America's two-decade love affair with pumpkin spice is cooling fast, with new search data showing consumer interest cratering even as coffee chains and retailers keep pushing the flavor earlier every year.
A Google report published August 26 found just 6 percent of the United States searching for pumpkin spice, down from 64 percent of U.S. states doing so the prior year, the New York Post reported. The drop is steep enough to raise a basic question for every chain that built its late-summer marketing calendar around the flavor: are consumers finally done?
Jenny Lee, Google's lead data analyst, pointed to shifting habits rather than a single cause. She described a "noticeable drop in searches for pumpkin spice" and a parallel "decline of pumpkin spice lattes," even as some users still search "when do pumpkin spice lattes come out." The curiosity lingers. The enthusiasm does not.
"People are looking for new twists on their everyday drinks, leaning into new routines over standard seasonal habits."
Lee's assessment lines up with what the numbers show across multiple platforms. Over 260 percent more people searched for "matcha latte" than "pumpkin spice latte" during the month covered by Google's report. Matcha now tops search charts in 29 states. On TikTok, roughly 500,000 posts carry the "matcha latte" tag, about equal to "pumpkin spice", and one matcha video by the account @beckymaelee racked up 4 million views.
Matcha is not the only challenger. Pinterest data shows banana latte pictures surging 916 percent. Blueberry lattes, marshmallow lattes, and carrot cake lattes are all ranking high on the platform for the first time. "Banana coffee syrup" is dominating Google search results in a category where pumpkin once had no real competition.
The pattern is straightforward. Consumers, especially the younger demographics that drive social-media food trends, want novelty. Pumpkin spice, which Starbucks first introduced in 2003, has had more than twenty years to saturate every product category from lattes to candles to deodorant. At some point, familiarity stops selling.
That reality has not stopped the industry from doubling down. Dunkin' launched its pumpkin spice lattes on August 19 this year. Starbucks followed on August 25, rolling out not just the classic PSL but new variations including an Iced Pumpkin Cream Shaken Espresso and a Pumpkin Spice Chai. Both chains moved their launch dates up by one day compared to the prior year, Fox News reported, part of a broader pattern retailers call "season creep."
The Pumpkin Spice Latte remains Starbucks' most popular seasonal drink, with hundreds of millions sold since 2003. Foot traffic at U.S. Starbucks locations jumped 24 percent on the day the PSL went on sale in 2024 compared to the previous eight Thursdays, AP News reported. Those are real dollars. But a one-day traffic spike does not refute a broader search-interest collapse.
The "season creep" trend tells its own story about where the market is headed. Instacart data from 2024 showed the seasonal peak for pumpkin spice orders hit September 17, ten full days earlier than in 2023. DoorDash reported PSL demand spiked on August 19 that year, nearly two weeks earlier than in 2021, with grocery orders for fall drink ingredients climbing as early as late July.
Michael Varnum, a professor at Arizona State University, told Fox News that retailers push seasonal products earlier hoping to "capture boosts in spending associated with holidays or seasonal shifts earlier with the idea that it might extend the period for which they'll see it in their sales." The strategy makes sense on a spreadsheet. But if consumer interest is genuinely declining, launching earlier just means burning through a shrinking window faster.
Trader Joe's restocked its viral pumpkin spice mini sheet cake and donuts the same week as Google's report. David's Protein debuted a Pumpkin Spice Gold Bar on August 24 at $39 per box, a product the New York Post described as the "viral (and expensive) power bars preferred by Bella Hadid." The race among coffee chains to cash in on pumpkin spice season now includes protein bars and baked goods, even as the core product loses its grip.
The arms race extends well beyond coffee. Walmart began stocking Halloween candy and pumpkin spice products months before fall, drawing pointed questions from shoppers about whether the seasonal calendar had lost all meaning.
New York City coffee shops like Joe Coffee Co. and Black Press Coffee still serve pumpkin spice lattes that the Post's author described as superior to the chain versions. But even those shops are "no longer getting the same slice of the popularity pie," the paper noted. When the product is better and the interest still drops, the problem is not quality. It is saturation.
The disconnect between supply and demand is hard to miss. Brands keep moving their fall menus earlier, La Colombe launched its pumpkin spice latte three weeks before Starbucks in what it called its earliest-ever fall rollout. Panera rolled out a pumpkin-heavy fall menu before summer even ended.
Varnum offered a useful frame for why consumers respond to seasonal products at all. "How we respond to seasons isn't purely driven by actual changes in the environment but is also shaped by other associations, traditions, rituals and schedules," he told Fox News. In other words, the craving for pumpkin spice was never really about pumpkin. It was about the feeling of fall. And if matcha, banana, and blueberry can deliver that same seasonal novelty, pumpkin has no inherent advantage.
Some caveats apply. The Google report's comparison figures, 6 percent of "the United States" versus 64 percent of "U.S. states", use different units and are not perfectly comparable. The methodology behind those numbers is not spelled out. And search interest is not the same as sales; Starbucks may still move enormous volumes of PSLs even as fewer people bother to Google the drink.
But the direction is clear. On TikTok, matcha has pulled even with pumpkin spice in post volume and is generating individual videos with millions of views. On Pinterest, banana and blueberry flavors are showing up in categories pumpkin spice used to own outright. On Google, the search gap is not close, matcha outpaces PSL by more than 260 percent.
Dairy Queen's early fall flavor launch this year featured caramel apple cheesecake, not pumpkin, a quiet signal that even fast-food chains may be reading the room.
Twenty years is a long run for any food trend. Pumpkin spice had a good ride. But when the data says consumers want something new and the industry keeps selling them the same orange drink a day earlier every August, that is not tradition, it is inertia.