For most of the last century a new flavour reached shoppers only after restaurants had made it familiar. That order has largely reversed, and the reason is reach.
Restaurants once held the introduction stage
Eating out was where people encountered ingredients they could not buy, because chefs had access to importers and specialist suppliers that households did not.
A flavour would build recognition over several years of restaurant menus, and only then would a manufacturer judge it safe enough to put into a packaged product.
That sequence depended on restaurants having better sourcing than shops, which is no longer reliably true.
Retail sourcing caught up and then overtook
Large grocers now buy directly from the same growing regions that supplied specialist importers, and they buy in volumes that make unusual items commercially ordinary.
Their own-label ranges give them a way to test an unfamiliar flavour without a national advertising commitment, since a limited run can be listed in a subset of stores.
The result is that a shopper can meet a new ingredient in a packet before ever seeing it on a menu.
Packaged goods reach far more people per week
A popular restaurant serves a few hundred people a day. A product on shelves in a national chain passes in front of millions of shoppers in the same week.
That difference in exposure means a packaged version builds familiarity much faster than a restaurant version can, even where the restaurant version came first.
Speed matters because familiarity is what converts curiosity into a repeat purchase, and repeat purchase is what keeps a flavour on the shelf.
Snacks are the cheapest experiment available
Most flavour trends now surface first in crisps, drinks, sauces and instant noodles, which is not an accident of taste but of cost.
These formats carry seasoning rather than depending on it structurally, so a new flavour can be swapped in without redesigning the product or the factory line.
The purchase is also low risk for the shopper, who is out very little money if the flavour turns out not to suit them.
Restaurants now respond rather than lead
A chef adding a flavour that shoppers already recognise avoids the work of explaining it, which shortens the menu description and reduces hesitation at the table.
So the restaurant version increasingly arrives second, positioned as the more considered treatment of something guests first met in a packet.
The trend still ends up on menus, but the aisle has become the place where it is decided whether it gets there at all.