McDonald's Refreshers and Dirty Sodas: National Rollout Explained

McDonald's Refreshers and Dirty Sodas: National Rollout Explained

McDonald's will begin selling refreshers and dirty sodas at its U.S. restaurants nationwide starting next month, with energy drinks to follow later this year, Restaurant Business reported this month. The rollout covers 13,706 locations and launches under the McCafé brand, officially retiring the CosMc's name the company used during its experimental phase.

The drinks follow a successful in-store test across more than 500 restaurants in Wisconsin and Colorado. "The results did exceed expectations for the entirety of the program," Jill McDonald, global chief restaurant experience officer, told analysts earlier this year. Energy drinks developed in collaboration with Red Bull are still to come later in 2026, meaning next month's launch is the opening move in what McDonald's has framed as an ongoing platform, not a completed menu addition.

From CosMc's to McCafé: how McDonald's built this strategy

The national launch caps roughly two and a half years of development, much of it spent on a side concept most observers wrote off as a failure.

McDonald's launched CosMc's as a standalone beverage-focused concept in suburban Chicago in late 2023, then expanded it into Texas. By mid-2025, all locations were closed. Rather than treat the shutdown as a loss, the company folded what it learned into the Wisconsin and Colorado test, using CosMc's as a deliberate R&D vehicle, Restaurant Business reported earlier this year.

One finding from that process reshaped what national rollout would require. On an August 2025 earnings call, CEO Chris Kempczinski said consumers "actually want to be given a recipe and then they just want to make adjustments around the edges on that," which made the drinks "less complicated than first thought," per Restaurant Business. That discovery drove the guided-recipe model now heading into national deployment.

The financial case is direct. Beverages are "more profitable than food," Kempczinski said during the same call. "It's a really large market opportunity. It's growing, and there's a lot of things to like." Beverage category lead Charlie Newberger put it in platform terms when the Wisconsin and Colorado test was announced: "We're not just adding drinks to the menu, we're advancing our global beverage platform that fits naturally with how people already enjoy McDonald's," he said in a statement. McDonald's pegs its global opportunity in beverages at $100 billion, according to the company.

What McDonald's new drink menu includes and when the chain wants to sell it

The test lineup covered three categories: coffee drinks (Creamy Vanilla Cold Brew, Toasted Vanilla Frappe), crafted sodas (Sprite Berry Blast, Sprite Lunar Splash topped with freeze-dried dragonfruit), and refreshers (Popping Tropic, made with pineapple and mango juices and popping pearls; Strawberry Watermelon, finished with freeze-dried strawberries). All were served in clear cups to show off the contents, a deliberate presentation choice, Restaurant Business noted after testing the drinks last September.

The timing strategy is as deliberate as the presentation. The refreshers are advertised as "moderately" caffeinated for all-day use, and the Wisconsin-Colorado test drove new visits specifically at snack, dinner, and evening hours, with higher average checks across those occasions. "It did drive incremental occasions," McDonald told analysts. "The financials are really playing out well." Those are dayparts where McDonald's has historically been weaker, and the same afternoon and evening window that chains like Dutch Bros and Swig have built their businesses around, per Restaurant Business.

Consumer research points in the same direction. Circana data published earlier this year found that drinks are "increasingly experiential," with dirty sodas cited specifically as part of a broader shift toward bold, sensory-forward beverages among younger consumers.

Test pricing ran between $2.89 and $3.19 for small sizes. McDonald's has stated its goal is to price below existing specialty chains, a credible position given that each of its 13,706 U.S. restaurants generates around $4 million in annual sales, giving the system substantial purchasing use, Restaurant Business reported.

The operational question: can McDonald's execute at scale?

The available execution data from the test is encouraging, and narrow.

A Restaurant Business reporter who ordered four drinks in the drive-thru last September was on the road in about four minutes, though the car was briefly pulled forward to wait. That's the kind of minor throughput friction that compounds quickly at volume. It's also the only concrete execution data publicly available from the test; McDonald's has not released drive-thru timing metrics or operational results from the Wisconsin and Colorado locations.

The guided-recipe model addresses this directly. Customers choose from preset options with minor modifications available, no blank-slate customization. As Kempczinski noted, consumers want a recipe with room for small adjustments, not a blank canvas. That's a narrower operational challenge than replicating a fully custom specialty drink experience, and it was a deliberate design choice, per Restaurant Business.

What that model produces when the audience grows from 500 test locations to 13,706 is the open question. The recipe architecture is McDonald's structural answer to execution risk. The actual performance data arrives after launch.

What McDonald's entry means for the specialty beverage category

The obvious question is whether chains like Dutch Bros, Swig, and 7 Brew have reason to be concerned. The historical precedents cited by Restaurant Business point the other way.

When McDonald's introduced smoothies in 2010, widespread concern about damage to the category didn't materialize. Tropical Smoothie Cafe grew nearly 1,200% over the following years and Smoothie King grew 380%, according to Technomic data. When McDonald's launched Mighty Wings in 2013 amid analyst concern about Wingstop, Wingstop's U.S. system sales rose 528% over the following decade. Both cases suggest McDonald's entry expanded the addressable market rather than redistributing existing customers.

Dutch Bros CEO Christine Barone offered a similar read when analysts asked in February whether McDonald's energy drink test in Colorado drew customers away from her stores. She declined to claim any impact. "This is a category that continues to grow," she said.

McDonald's is also not moving alone. Taco Bell's beverage-forward Live Más Cafe concept reported a 40% sales increase at its first location, per the franchisee operator. KFC's Kwench concept launched in the UK and Ireland and has since expanded to Australia. Potbelly completed a systemwide craft refresher rollout last fall. The convergence of multiple large chains on the same category at roughly the same time reflects shared conviction about where consumer demand is heading, Franchise Times reported last year.

McCafé offers a useful frame here. It didn't hollow out independent coffee shops; it made premium coffee a routine drive-thru purchase for millions of people who previously skipped it. The refreshers and dirty sodas launch is the same structural bet applied to a different category whether it produces the same result is what the rollout will show.

What comes next and who it affects

The scale arithmetic has no real equivalent in the specialty beverage world. A 5% lift in per-location sales from beverages across McDonald's U.S. system would produce roughly $2.7 billion, more than Dutch Bros generated systemwide last year. A 10% lift would create a $5.5 billion business ranking third among U.S. beverage chains, Restaurant Business calculated. Neither scenario requires pulling a single customer away from a specialty chain. Both require only that existing McDonald's customers add a drink to orders they were already placing.

For customers, the near-term change is concrete: lower-priced specialty drinks at drive-thrus they already use, available during the afternoon and evening hours that specialty chains have largely owned. The Red Bull energy drink collaboration still to come adds another category before the system has finished proving out the first one.

That sequencing matters. The beverage menu launching next month is the foundation, not the finished product. McDonald's will find out whether its guided-recipe model holds up at volume, and franchisees will find out whether the afternoon and evening lift the test promised materializes systemwide. How that goes will determine whether the Red Bull phase lands in a system that has found its footing, or one still working out the operational details.