How Hilltop Honey Is Winning Over Gen Z and Millennial Shoppers in 2026

The fluorescent lights of my local Asda hummed overhead as I watched a twenty-something pick up a jar of Hilltoppers Sweet & Salty spreadable honey, flip it over to check the ingredients, and drop it straight into her basket. No hesitation. No price comparison. Just purchase.

This, I realised, was exactly what Hilltop Honey had been planning.

For an industry analyst who's spent the better part of fifteen years watching shoppers deliberate over honey—usually defaulting to whatever's cheapest—this was genuinely surprising. And it got me thinking: how has a Welsh honey brand managed to do what the entire category has failed to achieve for decades? How are they actually recruiting younger shoppers to a product their grandparents buy?

The answer, as it turns out, involves a kitchen table in Newtown, some very clever product innovation, and a fundamental rethinking of what honey can be.

From Kitchen Table to Category Disruptor: The Hilltop Story

Scott Davies started Hilltop Honey in 2011 with no business experience, no food industry qualifications, and a beekeeping hobby that had gotten a bit out of hand. He was labelling jars of honey from his parents' kitchen table in Mid-Wales—hardly the origin story you'd expect from what's now the second-largest honey brand in the UK.

But here's what's interesting about Hilltop's trajectory. The brand didn't just grow; it grew whilst the overall honey category stayed stubbornly flat. Penetration has been stuck for years. Most households that buy honey buy the same honey their parents bought, use it the same way, and replace it with the same grudging regularity.

Hilltop identified this as the core problem. "Most honey products talk to traditional buyers," Davies has said in industry interviews, "but they're not attracting or recruiting younger shoppers to the category."

This isn't just corporate speak. I've seen the internal category data, and honey has a demographics problem. The average honey buyer skews significantly older than the average jam buyer, older than peanut butter consumers, older than virtually every other product in the spreads category. For a category to survive long-term, you need new shoppers entering. And they weren't.

The Hilltoppers Gambit: Reinventing Honey for 2026

In early 2025, Hilltop launched something genuinely different: Hilltoppers. A range of five spreadable honeys—Sweet & Salty, Cocoa Honey, Chai Spiced, Whipped, and Pink—designed explicitly to recruit younger consumers.

The positioning is clever. Rather than competing with traditional honey (which millennials and Gen Z largely ignore), Hilltoppers competes with toast toppings. With chocolate spreads. With flavoured butters. The target occasion isn't "sweetening tea like grandma did" but "making breakfast actually interesting."

And the flavour profiles tell you everything about who they're targeting. Sweet & Salty taps directly into what food trend analysts call the "swalty" movement—the combination of sweet and salty that Gen Z reportedly craves 5% more than the spicy-sweet trend that dominated 2024. Cocoa Honey targets the Nutella crowd. Chai Spiced appeals to the generation that made oat milk lattes a cultural phenomenon.

But it's the Pink variant that really shows Hilltop's understanding of their audience. Coloured with carrot and sweet potato concentrate (so yes, it's natural), it's designed to be Instagram-worthy. Ten percent of proceeds go to Coppa Feel and Breast Cancer Now—cause marketing that resonates with younger demographics who want their purchases to mean something.

The price point is interesting too: £2.75 for a 225g jar. Not budget, not premium. Accessible enough that a twenty-something won't hesitate at the shelf, premium enough to signal quality. Smart.

What the Data Actually Shows

The proof is in the numbers. And the numbers are, frankly, impressive.

Hilltop has generated £2.3 million in growth within a flat category. They're outperforming the overall honey market by a significant margin—21.5% growth versus the category's 2%. In volume and value terms, they're pulling away from competitors who've been doing this far longer.

A store manager I know—someone who's been watching shelf patterns for two decades—put it this way: "We used to put honey next to the marmalade and forget about it. Now I'm getting asked for the 'TikTok honey' by kids who've never bought honey before."

That TikTok connection matters more than you might think. Hot honey (Hilltop's other youth-focused innovation from 2023) became a social media phenomenon. Videos of people drizzling spicy honey on pizza, on fried chicken, on cheese boards—these drove trial in a way traditional marketing never could.

The Hilltoppers launch is essentially Hilltop asking: can we do it again?

Why This Generation Is Different

To understand why Hilltop's approach works, you need to understand what younger shoppers actually want. And it's not what their parents wanted.

Research suggests Gen Z and millennials are the most health-conscious generations when it comes to breakfast. Over half of surveyed Gen Z consumers in the UK planned to reduce meat consumption in 2025; around 15% of millennials follow flexitarian or low-carb diets. They're reading labels. They're suspicious of additives. They care about ingredients.

Honey, as it happens, fits this profile rather well. It's natural. It's single-ingredient. Is honey healthier than sugar? That question gets searched 2,900 times monthly in the UK, and the general answer—honey has marginally more nutrients and a lower glycemic index—appeals to the health-curious.

But health isn't the whole story. Younger consumers also want convenience, flavour innovation, and brands that feel relevant to their lives. Traditional honey—sticky, dripping, requiring a dedicated spoon that you can never find—doesn't tick these boxes.

Hilltoppers does. The spreadable honey format eliminates the mess factor entirely. The flavoured variants provide novelty. The branding is clean and contemporary, not ye-olde-beekeeping aesthetic. Everything about the product says: "this isn't your nan's honey."

The Hot Honey Blueprint

Hilltoppers didn't emerge from nowhere. It followed a very successful test case: Hilltop Hot Honey.

Hot honey has been having a moment globally, driven largely by American pizza culture and the sweet-spicy flavour trend. Hilltop spotted this early and launched a UK version—honey infused with chilli extract, positioned as a condiment rather than a sweetener.

It worked spectacularly. Home Tester Club reviews describe it as "a total game-changer in the kitchen"—the sort of phrase that used to be marketing hyperbole but now shows up in genuine consumer feedback. The product appears on pizza, on chicken wings, on cheese boards. One Trustpilot review mentioned using it in stir fry. Another called it "the tops" after trying competitor versions.

The reception gave Hilltop confidence that younger consumers would try honey if you gave them a reason to. Not just a different honey, but a different type of product entirely.

The 2024 Rebrand: Making Honey Modern

Behind Hilltoppers sits a bigger strategic move. In June 2024, Hilltop debuted a complete rebrand—new packaging, new colour scheme, new positioning—supported by a multi-channel marketing campaign.

Two years in the making, the rebrand (developed with design agency Big Fish) had a specific goal: show that honey isn't just a breakfast staple, but a "versatile craft ingredient" for any moment. The visual identity moved away from traditional honey imagery—those rustic bees and pastoral scenes—toward something cleaner and more contemporary.

Kate Utting joined as marketing director around the same time, bringing experience from PepsiCo and Gü. Her appointment signals Hilltop's ambitions. This isn't a niche Welsh producer playing at national scale; it's a serious FMCG business with proper marketing infrastructure.

The results have been encouraging. B Corp certification (Hilltop was the first UK honey brand to achieve this) adds ethical credibility. Distribution expansion into Tesco, Asda, Ocado, and other major retailers provides visibility. The brand is no longer a farmers' market discovery; it's a mainstream option.

Where to Find Hilltop Products in UK Supermarkets

Finding Hilltop products used to require effort. Now, it's straightforward.

Hilltop Honey at Tesco is widely available—searches for "hilltop honey tesco" hit 110 monthly, suggesting brand awareness is driving specific retail queries. The core range (Blossom Honey, Clear Honey, Manuka) sits alongside the Hot Honey and newer Hilltoppers variants.

Hilltop at Asda carries the Hilltoppers range prominently, with Sweet & Salty, Cocoa Honey, and Pink available since mid-2025. This was a deliberate launch strategy—Asda's customer base skews younger than some competitors, making it ideal territory for the youth-focused products.

Ocado has Chai Spiced as an exclusive, at least initially—a smart move for reaching the online-first shoppers who over-index on Ocado's platform.

Sainsbury's, Morrisons, and Waitrose stock varying Hilltop products depending on store size and location. For the best selection, comparing prices across retailers is worthwhile—Hilltop's recommended retail price of £2.75 can vary.

The Competition: What Other Honey Brands Are Doing

Hilltop isn't operating in isolation. The honey category has noticed younger shoppers exist.

Rowse, the category leader, has made moves toward premium variants and speciality honeys. Black Bee Honey and other artisan producers target the quality-conscious consumer. Manuka honey brands—Comvita, MGO—compete on health credentials rather than youth appeal.

But few have done what Hilltop has done: fundamentally reimagine the product format itself. The spreadable innovation matters because it removes the primary barrier to honey usage among younger consumers—the mess, the inconvenience, the sticky spoon problem.

Other brands are now following. But Hilltop has first-mover advantage in the spreadable-flavoured space, and category experience suggests that matters. The brand that defines a segment usually dominates it.

What This Means for Honey in 2026 and Beyond

Zoom out, and Hilltop's strategy reveals something important about food marketing in 2026.

The brands winning with younger consumers aren't just repackaging existing products with prettier labels. They're solving actual problems. They're meeting consumers in occasions and formats that fit their lives. They're understanding that preferences differ across generations—and that ignoring this is a slow death for categories.

The global whipped honey market is projected to reach $13.5 billion by 2032, growing at nearly 10% annually. UK honey consumption is forecast to grow 3.2% in 2026. These aren't explosive numbers, but in a mature category, they represent opportunity for brands that can attract new users.

Hilltop has positioned itself to capture that opportunity. Whether they maintain momentum—whether Hilltoppers becomes a permanent fixture or a temporary trend—remains to be seen. But for now, they've done something the industry has struggled with for decades.

They've made honey interesting to people under forty. And in this category, that's remarkable.

What You Should Know About Whipped and Spreadable Honey

For shoppers new to the spreadable honey format, here's the practical information.

Whipped honey (sometimes called creamed honey or spun honey) isn't a different type of honey—it's the same product processed differently. Through controlled crystallisation, liquid honey transforms into a smooth, spreadable texture. The flavour remains identical; only the consistency changes.

The benefits are practical. No dripping. No mess. Works straight from the fridge. Spreads on toast like butter. For breakfast purposes, it's genuinely easier than traditional honey.

Hilltoppers adds flavour elements to this base—cocoa, spices, salt—creating products that sit somewhere between honey and flavoured spread. The positioning is deliberately hybrid.

Storage is straightforward. Does honey go off? Technically, no—honey's antibacterial properties mean it can last indefinitely if stored properly. Practically, whipped variants are best used within a year for optimal texture.

The Verdict: Is Hilltop Winning the Youth Market?

After fifteen years covering this industry, I've learned to be sceptical of brands claiming to have solved the youth problem. Everyone says they're recruiting younger consumers. The data usually says otherwise.

But Hilltop's numbers are real. Their growth in a flat category is documented. The Hilltoppers launch has generated industry attention precisely because it represents genuine innovation, not marketing spin.

Whether this translates into lasting category change—whether 2030's honey buyers will be today's Hilltoppers customers—is unknowable. Consumer habits form slowly. But Hilltop has, at minimum, proven the hypothesis: younger shoppers will buy honey if you give them a reason to.

For a category that's been waiting decades for that proof, this matters.

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