- McDonald’s will begin testing a variety of new drinks at select stores. This comes months after the company shut down its CosMc’s stores, which specialized in unique beverages. The testing will begin in September, largely in Wisconsin and Colorado.
McDonald’s might have shut down CosMc’s, its Starbucks competitor, but the company is still leaning heavily into new beverage offerings.
A report in The Wall Street Journal says the company is planning to offer a variety of new drinks at hundreds of locations starting in September. Included among the offerings will be a range of coffees and “dirty sodas,” which will include things like flavored syrups and dried fruits.
The company plans to see which of the new drinks resonate with customers and then determine how to work them into the menu on a larger scale.
That was, in some ways, the point of CosMc’s. McDonald’s was able to experiment with offerings that may or may not have worked in its main business, without having to retrain its entire workforce and potentially slow down service.
The company opened eight of those stores. They were initially a hit, but McDonald’s gave up on the concept after less than two years.
“It allowed us to test new, bold flavors and different technologies and processes – without impacting the existing McDonald’s experience for customers and crew,” the company said in a statement when it announced the closing. “By creating a Learning Lab – in a way that only McDonald’s can – the CosMc’s team was able to test-and-learn in real customer-facing environments, which allowed for greater agility and speed.”
It added, at the time, that some of the most popular CosMc’s drinks will make it onto the menu at standard McDonald’s.
The 10 new drinks will largely be introduced in stores in Wisconsin and Colorado.