As purple ube goes global, the Philippines’ faces tightening supply
Filipino restaurant Kasa and Kin in London’s Soho offers a range of drinks and desserts made with ube, a root vegetable from the Philippines where demand from younger consumers is rising due to its vibrant color and sweet taste.
Vault and Grudge
Longtime Filipino restaurateur Chris Joseph has been serving ube at his London establishments for the past decade, but interest in drinks and desserts featuring purple sweet potatoes has surged in the past year.
Ube, a naturally sweet, starchy vegetable grown by farmers in the Philippines, has become the star of Kasa and Kin, the Soho restaurant that Joseph and his wife, Rowena Romulo, founded in 2021.
“What actually flew off the shelf was great from the beginning,” Joseph told CNBC in an interview.
Their former restaurant, Romulo Café, which opened in 2016 and has since been closed, was also known for its ube dishes. Kasa and Kin’s menu includes ube latte, ube martini, and ube tsunami cheesecake (a type of cheese). flood of purple sauce) and even an ube cream cheese toastie, among other creative items.
Ube has grown 230% on U.S. restaurant menus over the past four years, according to food and beverage analytics firm Datassentials
Washington Post | Washington Post | Getty Images
Joseph’s first customers were nostalgic Filipinos looking for a taste of home. “What we’re seeing now is people coming in and [being] I’m curious about Ube, people we don’t normally see. … They come in, they’ll look at the bakery’s cash register, they’ll buy something ube, a ube brownie or ube ice cream,” he said.
Last year, ube transcended Filipino culture and entered the mainstream consciousness as coffee chains and restaurants searched for the next viral food and drink craze.
Starbucks helped spark the trend in 2025 with its limited-time Ube Iced Coconut Latte and Ube Espresso Martini offerings, and expanded its spring 2026 lineup to include Ube Matcha Latte and Ube Vanilla Macchiato. US coffee chain Peet’s has also introduced an Iced Vanilla Latte with Ube Dream Top for the season.
Ube offerings on U.S. restaurant menus have increased 230% in the past four years, according to food and beverage analytics firm Datassentials. It’s currently on the menus of 95 chains across the U.S. and is expected to grow 74% over the next four years.
ube exports from the Philippines have increased sharply in recent years. According to data shared with CNBC by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), in 2025, the Philippines shipped approximately $3.2 million worth of ube (about 1.7 million kilograms); This represents an increase of roughly 20% over the previous year.
The United States was the largest importer, accounting for approximately $1.6 million, or roughly half of total exports. Canada, Australia and the UK were the next largest markets.
Joseph said ube’s increased visibility has increased Kasa and Kin’s sales, with the restaurant’s desserts seeing high demand.
Emily Tang, Datassentials’ chief product officer, told CNBC that ube is “approachable in terms of flavor,” which makes it easier to innovate.
“It pairs well with things people love like coffee, drinks, desserts and pastries, and it has a slightly nutty flavour, so the barrier to experimentation is very low. It’s not a terrible taste; it’s a safe experiment and visually stunning, too.”
‘Perfect trend’
Ube is having a moment but a slow rise to popularity. Datassentials has been tracking the flavor since 2017, when it was sold primarily in Filipino bakeries and authentic eateries in the United States.
According to Tang, its initial appearance on the international stage was due to the “rise of Asian culture in the mainstream”, from food and drinks such as Korean fried chicken and boba tea to media such as K-pop and K-drama.
A major milestone was when Baskin-Robbins introduced Ube Coconut Swirl ice cream as a limited-time product in 2022.
“This March was like the biggest month for ube limited time offers that we tracked across the top chains, so it’s really mainstream now,” Tang said of this year. he said and attributed his increasing popularity to social media.
“Visually it’s very vibrant. It’s Instagrammable. It’s very bright. It spreads very easily through social media, and so ube is a perfect trend in terms of its behavior,” Tang added.
Searching for the ube hashtag shows 120,000 posts tiktok and more than 750,000 posts on Instagram, all featuring ube’s striking purple hue.
The excitement around the ingredient is largely driven by the global appetite for more exotic drink and dessert flavours, as food chains aim to replicate the success of Japanese matcha and Dubai Chocolate, both of which have been adapted into everything from cakes to milkshakes.
“This is now part of the eating and drinking culture because the demand for food that looks good is as important as the taste,” Andrew Freeman, founder of hospitality consulting firm AF&Co, told CNBC.
According to Freeman, coffee has become a social media focus, especially for the younger generation who are moving away from drinking alcohol.
Ube latte at Kasa and Kin restaurant in Soho, London.
Vault and Grudge
“People are drinking less, so the coffeehouse culture is coming back,” he said.
“In this year’s report, we did a comprehensive study of how coffee went from a functional beverage to an extravagant one: ‘What can I put on coffee? What can I froth with?’ “What drives it is you want to have your picture taken and for it to go viral,” he said.
crimp welding
But while Ube is enjoying growing demand worldwide, Filipino farmers are struggling to keep up as climate change makes weather conditions more unpredictable and limits the supply of quality planting material. Philippine Root Crops Research and Education Center.
According to PSA data, the total production volume of purple yarns in the region decreased by 1.63% annually, from 13,381 mt in 2024 to 12,483 mt in 2025. The Philippines produced 14,150 metric tons of purple yarn in 2021.
Farmer Felisa Ap-ap harvests purple potatoes from the mountainside in Bayabas village of Sablan, Philippines, on February 13, 2026.
Ezra Acayan | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The country even imports some. ube from Vietnam To support local demand.
“One of those things initially is there will be an increase in demand and the supply chain needs to catch up and get an idea of what that is,” Kasa and Kin’s Joseph said.
As the price of ube increases, Joseph is not complaining because this is an opportunity for farmers in the Philippines to demand higher prices.
“A humble crop like tuber is something that doesn’t have much value, so I’m happy for them. If they can get more, they can plant more, great. Please let the world discover ube,” he said.
