- Nashville Hot Honey Cream Cheese: Sweet heat that works across chicken, burgers, veggie sandwiches, and wraps.
- Buffalo Ranch Cream Cheese: Two beloved flavors unified into a spread that elevates the whole plate.
- Dill Pickle & Smoked Chili-Garlic Cream Cheese: The pickle-forward flavor that fast casual, sports venues, and c-stores are all chasing.
And when you work with us, you’ll never have to mix a spread in-house again. Get consistent punches of flavor every single time when you let us handle the mixing.
Signature Soups in a Dollop? Oh Yes.
This one stops people in their tracks when they first hear it. Butterball® Farms’ flavored butter dollops can be formulated to include chicken and beef particulates along with complementary spices and aromatics. The result is a single dollop that becomes a complete broth or soup base when you add water.
A few of the R&D team’s favorite applications for 2026:
- Korean Gochujang Chicken & Kimchi Broth: Sweet heat and umami in one deeply satisfying bowl.
- Birria Chili Beef Consommé: One of the fastest-growing global dishes on U.S. menus, ready to use without the multi-hour braise.
- Chicken Pot Pie Creamy Herb Broth: The most nostalgic comfort food on the planet, as easy as one dollop.
- Smoked Cheddar & Beer Brat Broth: Cheesy, smoky, hearty, and flexible enough to become a dip, a mac, or a soup.
- Coconut Curry Chicken & Veg Broth: A rich, aromatic base that your team can finish any way they like.
Whether you’re running a campus dining hall juggling 3,000 covers a day or a regional restaurant chain managing tight kitchen crews, this is the kind of product that changes how you think about scratch-made flavor.
Seasonal LTOs: Butter Has a Flavor for Every Holiday
One of the most powerful ways to drive repeat traffic is a seasonal, limited-time offering, and flavored butter is one of the cleanest ways to execute it. Swap a single dollop, transform the whole dish.
The Butterball® Farms R&D team has developed inspired seasonal pairings for every major holiday and occasion throughout the year. A few standouts:
| Holiday | Flavored Butter | Why We Love It |
| Christmas | Cranberry-Orange-Cinnamon | Warm, sweet-tart, and made for holiday rolls and roasted turkey |
| Valentine’s Day | Cardamom-Raspberry | Floral, fruity, and unmistakably romantic over duck or lamb. |
| Mardi Gras | Cajun Citrus-Creole Garlic | Bold, lively, and build for shrimp, po’boys, and cornbread. Laissez les bons temps rouler! |
| Passover | Fig-Honey | Sweet, earthy, and ideal for roasted root veggies or flourless cakes. |
| Derby Day | Bourbon-Mint | A natural for hot browns, biscuits, and pork sliders. |
| 4th of July | Maple-Chipotle | Sweet smoke that belongs aaalllll over BBQ chicken, cornbread, and grilled shrimp. |
| Thanksgiving | Cranberry-Orange | A classic for turkey, biscuits, and sweet potatoes. Grandma will be jealous. |
| Tailgate Season | Buffalo-Ranch | No introduction needed. (But it’s really good on wings, burgers, and fries.) |
These pairings are baked into the full 2026 Flavor Guide, complete with seasonal charts covering winter, spring, summer, and autumn. It’s a turnkey LTO calendar, built around butter.
Butter Bits™: A New Way to Bake In Flavor
New in 2026 from Butterball® Farms: Butter Bits™. These small frozen pearls of premium salted butter (sized from a morsel to a small barrel shape) can be worked directly into doughs and batters, to add buttery flakiness to baked goods, richer flavor in proteins, and a golden richness in pizza dough that you simply cannot get any other way.
Contact Butterball® Farms directly to learn more about Butter Bits and how they can work in your application.
Quality That Backs Up Every Bite
Butterball® Farms earned a BRC-AA rating, the food industry’s gold standard for manufacturing quality and safety. That rating means every single product that leaves our facility meets the most stringent quality standards in the industry. When you’re running operations at scale, that’s the foundation on which everything else gets built.
Seven decades of reimagining butter. A dedicated R&D team. Custom flavor development for regional and national restaurant chains and food manufacturers. And a product lineup built to handle the demands of high-volume foodservice without ever compromising what ends up on the plate. That’s how Butterball® Farms helps you Imagine Butter Differently.
Ready to Make 2026 Your Most Flavorful Year Yet?
Download the full 2026 Flavor Guide, or get in touch to talk custom flavors and product applications.
