As purple ube goes global, the Philippines’ faces tightening supply

Long-time Filipino restaurateur Chris Joseph has served ube across his London establishments for the past decade, but interest in drinks and desserts featuring the purple yam has surged in the past year.

Ube, a naturally sweet, starchy vegetable that is grown by farmers in the Philippines, has been the star of Joseph and his wife Rowena Romulo’s Soho restaurant Kasa and Kin, founded in 2021.

“What was really flying off the shelf was ube from the start,” Joseph told CNBC in an interview.

Their former restaurant, Romulo Café, which opened in 2016 and has since closed, was also known for ube dishes. Kasa and Kin’s menu features an ube latte, ube martini, ube tsunami cheesecake (with a flood of purple sauce), and even an ube cream cheese bread among other creative items.

Joseph’s initial customers were nostalgic Filipinos searching for a taste of home. “What we’ve seen now is people walking in and [being] curious about ube, people that we don’t normally see. … They come in, they’ll look at the bakery case, they’ll pick up an ube something, or the ube brownie, or ube ice cream,” he said.

In the past year, ube has transcended Filipino culture and entered the mainstream consciousness as coffee chains and restaurants hunt for the next viral food and drink craze.

Starbucks helped spark the trend in 2025 with limited-time offerings of Ube Iced Coconut Latte and Ube Espresso Martini, expanding its 2026 spring lineup to include an Ube Matcha Latte and Ube Vanilla Macchiato. U.S. coffee chain Peet’s also introduced an Iced Vanilla Latte with Ube Dream Top for the season.

Ube offerings have risen by 230% across restaurant menus in the U.S. in the past four years, according to food and beverage analytics firm Datassentials. It currently features on the menu at 95 chains across the U.S., and is predicted to grow 74% in the next four years.

Exports of ube from the Philippines have risen sharply in recent years. In 2025, the Philippines shipped about $3.2 million worth of ube — nearly 1.7 million kilograms—marking a roughly 20% increase from the prior year, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) shared with CNBC.

The United States was the largest importer, accounting for around $1.6 million, or roughly half of total exports. Canada, Australia, and the U.K. were the next largest markets.

Joseph said the increased visibility of ube has boosted Kasa and Kin’s sales, with the restaurant’s desserts seeing high demand.

Emily Tang, Datassentials’ chief product officer, tells CNBC that ube is “accessible from a flavor perspective,” which makes it easy to innovate with.

“It pairs well with things that people like, meaning coffee, drinks, desserts, and pastries, and it has a mild nutty flavor, so it’s got a very low barrier to trial. It’s not a scary flavor; it’s safe experimentation, and it’s also visually stunning.”

Ube is having a moment, but it’s been a slow ascent to popularity. Datassentials has been tracking the flavor since 2017, when it was primarily sold in Filipino bakeries and authentic mom-and-pop eateries in the U.S.

Its initial appearance on the international scene was tied to “the rise of Asian culture in the mainstream,” from food and beverages like Korean fried chicken and boba tea to media like K-pop and K-drama, according to Tang.

A major milestone was in 2022 when Baskin-Robbins offered Ube Coconut Swirl ice cream as a limited-time item.

“This March was like the biggest month for ube limited-time offers that we have been tracking at the top chains, so now it’s really in the mainstream,” Tang said of this year, and tied its accelerating popularity to social media.

“It’s so visually vibrant. It’s very Instagrammable. It’s very bright. It’s very easily spread by social media, and so ube is just a perfect trend in its behavior,” Tang added.

A search of the ube hashtag shows 120,000 posts on TikTok and more than 750,000 posts on Instagram, all featuring ube’s striking purple hue.

The hype around the ingredient is largely driven by a global appetite for more exotic drink and dessert flavors, as food chains aim to replicate the success of Japanese matcha and Dubai Chocolate, both of which were adapted into everything from cakes to milkshakes.

“It’s just part of the culture of eating and drinking now because the demand for beautiful-looking food is as important as the taste,” Andrew Freeman, the founder of hospitality consulting firm AF&Co, told CNBC.

Coffee, in particular, has become a social media focus for the younger generation as they trend away from drinking alcohol, according to Freeman.

“People are drinking less, so coffee house culture is coming back,” he said.

“In this year’s report, we had a whole study of coffee and how it’s gone from being a functional drink to being an over-the-top, ‘What can I put on top of the coffee? What can I foam it with?’ What’s driving it is that you want to get it photographed, and you want it to go viral,” he said.

But while ube is enjoying increased demand globally, Filipino farmers are struggling to keep pace as climate change makes weather patterns more unpredictable and limits the supply of quality planting material, according to The Philippine Root Crop Research and Training Center.

The total volume of production of purple yams in the region has declined annually, down down 1.63% from 13,381 metric tons in 2024 to 12,483 metric tons in 2025, according to PSA data. In 2021, the Philippines produced 14,150 metric tons of purple yams.

The country is even importing some ube from Vietnam to support local demand.

“It’s one of those things right in the beginning, you’re going to have a surge in demand, and the supply chain just needs to catch up and get an idea of what it is,” Kasa and Kin’s Joseph said.

While the price of ube has increased, Joseph is not complaining because it’s an opportunity for farmers in the Philippines to charge higher prices.

“A humble crop like a tuber is something that not many value, so I’m happy for them. If they can get more for it, they can plant more of it, great. Please let the world discover ube,” he said.