Meet the 2025 Food & Wine Game Changers Transforming How We Eat and Drink

The food and beverage industry is constantly evolving. Everywhere you turn there are new trends and new tech, but also new challenges that force you to rethink everything you know. The 2025 Food & Wine Game Changers — our fifth annual list of the people, products, and companies changing the way we eat and drink for the better — are meeting those challenges with creativity and grit. 

One of the biggest themes in this year’s Game Changers list is accessibility. There’s Ayesha Curry, whose nonprofit Eat. Learn. Play. has provided over 25 million meals to children and families in Oakland, California, and there’s Alicia Towns Franken, who is striving to create more opportunities for minorities in the wine industry. There’s LifeStraw, whose filtration devices transform undrinkable water into something that is clean and safe, and, for those with limited hand strength (or just a fear of flying corks), there’s one of our staff favorites, Champop, a clever device that makes opening a bottle of bubbly a breeze for everybody.

What they have in common is a shared vision for the future, one that leads their companies, and the rest of us, in a better, brighter direction — and that makes the world a more delicious and delightful place while they’re at it. Read on to meet the 2025 Food & Wine Game Changers. — Amelia Schwartz, Editor

Companies have spent years adjusting the size and shape of the air fryer, but at the end of the day, it’s still a countertop convection oven. That is, until SharkNinja shook up the category with the Ninja Crispi Portable Glass Air Fryer Cooking System. This new innovation makes it possible to cook, serve, and store food in the same container — anywhere, anytime.

In 2013, Luke Saunders set out to find a better way to provide healthy food to on-the-go people like him. His solution? Farmer’s Fridge: a vending machine that can dispense delicious, nutritious meals in seconds. With over 1,700 units across 16 states, Farmer’s Fridge is revolutionizing access to fresh meals.

This California-based company is diverting millions of fruits and vegetables from landfills — without us ever knowing. Through its invisible and edible protective coating, Apeel is ensuring that produce like avocados, apples, and mangoes stays fresh longer in grocery stores worldwide.

Little Sesame hummus is smooth and velvety, with a nutty, rich sesame flavor and bright zingy lemon notes — F&W editors unanimously agreed that it’s the best store-bought hummus we’ve ever tasted. And you can feel good eating the hummus. By using American regeneratively grown chickpeas, Little Sesame is taking part in rebuilding soil health in the Great Plains.

The unagi supply chain has long been convoluted — eels were caught in Maine, then shipped to Asia to grow to maturity. Now, thanks to American Unagi, eels never have to cross international waters to reach dinner plates. The first large-scale, land-based eel aquafarm in the United States is making eel more accessible and sustainable for American consumers and chefs alike.

Not only is The Ajinomoto Group the first and largest MSG company, but they’re also on a mission to debunk the racist myth that the seasoning is harmful — a misconception that has existed ever since the New England Journal of Medicine coined the term “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.” Ajinomoto recruited a team of chefs to share the truth: that MSG is simply an umami-packed ingredient that every home cook should be using.

In a digital age, old-fashioned methods restore connection and community to dining out. The Yellow Bittern in London and Eulalie in New York City are rejecting social media, reservation platforms, and QR codes in favor of the warm, face-to-face hospitality that much of the restaurant industry has come to overlook.

The signature Champagne “pop” is half the fun of drinking bubbly. But how can you keep the fun of opening a bottle of sparkling wine without the risk of losing an eye? The answer: Champop. This small plastic wine opener can be placed over the top of a sparkling wine cork and, with a gentle twist, pulls the cork from the bottle.

Making canned cocktails isn’t hard. Making excellent canned cocktails is. Founded by Yoni Reisman and Neal Cohen, Tip Top partners with veteran bartenders to ensure that their 16 flavors — classics like Negroni, Cosmopolitan, and Mai Tai — are just as delicious as what you could get at a cocktail bar, setting a new standard in the ready to drink industry. You don’t need to leave your house to enjoy Tip Top. Simply pour it in a glass or drink it directly from the can.

For the past two decades, LifeStraw have provided clean, filtered water to anyone around the world — by building filters into straws. From water bottles and glass pitchers to their eponymous straw, LifeStraw’s products catch bacteria, parasites, microplastics, and other contaminants, putting potable water that is safe to drink within easy reach of millions.

With the price of coffee at an all-time high — part of an upward trend that’s expected to increase as climate change causes crop yields to plummet and prices to soar — Atomo Coffee is offering an alternative that is sustainable, fair trade, and affordable. It’s coffee, just without the beans. To replicate coffee’s rich, complex flavors, Atomo uses a blend of date pits, strawberry fiber, green bananas, and caffeine reclaimed from green tea.

Ayesha Curry has written cookbooks, hosted cooking shows, opened restaurants, launched a lifestyle brand and magazine, and acted in films. And yet, her most exciting project is her most ambitious one: fighting childhood hunger in her adopted hometown of Oakland, California, with her nonprofit, Eat. Learn. Play.

Cofounder of BET (Black Entertainment Television) and CEO of hotel group Salamander Collection, Sheila Johnson is a hospitality magnate. Her projects like The Family Reunion, founded in partnership with F&W and Kwame Onwuachi, are the most stylish, joyful, and inclusive experiences anywhere.

As the founder of the Boston-based nonprofit Wine Unify, Alicia Towns Franken is accelerating careers and creating a community for aspiring wine professionals of color through access to professional certifications, mentorship opportunities, and educational resources.