Every fall, brands add pumpkin spice to everything, from cereals and sodas to … toilet paper. Fall seems to come earlier every year too. By the end of summer, Starbucks has typically already released its infamous pumpkin spice latte, or PSL, a drink that has become a hallmark of the season.
And the flavor continues to be profitable. In 2025, pumpkin spiced foods garnered an estimated $1.25bn in revenue, according to Future Market Insights.
But this year, another flavor is vying for consumers’ dollars – apple.
In August, McDonald’s released four caramel apple-flavored coffees for the season. That same month, Dairy Queen announced a caramel apple cheesecake Blizzard. The specialty coffee brand La Colombe followed suit, announcing its canned caramel apple draft latte that swiftly sold out – the fastest of any of its releases, according to a brand spokesperson.
Apple-flavored foods have also made their way into grocery aisles, with limited-release launches from popular brands including Olipop (caramel apple), Poppi (sour apple) and RX Bar (apple pie).
“Apple definitely feels like a standout thing this year. Like every other year, it was PSL season, baby. It was blue jeans, a white top, a black vest, tall boots and an infinity scarf,”said Nate Rosen,the co-founder of Express Checkout, a media company that analyzes consumer trends.
“This year definitely feels different. And also, I feel like more people are talking about it,” said Rosen. Recently, the team shared a video to its Instagram account, asking, “Is apple the new pumpkin spice?” It listed 13 new apple-flavored snacks and beverages. Business outlets from Inc. to Fortune have similarly noted the trend in the restaurant and beverage spheres.
“Caramel apple is being pushed out by sources that are like the news. So news releases, and social media videos and other types of things will carry more virality,” says Dr Jin-A Choi, an assistant professor of advertising at Montclair State University, who researches social media analytics and has studied pumpkin spice for four years.
This doesn’t mean shoppers have ditched pumpkin spice entirely. Google Trends data shows that pumpkin spice is still searched far more than apple. However, last year Choi and her team found a 15% decrease in “pumpkin spice-related searches”, between 2024 and 2025, the lowest level post- Covid. The team attributes this to multiple factors, including the increased price of pumpkin spice-flavored items due to higher tariffs on ingredients such as cinnamon and nutmeg.
Can apple really reign over pumpkin spice? How good can an apple-flavored soda really be? With all of the new releases, Filter editors wanted to know if any of them were worth the hype. So, we tried a handful of them, conducting our own early autumn taste test.
Comparing apples to apples
Leading brands in the gut-healthy soda space – Olipop, Culture Pop and Poppi – have all released apple-flavored beverages. Bloom, an energy drink brand, released a crisp apple version of its “Bloom Pop,” prebiotic soda, while V8 and Alani launched its own iterations last year.
“Most of the apple products that we saw – apple pie and caramel apple, and like autumnal apple-flavored products we saw were mostly drinks. And most of those drinks were energy drinks,” said Rosen..
Of the five drinks Filter editors sampled, there were a few standouts.
We loved Olipop’s caramel apple soda, which has a subtly sweet, authentically caramel apple taste you wouldn’t think possible in a prebiotic beverage. I have tried nearly all of the brand’s flavors, and this ranks in my top three (next to grape and cherry vanilla). Karen Yuan, Filter commissioning editor, agrees: “It tastes almost like a caramel apple cider. I’m not usually a soda person, but this may have converted me to Olipop.”
While Yuan wasn’t a fan of Poppi’s sour apple due to a lingering aftertaste, I adored it. I can only describe it as if the green apple shampoo you used as a child turned into a beverage (in the best way possible). Another Filter editor, Megan Reynolds, said that the sour apple soda reminded her of Apple Sidra, a Taiwanese soft drink that “tastes like a less-virtuous and more refreshing Martinelli’s sparkling cider”.
Snack brands are also leaning into apples – such as the yogurt brand Noosa’s new apple pie yogurt – which has bits of pie crust mixed in. Our editors gave it top marks, and it even earned a spot on Filter editor Nick Mokey’s grocery list.
Other notable releases include pretzel company Snack Factory’s apple spice white creme pretzel crisps. These are sweet – and best enjoyed in small amounts.
RX Bar’s new apple pie protein bar earned mixed reviews in the newsroom. While I found that it tasted like chemicals, Yuan says it’s “the least bad flavor from the brand”.
Is apple really the new pumpkin?
Pumpkin spice is still as present as ever this autumn. In July, Starbucks launched its pumpkin menu, which featured three new drinks. Unlike other brands, it left apple-flavored products off the menu altogether, including a past release, the apple crisp shaken espresso. The company did not respond to our request for comment.
This year, we’ll continue to find dozens of pumpkin spice items, such as Trader Joe’s endless offerings – including chardonnay and hummus.
So, until apple earns its own latte acronym or becomes associated with a new (and hopefully less misogynistic) meme involving infinity scarves and tall boots, we can’t dethrone pumpkin as the ruler of fall. At least not yet.
Other pieces you might enjoy from the Filter, the Guardian’s guide to buying fewer, better things:
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‘The perfect food storage finally exists’: I tried the new Anydeli plastic-free containers
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A buckwheat pillow and a 10lb blanket: what you loved most in September
