For Starbucks, its rotating menus of festive flavors are a carefully crafted global strategy to define what the holidays taste like.
Each November, the world’s largest coffee chain rolls out limited-time menu offerings designed to spark both joy and revenue — from Latin America’s Hazelnut Caramel Latte to gingerbread classics featured across the Asia Pacific region.
Underneath the whipped cream this year is a clue to how the brand’s turnaround effort is going, analysts told Business Insider.
Starbucks shared with Business Insider what its 2025 holiday drink menu looks like around the world, featuring 12 regional drinks meticulously curated to ring in the new year.
“Starbucks’ holiday menu is designed to reflect the traditions and preferences of the communities we serve around the world,” Brady Brewer, chief executive of Starbucks International, said in a statement about the holiday launch. “By localizing our menu, we celebrate our customers’ tastes with global holiday traditions reimagined with a local twist.”
Global holiday flavors, reimagined
In Tokyo, the holidays this year taste like creamy milk tea poured over strawberry pulp. In Havana, they come steeped in hazelnut, cranberry, and cinnamon. And in London, red cups are brimming with matcha and red velvet.
In addition to holiday staples like the Peppermint Mocha and Gingerbread Latte, this year, Starbucks debuted its Hazelnut Praline Mille-Feuille Oatmilk Latte in the Asia Pacific region, along with an Iced Sugar Cookie Matcha Latte in Canada, and a Strawberry & Joyful Medley Tea in Japan and Thailand.
The 2025 seasonal menu also includes:
- New Toffee Nut Cream Matcha Lattes and Gingerbread Matcha Lattes in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa
- The return of Caramel Brulée Lattes in the US, Canada, and their debut in Latin America and the Caribbean
- The return of Cranberry White Mocha, Hazelnut Caramel Latte, and Holiday Cinnamon Latte in Latin America and the Caribbean
- A Toffee Nut Cheesecake in China, and a Pistachio Chocolate Mille-Crepe in Taiwan
Starbucks
The seasonal drinks, which launched on November 6, aren’t just a festive tradition; they’re a key driver of sales for Starbucks.
Foot traffic data from Placer.ai shows that, on November 13th’s Red Cup Day, visits to US Starbucks locations spiked 44.5% above the year-to-date daily average. The Red Cup Day, during which customers receive a free reusable holiday cup with their purchase, reached a higher traffic peak than that seen on November 6, when the company launched its Bearista collectible cup.
CEO Brian Niccol previously described November 6 as the official start of the company’s holiday season, as Starbucks’ biggest sales day ever in North America.
A key season in Starbucks’ broader turnaround
“Holiday is really important to Starbucks’ business; seasonally, it’s an important quarter,” Sara Senatore, managing director of global equity research and senior analyst covering restaurants at Bank of America, told Business Insider. “Starbucks is intrinsically kind of part of American holidays.”
Michael Della Penna, chief strategy officer at the digital advertising research firm InMarket, framed Starbucks’ holiday rollout as a multi-layered strategy: one that builds its global brand identity, satisfies local tastes through its regional offerings, and captures multiple forms of consumer spending — from beverages to merchandise to gift cards.
Starbucks
In prior years, Starbucks gift cards have been so ubiquitous that as many as one in seven Americans received them as a gift during the holiday season. Last holiday season, Starbucks’ Q1 earnings report revealed that its US gift card sales reached $3.5 billion, maintaining its position as the #2 brand in the US by gift card sales.
In Della Penna’s view, the holiday season exemplifies how personalization options and seasonal momentum can converge for Starbucks to “own the moment” globally.
“The holiday season at Starbucks is part of the zeitgeist, and really, really embedded into our annual rituals, in many respects,” Della Penna said. “There’s something for everyone on a global basis, which makes this much bigger than a domestic promotion.”
Innovation beyond the holidays
While Starbucks has successfully embedded itself in seasonal rituals, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, president of the strategic design agency, Shikatani Lacroix Design, told Business Insider the next phase of the company’s continued “Back to Starbucks” effort will have to be about rediscovering — but not repeating — its roots, in order to keep customers interested.
“Where they were no longer exists,” Lacroix said. “They need to reinvent themselves, not just go back.”
Experimenting with new regional flavors is a good start, and the holiday season presents the perfect opportunity to do so while remaining culturally relevant, Lacroix said.
This year’s holiday marks the first one that will carry the full weight of Niccol’s influence since he became CEO last September, and the peak season presents a major test of his leadership and innovation strategy as part of his broader turnaround plan, Senatore said. It will also stress-test Starbucks’ Green Apron Service model, which was introduced this year with the specific goal of improving service.
The first innovation that debuted entirely under Niccol’s purview was the September rollout of its protein milks and cold foams. In October’s earnings report, Starbucks said that the new protein offerings were behind a 1% rise in its fourth-quarter comparable sales — the first time in seven quarters that the coffee chain has reported an increase.
“Now, the innovation flywheel, if you will, is starting to spin faster,” Senatore said. “I think there’s certainly an expectation that we’ll continue to see that trajectory: more consistent innovation, better marketing, and all of those components of better operations coming together.”
