Philippines faces supply crunch as Purple Ube expands globally

Longtime Filipino restaurateur Chris Joseph has been serving ube at his London locations for the past decade, but interest in purple yam drinks and desserts has soared over the past year.

Ube, a naturally sweet and starchy vegetable grown by Filipino farmers, is the star of Casa & Kin, a Soho restaurant founded in 2021 by Joseph and his wife Rowena Romulo.

“What was really flying off the shelves was UBE from the beginning,” Joseph said in an interview with CNBC.

The previous restaurant, Romulo Cafe, which opened and closed in 2016, was also known for its Ube cuisine. Casa and Kin’s menu features inventive items like ube lattes, ube martinis, ube tsunami cheesecake (filled with purple sauce), and even ube cream cheese bread.

Joseph’s first customers were nostalgic Filipinos looking for a taste of home. “What we’re seeing now is people are walking in and they’re interested in Ube. People they don’t normally meet. … They come in, they look at the bakery case, they pick up something from Ube, or a Ube brownie, or a Ube ice cream,” he said.

Over the past year, ube has transcended Filipino culture and entered mainstream consciousness as coffee chains and restaurants seek out the next food and drink trends.

Starbucks sparked the 2025 trend with limited edition Ube Iced Coconut Latte and Ube Espresso Martini, and expanded its Spring 2026 lineup to include Ube Matcha Latte and Ube Vanilla Macchiato. American coffee chain Peet’s also introduced an iced vanilla latte made with Ube Dream Top this season.

Over the past four years, Ube menus have increased 230% across U.S. restaurant menus, according to food and beverage analytics firm DataSessentials. It’s currently on the menu at 95 chains across the U.S. and is projected to grow 74% over the next four years.

Ube exports from the Philippines have increased rapidly in recent years. According to Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data shared with CNBC, in 2025, the Philippines shipped approximately $3.2 million worth of uBEs (approximately 1.7 million kilograms), an increase of approximately 20% from the previous year.

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

Mr. Joseph said sales at Casa and Kin have increased due to increased awareness of Ube City, and the restaurant’s desserts are in high demand.

Emily Tang, chief product officer at Datassentials, told CNBC that ube is “more accessible from a flavor standpoint,” making it easier to innovate.

“It pairs well with coffee, drinks, desserts, pastries, and other things that people like. It also has a mild nutty flavor, so there’s a very low barrier to trying it. It’s not a scary flavor. It’s safe to experiment with, and it looks beautiful.”

Ube has been on the rise for a while, but its popularity is slowly increasing. Datassentials has been tracking the flavor since 2017, when it was primarily sold in bakeries in the Philippines and authentic mom-and-pop eateries in the United States.

Tan said its first appearance on the international stage was tied to the “rise of Asian culture in the mainstream,” from foods and drinks such as Korean fried chicken and boba tea to media such as K-pop and K-dramas.

A major milestone came in 2022, when Baskin-Robbins offered Ube Coconut Swirl Ice Cream as a limited-time product.

“March this year was like the biggest month for UBE’s limited-time offers that we’ve been tracking on top chains. So now it’s really gone mainstream,” Tan said of this year, linking its acceleration in popularity to social media.

“Visually it’s very vibrant. It’s very Instagrammable. It’s very bright. It’s very easily spread by social media. So what ube does is just the perfect trend,” Tan added.

A search for the hashtag ube reveals over 120,000 posts on TikTok and 750,000 posts on Instagram. These all feature ube’s striking purple hue.

The hype around the ingredient is largely driven by global demand for more exotic drink and dessert flavors, with food chains aiming to replicate the success of Japanese matcha and Dubai chocolate, which have been applied to everything from cakes to milkshakes.

Andrew Freeman, founder of hospitality consulting firm AF&Co, told CNBC: “The demand for the aesthetic appearance of food is just as important as the taste, so it’s now just part of the food and drink culture.”

Coffee, in particular, has become a hot topic on social media, Freeman said, as younger generations increasingly move away from drinking alcohol.

“Coffeehouse culture is coming back because people are drinking less,” he says.

“For this year’s report, we did a thorough study of coffee and how it went from a functional drink to a drink of excess, ‘what can you put on top of your coffee, what can you whip up?’ What’s driving it is that we want to be photographed and we want it to go viral,” he said.

But while ube is enjoying increased global demand, Filipino farmers are struggling to keep up as climate change makes weather patterns more unpredictable and limits the supply of high-quality planting materials, according to the Philippine Root Crops Research and Training Center.

According to PSA data, the total production of purple sweet potatoes in the region has been decreasing year by year, decreasing by 1.63% from 13,381 tons in 2024 to 12,483 tons in 2025. In 2021, the Philippines produced 14,150 tons of purple sweet potatoes.

The country imports some ube from Vietnam to support local demand.

“This is one of those early days. There’s going to be a surge in demand. The supply chain needs to catch up and understand what it is,” Casa & Kin’s Joseph said.

Although the price of ube has increased, Joseph is not complaining because it is an opportunity for Filipino farmers to charge a higher price.

“It’s good for them because humble crops like tubers don’t have much value. If they can get more, they can plant more. It’s great. I hope the world discovers ube,” he said.