People craved spicy food in 2023 – and loved adding pickles to pretty much everything

• Spicy potato tacos, iced coffee, and pickles were among the top-selling items on Grubhub in 2023.
• The most popular flavor of chicken wings was buffalo and of pizza was cheese.

Diners craved spicy food, cold coffee, and pickles in 2023, according to sales data from Grubhub.

The delivery aggregator released its 2023 report looking at the top food and drinks trends for the year.

Spicy food was in high demand, Grubhub says. The top spicy dish ordered in 2023 was spicy potato soft tacos, followed by spicy chicken sandwiches, spicy tuna rolls, hot and sour soup, and drunken noodles.

The most popular flavor of chicken wings was buffalo, followed by lemon pepper, BBQ, teriyaki, and garlic parmesan. Chicken-wing flats were ordered 10 times more than drums, Grubhub says.

Younger people are increasingly turning to iced coffee, fuelling huge growth in cold-beverages sales for the likes of Starbucks and Tim Hortons. "Cold has kind of taken over," a Starbucks exec told investors last year. Grubhub says the most-ordered type of coffee on its app in 2023 was iced coffee, followed by caramel frappes, mocha frappes, cappuccinos, and hot coffee.

People ordered caffeinated drinks well into the evening, too, with more than 10 million coffee beverages ordered after 5 p.m., especially in New York City, Grubhub says.

Pickles, however, had the biggest increase in sales of all individually-ordered items, with orders nearly doubling in 2023 to more than 6.9 million. The salty, briny snacks featured in the viral trend of "girl dinners" this summer and led to sales booming for a sweatshirt featuring images of pickled foods. Brands have been cashing in on the craze – think Heinz's pickle ketchup and Best Maid's sour pickle beer.

One trend Grubhub noticed this year was people getting both salad and French fries in the same order. Fries were, unsurprisingly, the most-ordered side dish in 2023, with the most popular style being classic cut followed by waffle fries, cheese fries, sweet potato fries, and curly fries.

A standard cheese pizza was the most ordered pizza on Grubhub in 2023, followed by margherita, pepperoni, buffalo chicken, and Hawaiian.

Other trends that Grubhub notes include a jump in dairy milk in coffee and a rise in the number of Diet Coke orders.