Banana is moving beyond the fresh produce aisle, increasingly being reimagined across drinks, snacks, bakery, confectionery and desserts.
While this may appear to be a new opportunity in markets such as New Zealand, banana has long played a much broader role across Asian food cultures, from banana chips and fried banana snacks to cakes, desserts and drinks. Its appeal is partly that it is so familiar: consumers already understand its sweetness and associations with comfort and indulgence.
In New Zealand, banana has traditionally appeared in flavoured milk, ice cream, baking, children’s products and dried snacks, with newer applications extending into areas such as functional and high-protein products. Yet that familiarity can also be limiting, with banana sometimes associated with children’s products, milkshakes or confectionery-style flavours. Its current moment is therefore less about banana suddenly becoming fashionable and more about expanding the repertoire of a flavour consumers already know.
Korean and wider Asian food trends are accelerating that shift by changing how New Zealand consumers discover and engage with food. Korean foods have become increasingly visible beyond specialist Asian grocery stores, helped by K-pop, K-dramas, social media, travel and growing interest in Korean convenience-store culture.
Perhaps more importantly, this culture encourages a spirit of experimentation: readily available products can be combined quickly to create something different and delicious. This lowers the barrier to trying Asian-inspired foods, turning discovery into something consumers can participate in rather than simply observe.
The recent “Ttungba Latte” trend emerging from Korean convenience-store culture is a good example. The DIY drink combines banana milk with coffee over ice, turning readily available convenience-store products into a new drinking experience.
Popularised through social media and visitors to Korea, its appeal goes beyond flavour; it is also about making something yourself and sharing the discovery.
Binggrae Banana Milk
For New Zealand consumers, this kind of DIY food culture can make Asian-inspired products feel accessible, an invitation to try it, combine it and make it your own. For banana, this is significant because the innovation is not necessarily the flavour itself, but the format, combination and occasion in which it is experienced.
Wider Asia provides an even richer innovation repertoire. Across Southeast Asia, banana has long moved comfortably between snack, dessert and street food, and brands are now translating some of those familiar experiences into contemporary formats.
In Singapore, Mr Popiah has transformed the fried-banana experience into a frozen, air-fryer-ready banana and jackfruit spring roll, while Bronys Brownie Crisps ‘Banana Fritter Flavour’ reinterprets a familiar Southeast Asian snack using banana, dried banana and crunchy cornflakes.
These products demonstrate that Asian food culture offers more than new flavours; it provides a library of food experiences that can be reimagined for changing lifestyles and occasions.
Bronys Pack
We are seeing similar experimentation in New Zealand. Whittaker’s 2025 limited-edition Banana Caramel block paired banana-infused caramel with milk chocolate, deliberately bringing together nostalgia and indulgence, while Fix & Fogg pairs banana with caramel and crunchy peanut butter, moving banana into a more textural spread. Barker’s has taken another familiar reference point, banana bread, and translated it into a spread made with real banana.
Banana’s familiarity is both its strength and its challenge. Pairing it with flavours such as coffee, caramel, nuts or spice, or presenting it through more unexpected textures and formats, can move banana beyond its traditional children’s and confectionery associations towards more contemporary and sophisticated occasions.
These examples show how innovation can come not from introducing an unfamiliar flavour, but from changing its texture, format and occasion. For FMCG brands, there is room to go further: crunchy or layered snacks, frozen desserts, breakfast products, filled bakery, functional and protein formats and even sweet-and-savoury combinations.
Ultimately, banana’s opportunity is not about inventing a completely new flavour. Its familiarity may actually be its greatest advantage: consumers already know what banana tastes like, allowing innovation to happen around it through format, texture, flavour combinations, convenience and consumer creativity.
Korean convenience-store culture is providing a powerful gateway for discovery, while the wider Asian repertoire demonstrates how many roles banana can play.
The lesson for FMCG brands is not necessarily to replicate Asian products, but to think more expansively about what banana can do. Banana hasn’t suddenly become interesting. We are simply starting to look at it differently.
Dr Nazlin Imram, PhD in Sensory and Consumer Science, has more than 25 years of experience leading food, beverage and flavour businesses across Asia Pacific.
Explore the banana feature in the latest issue here
