The viral food index: what TikTok did to the South African plate
In four years, a chocolate bar from Dubai went from zero to a +6,347% search explosion in South Africa. We tracked the whole viral food economy — the megahits, the one-season wonders and the trend that quietly died — to find out what actually sticks.
The 60-second version
- 🍫 Dubai chocolate is the biggest food story of the era — a +6,347% vertical takeoff after late 2023.
- 🎂 Bento cakes (+523%) and pistachio (+552%) turned viral moments into lasting menu fixtures.
- 📉 Not everything sticks. Croffles and cronuts barely moved; bubble tea actually declined (−19%).
- 🔮 The flavour outlives the format: the bar will plateau, but pistachio is now in lattes, cakes and spreads for good.
Ten years ago a food trend took years to cross an ocean. Today it takes a weekend. A pastry chef in Dubai films a chocolate bar, a few million people watch the knafeh crunch, and within months South Africans are queuing, baking knock-offs and pushing pistachio into a global shortage. The speed is new. The question is which of these rockets actually reach orbit — and which burn up.
We built a Viral Food Index from four years of search demand to separate the two. The verdict: virality is easy, durability is rare, and the trends that last share a specific DNA.
- National search demand for food keywords, monthly, June 2022 – May 2026.
- Growth compares the first 12 months to the most recent 12. Brand-new items (Dubai chocolate) show enormous percentages because they started near zero.
- "Stuck" vs "fizzled" is judged on whether interest held a high plateau or fell back toward the baseline.
The megahits
The rockets that reached orbit
Three trends didn't just spike — they relocated the baseline. Dubai chocolate, bento cakes and pistachio went from unknown to expected, the kind of thing a customer now assumes a good bakery will offer.
Monthly search demand for the four defining viral foods.
The takeaway: Dubai chocolate is the textbook viral curve: flat, then near-vertical from late 2023. Bento cakes and pistachio rode the same wave.
The Dubai chocolate bar — Fix Dessert Chocolatier's pistachio-and-knafeh creation — went viral on TikTok in December 2023 and never looked back, even triggering a global pistachio shortage.12
Four-year change in search demand across the viral food economy.
The takeaway: Dubai chocolate laps the field, but pistachio and bento cakes are the proof that a moment can become a menu fixture.
Notice who is NOT near the top: croffles, cronuts and bubble tea. Plenty of "next big thing" candidates never converted hype into habit.
The honest part
Most viral foods fizzle
For every Dubai chocolate there's a croffle — a clever hybrid that got its fifteen minutes and faded. Plotting growth against current volume separates the durable hits (top-right) from the flash-in-the-pan novelties and the genuine fallers.
Each dot is a food: horizontal = four-year growth, vertical = current monthly search volume.
The takeaway: The top-right is where durability lives. Most viral novelties cluster low — high noise, low staying power.
The pattern is consistent worldwide: novelty drives the spike, but only foods that are genuinely delicious, photogenic AND easy to reproduce at home or in a café convert into lasting demand.
Monthly demand for the hybrid pastries that came and went.
The takeaway: Croffles and cronuts show the classic boom-bust shape — a sharp spike that settles back near where it started.
These weren't failures, exactly — they were formats, not flavours. A croffle is a gimmick you try once; pistachio is a taste you come back to. That difference is everything.
Relative search volume across the chocolate, bakery, drink and savoury viral categories.
The takeaway: Sweet and chocolate dominate the map — viral food in South Africa is overwhelmingly a dessert phenomenon.
It makes sense: desserts are the most photogenic, most giftable and most impulse-driven food category, which is exactly the fuel virality runs on.
| Trend | 4-yr change | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Dubai chocolate | +6,347% | 🚀 Generational hit |
| Pistachio (choc & latte) | +552% / +252% | ✅ Flavour is here to stay |
| Bento cakes | +523% | ✅ New default for small celebrations |
| Matcha | +61% | ✅ Mainstreamed |
| Croffles / cronuts | +17% / +14% | ➖ One-season novelty |
| Bubble tea | −19% | 📉 Past its peak |
The verdict
Virality is cheap. Staying power is earned.
The viral food economy looks chaotic, but it follows rules. A trend goes vertical when it's novel and photogenic; it survives only when it's also genuinely good and easy to reproduce. South Africans will try anything once — that's why the spikes are so violent. What they keep is smaller, quieter and far more valuable: a handful of flavours, like pistachio and matcha, that started as a TikTok and ended up on the everyday menu.
Every viral food gets its fifteen minutes. The rare ones get a permanent spot on the menu.
- Source. Aggregated South African search demand for food keywords, monthly, June 2022 – May 2026.
- Growth. First 12 months vs the most recent 12; brand-new items start near zero, inflating percentages — we judge durability on the shape of the curve, not the headline number.
- Caveat. Search interest is intent and curiosity, not units sold.
References & further reading
Food figures are PartyTrends' own analysis of the search-demand dataset described above. Sources below corroborate the global trends.
- BBC Travel, How Dubai chocolate conquered the world (May 2025) — Fix Dessert Chocolatier; viral via TikTok Dec 2023. bbc.com
- The Guardian, TikTok trend for 'Dubai chocolate' causes international shortage of pistachios (Apr 2025). theguardian.com
- Food & Wine, Pistachio Is the Flavor of 2025 — Google pistachio searches doubled. foodandwine.com
- CNN Travel, Meet the woman behind Dubai's viral super-chunky chocolate bar. cnn.com
- The Daily Meal, What Are Bento Cakes And Where Did They Come From? — Korean "no-share" cakes that went global. thedailymeal.com
- PartyTrends, Food Stats & Methodology. partytrends.co.za/stats