Chains push beverage formats

Taco Bell is opening another café-style restaurant in Mission Viejo as big fast-food chains put more effort into drinks. (yahoo.com) The Mission Viejo site at 27770 Santa Margarita Parkway is listed by Taco Bell as a Live Más Café, a format that adds more than 25 handcrafted beverages to the regular food menu. Taco Bell’s location page says the store serves Churro Chillers, specialty coffees, Refrescas, Freezes and Limonadas. (tacobell.com) Yahoo reported on April 13 that the Mission Viejo opening would be Taco Bell’s sixth Live Más Café in Orange County. Taco Bell said last fall that new cafés in Irvine and San Diego joined earlier sites in Simi Valley and Chula Vista as it expanded the concept in Southern California and Texas. (yahoo.com 1) (yahoo.com 2) (yahoo.com 3) The format shifts Taco Bell away from the usual drive-thru-first playbook and toward stores built around specialty drinks inside the restaurant. Taco Bell’s Live Más Café page says these drinks are sold only at café-format locations, not across the chain. (tacobell.com) McDonald’s is making a similar push after testing CosMc’s, its standalone beverage concept that opened in December 2023. In June 2025, the company said it would close CosMc’s locations and move CosMc’s-inspired drinks into a beverage test at hundreds of McDonald’s restaurants in the United States. (restaurantbusinessonline.com) (mcdonalds.com) McDonald’s said the test would be run by a dedicated beverage team, and later described the lineup as including soda-based drinks, refreshers and “energy-boosting sips.” Restaurant Business reported that the first menu included six drinks in coffee, crafted soda and refresher categories. (mcdonalds.com) (restaurantbusinessonline.com) That helps explain why “dirty sodas” and energy drinks keep showing up in chain menus. Taco Bell’s Live Más Café pages list a Dirty Mountain Dew Baja Blast Dream Soda and Rockstar Energy Refrescas, while McDonald’s has said its new beverage work targets fast-growing categories beyond standard fountain soda and coffee. (tacobell.com) (mcdonalds.com) Industry trade publication QSR Magazine said last year that specialty beverages had become a roughly $100 billion category, citing market research and heavy demand from younger quick-service customers. Taco Bell and McDonald’s are now testing different ways to chase that spending without remaking every restaurant around a full café. (qsrmagazine.com) For now, Taco Bell is adding more café-format addresses one store at a time, while McDonald’s is folding beverage ideas back into its main brand. The common bet is that a chain built for burgers or tacos can also sell a second visit built around a drink. (yahoo.com) (restaurantbusinessonline.com)