20 Oct 2025 TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025
TIME editors highlight the most impactful new products and ideas in TIME’s annual Best Inventions issue. Some fascinating foodbev-related items feature, too….
For 25 years, TIME editors have highlighted the most impactful new products and ideas in TIME’s Best Inventions issue. The pace of innovation has accelerated, from an initial 35 in 2000 to this year’s list of 300 inventions!
Here are the Best Inventions linked to food and beverages – incredible tech!:
Bubs – Foamy vegan gummies
The distinctive Bubs candies, which come in a variety of shapes and flavours, are a 1990s invention of the Swedish Lindström family.
The vegan, gluten-free gummies have a unique foamy texture created with a proprietary recipe and manufacturing technique. The candies went viral on social media in 2024, causing a surprise supply shortage,
Bubs owner Orkla Snacks is launching four new bagged candies for the US market: sour tutti frutti diamonds, sour lemon raspberry skulls, sour strawberry vanilla diamonds, sweet banana toffee ovals.
Bubs: See more here
Aerflo System – Waste-free sparkling water
Dubbed “the world’s first portable soda maker”, the Aerflo bottle system works anywhere from kitchen to a campsite, offering portable carbonation without waste.
“Aluminium cans are only around 50% recyclable in the US,” says Aerflo co-founder Buzz Wiggins. “The rest goes to waste.” His company’s solution — a water bottle with a svelte carbonation unit built right into the lid — aims to reshape the $40-billion sparkling water industry.
Leading up to its launch in 2024, the company miniaturised its design and worked with the US Dept of Transportation to become the first federally permitted business to ship CO₂ through the USPS.
Aerflo’s mail-in refill program then cycles its carbon capsules back to its New Jersey facilities for reuse, eliminating more than a million single-use containers in a year.
Aerflo System: See more here
AeroPress Premium – Simple and stylish coffee
“The glass chamber was the number one feat,” Matt Brown, director of new products at AeroPress, says about designing the AeroPress Premium, a $200 metal-and-glass version of the company’s beloved namesake plastic coffee maker.
Resembling an oversized syringe, the AeroPress consists of a chamber, filter cap, and plunger. For the Premium, Brown says it took over a year for the company to find a glass manufacturer to create “a double wall chamber that’s actually sealed on two ends”.
CEO Gerard Meyer says that also meant AeroPress had to “invent tests which didn’t even exist” to check if it could combine boiling water, ground coffee, glass, and metal in an end-product that was both comfortable and safe to use.
AeroPress Premium: See more here
Better Meat Co Rhiza – An innovative alt-protein
“I wish people would be happy eating lentil soup and hummus wraps,” says Better Meat Co CEO Paul Shapiro. “But people want meat.”
His company makes Rhiza, a complete protein produced by feeding sorghum and potato sidestreams from French fry factories to Neurospora crassa microbes. It ferments in mere hours — less than 2.5% of the time it takes to produce chicken — and gains a meat-like texture.
Brands like Hormel have blended Rhiza with animal meat to boost its low-fat protein content, and Better Meat Co plans to sell Rhiza as a standalone alt-protein — priced lower than US commodity ground beef — next year.
The Better Meat Co: See more here
Cann – An alcohol-free buzz
Only 54% of Americans reported drinking alcohol in 2025—the smallest share in almost a century. Cann is capitalising with an alternative social beverage.
An 8 oz. serving of its microdose cannabis drinkable contains 2 mg of THC and 4 mg of CBD, capturing the “buzz people love with alcohol” without “the problematic stuff,” like high calories and hangovers, says CEO and co-founder Jake Bullock.
With inventive flavours like grapefruit rosemary, it sold nearly 10 million cans in 2024. This year, the brand launched an Aperol Spritz-inspired bottle to share and a “naked roadie” — a flavourless liquid packet that can be mixed with other drinks.
Cann: See more here
Kara Pod – Coffee from thin air
No need to refill this coffeemaker’s water reservoir every day to support the daily habit: The machine can pull 1 gallon (3.785 litres) of water a day out of thin air.
Kara Water spent two years miniaturising its patented air-to-water technology to develop the countertop product, which dispenses mineralised water and can use either Kara’s own biodegradable coffee pods or Nespresso-compatible pods to make coffee.
It’s not cheap, but even with operating costs factored in, CEO and founder Cody Soodeen says Kara Pod still offers savings to customers who normally buy bottled water or coffee from a shop.
KaraWater: See more here
Ninja Swirl by Creami – Soft-serve, any-serve ice-cream
The Swirl adds a delicious twist to Ninja’s Creami range of at-home ice cream makers: It can whip up soft serve, along with the customizable hard ice cream that made the original a bona-fide viral hit back in 2021.
“I think the way we create ice cream is truly unique,” says Kaitlyn Hebert, Ninja’s CMO of global marketing. “It took a lot of trial and error to get that beautiful swirl you imagine as a child.”
With the Swirl’s 13 one-touch programs — including gelato, frozen custard, milkshake, fruit whip, and a new Creamifit option (designed for low-sugar, high-protein recipes) — the possibilities are endless.
Ninja Swirl: See more here
Posha – Robotic home chef
AI is finally doing a job many people want it to take: cooking dinner.
Posha is about the size of a microwave (and fits under standard kitchen cabinets), with a burner, stirring attachments, ingredient containers, and a touchscreen to control it all. Pick a recipe from the frequently updated digital library and follow Posha’s ingredient prep instructions.
Then walk away! Posha adds ingredients and cooks, using AI cameras to adjust (like adding water if too dry) just as a human would. It can only do one-pot dishes for now, but the recipe range is impressive. The tikka masala was delicious.
Posha: See more here
Savor Butter – Lab-grown fats
Savor is making animal-free fats that chemically match the real stuff, but have lower CO2 emissions, water use, and land use than their agriculture-based counterparts.
Starting with water and either carbon dioxide or methane, the food-tech firm uses a thermal process to build fatty acid molecules, which can then form fats like milkfat and butter.
In March it launched, adding a little rosemary and thyme extract for grassy undernotes. It behaves, and tastes, just like regular butter. Savor has been used in Michelin-starred restaurants like SingleThread and Atelier Crenn, and even made a collection of chocolate bonbons, on sale in December.
Savor Butter: See more here
Shinkei Poseidon – A more humane approach to commercial fishing
Most fish that we eat die slowly as they flop around on a boat deck, releasing stress hormones and lactic acid that can degrade quality and shelf life.
Shinkei Systems invented Poseidon, an AI-powered robot that makes fish deaths more humane by automating a centuries-old Japanese slaughtering technique known as “ike-jime.” Poseidon scans fish using computer vision to determine their species and then kills them instantly.
Seven commercial fishing boats are now using the robot; Shinkei Systems then buys and sells the high-quality fish under its brand, Seremoni, to upscale restaurants and grocers including Daniel in New York and Benu in San Francisco.
Shinkei Systems: See more here
Tropic non-browning banana – Longer-lasting bananas
The world’s most popular fruit grows less so when it gets brown and mushy. To extend shelf life and reduce food waste, scientists at U.K.-based biotech company Tropic introduced the first non-browning banana this year.
The banana, made using precision gene editing techniques, stays fresh at least 12 hours after peeling and doesn’t brown as easily.
CEO Gilad Gershon says they’re also working on bananas that stay greener longer and are resistant to a fungal disease wreaking havoc across plantations from Asia to Latin America.
Tropic: See more here
Wildtype salmon saku – The first lab-grown seafood
In May, Wildtype’s cultivated salmon became the first cell-grown seafood to receive approval from the US FDA. (Lab-grown chicken was approved in 2023.)
It was a long-awaited milestone for co-founders Justin Kolbeck and Aryé Elfenbein, who believe that cultivated proteins will help improve food security and lessen the environmental ramifications of commercial fishing.
By year’s end, Wildtype’s sushi-grade salmon saku will be served in restaurants in San Francisco, Seattle, Aspen, and beyond. Meanwhile, the company in September joined cell-cultivated chicken maker Upside Foods in a lawsuit against Texas to fight a new law banning the sale of cultivated foods in the state.
Wildtype Foods: See more here
Source: Time