Dive Brief:
- McDonald’s will start serving three caffeinated refreshers with fruit or boba inclusions, and three flavored sodas with cold foam on May 6, the chain said Tuesday.
- The chain said it was adding a new in-restaurant position, the beverage specialist, specifically to ensure the quality and consistency of its new drinks, which are a permanent part of the McCafé menu.
- The Golden Arches has been testing premium beverages, including refreshers and other trendy drinks, since late 2023, when it launched the now-defunct CosMc’s spin-off.
Dive Insight:
With new drinks and procedures posing operational challenges, McDonald’s is adding the beverage specialist position to solve those potential issues.
The chain said the addition came after studying the operations of segment-leading beverage brands, and that the beverage specialists will have their own station behind the counter. High-performing workers will be trained first for the position, but all crew members will eventually rotate through the post, McDonald’s said, aided by video training.
Upon CosMc’s quietus, the brand took lessons from its spin-off to refine a slate of drinks it then tested across hundreds of regular McDonald’s locations last year.
“We've taken the time to get this right, introducing new drinks that are hand-crafted with bold flavors and quality ingredients our fans can taste in every sip,” said Alyssa Buetikofer, McDonald’s USA’s chief marketing and customer experience officer.
Refreshers have been all the rage on restaurant menus for years now, with Restaurant Dive first covering the drinks nearly eight years ago as a component of Starbucks’ menu strategy. Since then, they have become a major component of QSR menu strategy as chains look to capture consumer interest in sweet, cold, often-caffeinated, photogenic beverages.
McDonald’s brightly-colored refreshers, which contain freeze-dried fruit and boba, and some caffeine — 45 milligrams for a small, 60 milligrams for a medium and 75 milligrams for a large — fit squarely into that trend.
The QSR segment’s menu innovation largely depends on widespread consumer acceptance, a process that can take years for new categories and flavor types.
The arrival of refreshers at the Golden Arches — still America’s largest restaurant brand by revenue — signals the drinks category has reached a point of wide cultural saturation. Competitors ranging from Taco Bell to Whataburger have leveraged refreshers to capture new consumer occasions for years.
Dirty sodas are still a bit more outré for fast food. KFC is testing dirty sodas in the U.S., but only at its Saucy spinoff so far. Still, the rapid growth of concepts like Swig, which is dedicated to the dirty soda, signal a latent consumer interest. McDonald’s dirty sodas use cold foam, rather than coffee creamer, and come with vanilla syrup, making them fairly simple constructions.
