McDonald’s plans energy drinks and crafted sodas to challenge rivals

McDonald’s is widening its fight with specialty drink chains, planning to add energy drinks and crafted sodas as it tries to turn beverages into a bigger traffic and profit engine. The lineup is expected to include a Red Bull Dragonberry Energizer, a Dirty Dr Pepper and a Mango Pineapple Refresher, with some drinks set to arrive as early as next month and energy-drink options targeted for August.

The move puts McDonald’s directly into a fast-growing corner of the cold-drinks market, where Starbucks, Dutch Bros and Sonic have built strong businesses around customization, flavor and repeat visits. McDonald’s appears to be aiming for a lower price point than those rivals, a familiar tactic for a chain that has leaned heavily on value as diners remain cautious about spending.

That strategy matters because McDonald’s has been under pressure to keep traffic moving. In the first quarter of 2025, U.S. comparable sales fell 3.6%, with the company pointing to negative guest counts and consumer uncertainty. By the third quarter, global comparable sales were up 3.6% and U.S. comparable sales rose 2.4%, with chief executive Chris Kempczinski again emphasizing everyday value, affordability and menu innovation as growth drivers.

The beverage push has been building for more than a year. McDonald’s launched CosMc’s in December 2023 in Bolingbrook, Illinois, as a small-format, beverage-led concept designed to test bold flavors and customization. In May 2025, McDonald’s said that CosMc’s had served as a “launchpad for learning,” helping the company test new flavors, technologies and processes without changing the core McDonald’s experience. The company also said it had created a dedicated category team focused on beverages.

McDonald’s then said CosMc’s-inspired drinks would be rolled out to hundreds of U.S. restaurants as part of an upcoming beverage test, while stand-alone CosMc’s locations would close on a rolling basis starting in late June and the CosMc’s app would be discontinued. That makes the current menu shift look less like a one-off experiment and more like the next phase of a broader reset.

The scale of the chain gives the effort outsized importance. McDonald’s says it serves 68 million people daily and operates about 44,000 restaurants globally, so even a modest gain in beverage occasions could reshape sales mix across the system. For a company that has long relied on burgers, fries and breakfast, the new drinks suggest a more ambitious question: whether the next battleground in fast food is not the meal, but the beverage run.