How BTS-fueled ube craze in Korea tests Philippine supply limits

The purple latte at cafes in Seongsu and the purple cream bread on convenience store shelves have something in common besides their color. Both depend on ube, a purple yam grown almost entirely in the Philippines, which is struggling to produce enough of the vegetable.

In Korea, the craze for ube treats is partially due to the vegetable’s hue. Purple is BTS’s signature color, and now that the septet has made a comeback and embarked on a world tour, fans have been paying attention to all things violet. As a result, buying ube snacks, drinks and desserts has become a way to celebrate the band, and Korean food outlets credit the fandom for sparking the ube trend and helping it reach the general public.

The craze, however, is colliding with an agricultural reality. The world wants ube faster than the Philippines can grow it, and cafes in Korea are already feeling the squeeze.

A Filipino staple goes global

Ube is a purple yam cultivated mainly in the Philippines and across Southeast Asia. It is often mistaken for the Korean purple sweet potato or the taro, but the three are not the same. Ube’s flavor is nutty and sweet, almost like vanilla, but its real draw is its appearance.

The vivid purple is completely natural, achieved without any artificial dye, which made it a social-media favorite — first within Filipino immigrant communities in the United States, and then in mainstream U.S. and European cafes. One industry figure has called it the matcha of the Philippines, a humble local food becoming a national culinary symbol abroad.

A crop that is shrinking, not growing

The problem lies with how little of it there is, and how that supply is shrinking rather than growing. Ube production in the Philippines fell to 12,483 metric tons in 2025 from 13,381 in the previous year and more than 14,000 in 2021, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.

While the government has pushed for wider cultivation of the vegetable, ube takes at least nine months to mature, making it much less attractive to Filipino farmers than faster-growing crops. It is also sensitive to climate shifts, and the Philippine Root Crop Research and Training Center has cited unpredictable weather and a shortage of quality planting material as constraints on output.

But the demand for ube continues to grow. In the United States, ube offerings on restaurant menus have risen 230 percent over the past four years and now appear across 95 chains, with food-analytics firm Datassential projecting another 74 percent of growth over the next four years.

Export data tells the same story. Ube exports reached 1.7 million kilograms (3.7 million pounds) in 2025, up 20.4 percent from a year earlier, with about half going to the United States and the rest to Canada, Australia, Britain and the Netherlands, according to the Philippines’ Department of Trade and Industry.

The clearest sign of strain is that the Philippines has reportedly been importing ube grown in Vietnam, meaning that a producer nation has been buying in its own signature crop.

Korea feels the pull

Korea is tied directly to that supply chain. Korean cafes and bakeries do not use fresh ube; instead, they use imported Philippine ube powder to bake their bread and ube concentrate to make their drinks. The exact amount of ube imports is not officially tracked by the Korea Customs Service.

The strain has already reached Korean shelves. Yonsei Shop, whose ube cream bread sold more than 50,000 units in four days, said that it had difficulty securing Philippine ube powder ahead of the launch and was working to stabilize supply, according to The Asia Business Daily. The same outlet reported that the cafe chain Knotted, which rolled out ube doughnuts and drinks on April 10, experienced supply swings when demand spiked in March and April, though sourcing has since stabilized.

Other industry figures stated that they have had no issues with their supply. 

“There is no major problem with our supply at the moment,” an industry source said. “The supply price is still the same as the original quote, and there has been no change in volume.”

Another said that their company was managing supply through advance coordination with distributors.

“We are building a stable supply chain in close cooperation with our sourcing regions and supply partners,” the source said, adding that the volume of raw materials and import schedules are arranged with distributors from the product-planning stage and adjusted as demand shifts.

A dessert cycle spinning faster

Also behind the squeeze is a dessert cycle that is spinning faster than ever. Matcha dominated Korean cafes for months, and Dubai chocolate did the same for a shorter spell. Ube seems to be their successor. With in-house development unable to keep pace, Korean food companies have shifted their strategy, racing to localize globally proven goods rather than invent their own. This has resulted in major players simultaneously setting their sights on ube.

Twosome Place’s ube latte topped its noncoffee drinks ranking within three days of its launch in April; Knotted’s ube donut and drink sales jumped sharply; and Starbucks, Paris Baguette and CU all introduced ube products within weeks of one another. Each was reaching for the same scarce ingredient at the same time.

Shock or fad

Whether that will amount to a genuine supply shock is still an open question, though the foundation is there: a small, slow-growing, climate-exposed crop concentrated in one country, with producers themselves importing the vegetable to keep up with demand. Yet Korean firms still describe their sourcing as sometimes tight, not in crisis.

Some in the trade are betting that the ube craze will pass before the supply chain potentially breaks.

“We see the […] trend as nearing its end, so we have no separate plans to purchase [more ube],” one industry representative said — a sign that some buyers are already stepping back rather than stocking up.

The cautionary precedent is people’s obsession with Dubai chocolate last year. The viral pistachio-and-kataifi (shredded Middle Eastern phyllo dough strands) bar drove a global pistachio shortage that pushed kernel prices up by roughly a third; left the nut trade, in one trader’s words, basically tapped out; and forced some retailers to ration sales, according to reporting led by the Financial Times. Kataifi itself was difficult to source, since it is made mainly in Turkey, Greece and the Middle East.

Ube’s future — either becoming the next Dubai chocolate or fading into a niche cafe trend — will decide whether these early tremors become a real shock.

In the end, the ube wave is a study in mismatched speeds. Korean companies can localize a global dessert in a matter of weeks, but the yam at the center of the sweet treat takes nine months to grow in a country that cannot yet plant enough of it. The faster the dessert cycle spins, the harder it runs into the slowness of agriculture.

BY KIM MIN-YOUNG [[email protected]]