Square Data Reveals How Wellness, Nightlife, and Merch Are Reshaping Food and Beverage in 2025

Square’s latest restaurant data highlights a year of contrasts: consumers are balancing wellness and nightlife, while businesses are cashing in on branded merchandise.

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New report shows consumers embrace both protein-packed menus and late-night indulgence ahead of holiday season (Photo: Square)

Bars, breweries, and cafés are diversifying revenue with branded merch ahead of the holidays

Across Square sellers, breweries, bars, and cafés are seeing particular success with branded retail items, particularly as consumers look for gifts ahead of the 2025 holiday season. As of Q3 2025, 56.5% of breweries, 22.9% of cafés, and 17% of bars are offering merch like t-shirts, hoodies, and hats.

In terms of which items are most popular with customers, t-shirts are most purchased (58.2%) followed by hats (22.8%), hoodies (11.5%), and totes (7.5%).

“Resilient restaurant operators are smartly looking beyond traditional revenue streams, and branded merchandise offers an opportunity with typically higher margins than food service – and with marketing built-in,” said Ming-Tai Huh, Head of Food and Beverage at Square. “But success depends on having the right systems in place – with Square, businesses can switch easily between restaurant and retail modes in their point-of-sale device and set up e-commerce, allowing for easy expansion into merch sales without added operational complexity.”

Menus bulk up on macros

Consumers are growing more health-conscious, increasingly looking to consume food that has additional wellness benefits. Square looked at demand for health-focused and “functional” menu items such as protein and matcha since the beginning of 2023.

With “proteinmaxxing” on the rise, diners are also looking for protein-packed menu items. In Q2 2025, orders for menu items that contained the word “protein” were up 17% year-over-year, and in Q3 2025, this accelerated to 20.6%. This trend was especially pronounced at full-service restaurants and cafés, where orders for protein menu items were up 25.4% and 22% in Q3 YoY, respectively.

Matcha demand blooms as the tea takes over cafés and bakeries alike

Matcha lattes, too, are another key example of the rise in “functional” beverages given green tea’s health benefits. In Q3 2025, orders for matcha were up 36.5% YoY, a slight deceleration from Q2 2025 when matcha orders were up 44.3%. Overall, though, matcha has seen major growth over the past few years, and this trend is expanding beyond cafés – orders for matcha-flavored menu items were up 47.5% at ice cream shops and 40% at bakeries in Q3 YoY.