Fried chicken has dominated fast food headlines for months, with American names like Dave’s Hot Chicken and Raising Cane’s landing in the UK and existing chains scrambling to keep up. Domino’s launched its own chicken focused spin-off, and Burger King has only just introduced tenders for the first time in its history.
While all that chicken news has been grabbing attention, something else has been building quietly in the background. Fast food chains across the board have started leaning heavily into elaborate, barista style drinks, and it’s a change that’s likely to surprise a fair few people once they notice how far it’s gone.
KFC kicked things off with Kwench.
Back in January 2025, KFC introduced a new drinks range called Kwench, aimed squarely at younger customers looking for something a bit more exciting than a standard fizzy drink. The range built on the brand’s existing Krushems line, reworking familiar flavours into something with broader appeal for a newer generation of customers.
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Since then, Kwench has expanded steadily and now includes everything from a strawberry shortcake flavoured shake to an iced tiramisu latte and a cherry flavoured boba drink. A KFC strategy director explained the thinking behind the range comes down to changing expectations, with customers increasingly wanting drinks that feel like more of an experience rather than something purely functional to have alongside a meal.
Greggs and McDonald’s caught people off guard.
Around the same time Kwench launched, Greggs made a move that left plenty of customers baffled, adding matcha to its menu alongside its usual bakery staples. The pairing felt unexpected given matcha’s association with wellness culture rather than sausage rolls, and it didn’t take long for people to start questioning the decision online.
McDonald’s followed a similar path over the summer, introducing a Vanilla Matcha Frappé that combined green tea flavouring with sweet vanilla, blended with ice and topped with cream. The drink ended up being widely praised, with plenty of customers calling it one of the standout releases of the season despite how unusual the pairing initially sounded.
McDonald’s has taken its drinks range pretty far.
McDonald’s has been particularly vocal about leaning into this change, describing itself as being firmly in what it calls its iced drink era. The current lineup includes a frozen strawberry lemonade, a mango and pineapple smoothie, a caramel iced frappé, and a range of fruity Sprite Zero mixes served over ice in flavours like sour cherry and green apple, with a guava version on the way soon.
There’s more in the pipeline too, with several new drink concepts unveiled at McDonald’s worldwide convention earlier this year, including a horchata flavoured Dr Pepper and an energy drink range in fruity flavours. None of these have been confirmed for UK menus yet, but they reflect a wider push from McDonald’s in the US to compete more directly with coffee chains through increasingly elaborate McCafe options.
Other chains are following the same path.
KFC and McDonald’s aren’t the only ones experimenting here. Dave’s Hot Chicken has introduced its own range of frozen drinks, including versions topped with cream or popping boba pearls, while Taco Bell recently brought its distinctive turquoise flavoured soft drink over from the US.
Popeyes has also confirmed new drinks are on the way soon, suggesting the trend is far from finished. With so many chains moving in the same direction at once, it’s becoming harder to find a major fast food brand that hasn’t started rethinking its drinks menu in some way over the past year or so.
Experts think this trend isn’t going away.
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According to a food industry consultant, this change is less about fast food chains suddenly becoming trendsetters and more about them catching up to where spending has already been heading. Specialist drink brands have spent the past few years making elaborate iced coffees and matcha drinks feel completely normal, particularly in cities, which has opened up an obvious opportunity for bigger chains to offer something similar at a lower price point.
There’s also a cultural change at play, with drinks increasingly being treated as a purchase in their own right rather than something bought purely alongside food. People are buying these drinks while out and about, meeting friends, or simply because they’ve seen something similar online, rather than only picking one up as part of a full meal. That change means fast food chains now need to compete for spending that might otherwise go to specialist drink brands entirely.
What can we expect from fast food drinks menus next?
Given how much appetite there already seems to be for these kinds of drinks, experts expect chains to keep expanding this side of their menus, particularly with more premium options featuring different textures and add-ins. The bigger players are likely to keep chasing that in-between meal spending as customers continue treating drinks as a standalone occasion.
Don’t expect it to happen quickly, though, since larger chains tend to move cautiously until a trend has clearly become mainstream rather than jumping in early. Even so, with so many chains already moving in this direction, it looks like elaborate, coffee shop style drinks are becoming a permanent fixture on fast food menus rather than a passing phase.
If you’ve noticed your usual fast food order slowly filling up with more elaborate drink options lately, it’s not just in your head, and by the sound of it, there’s plenty more still to come across the chains you visit regularly.
