McDonald’s secretive new CosMc’s concept could be Dutch Bros rival
Published 12:54 pm Tuesday, December 5, 2023
- Cold drinks represent 80% of Dutch Bros' sales. The Grants Pass company says inflation forced it to raise prices.
As Dutch Bros marches east with its lineup of outrageously colorful caffeinated beverages, the Oregon drive-thru chain may have caught the attention of a formidable competitor.
McDonald’s is launching a similar concept early next year it calls CosMc’s with a drink lineup that evokes Dutch Bros’ menu. CosMc’s appears set to offer iced drinks, spiced lattes and sugary confections with names like Sour Cherry Energy Burst, Island Pick-Me-Up Punch and S’More’s Cold Brew.
McDonald’s plans to offer more details at its annual investor day Wednesday, but it quietly set up the first CosMc’s this month in Bollingbrook, Ill., and the internet has already taken notice.
CosMc’s names and brightly hued styles are reminiscent of some of Dutch Bros’ popular drinks, among them the Palm Beach and Tiger’s Blood lemonades, Electric Berry and Dragon Slayer sodas and the Caramelizer Dutch Freeze. Dutch Bros’ irreverent attitude and flamboyant drinks helped the Oregon company gain a devoted following, especially among young people, and it’s become one of the state’s largest businesses.
Dutch Bros’ stock dropped by about 10% last week in the days after CosMc’s menu hit social media last week. It’s not clear if the potential competition drove the decrease, though, and shares regained some of the lost ground in the following days.
McDonald’s announced the CosMc’s concept last summer but said little at the time about what it had in mind.
“CosMc’s is a small format concept with all the DNA of McDonald’s, but with its own unique personality,” McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski told investment analysts on a quarterly conference call. The company said it would start with a small number of CosMc’s locations in a “limited geography.”
CosMc’s is named for a bug-eyed, multi-armed alien McDonald’s created to advertise its products in the 1980s and ’90s.
“You get a Dutch Bros kind of feeling here,” Iman Jalali told Business Insider after he snapped photos of the CosMc’s menu last week and posted them on social media. CosMc’s wasn’t open yet, and Jalali said the chain was filming a commercial when he went by.
CosMc’s Bollingbrook location appears much bigger than Dutch Bros’ drive-thru stands, and its menu — at least as shown on the menu board photographed by Jalali — includes breakfast sandwiches and other foods that the Oregon chain doesn’t offer.
“They look to be combining the all-day breakfast demand with the Starbucks caffeine demand and mixing drinks that are more kid-friendly than Starbucks,” Jalali told Business Insider.
The broader menu could give CosMc’s an opportunity to differentiate itself from Dutch Bros but would also make it more expensive to build and operate its drive-thrus. The chain might also run into resistance from McDonald’s franchisees, who might not be thrilled about having a similar menu operating anywhere close to their restaurants.
McDonald’s did not respond to a request for comment on its plans and Dutch Bros declined to discuss a potential competitor.
Dutch Bros started in 1992 with two brothers’ coffee pushcart in the small southern Oregon town of Grants Pass. It now has nearly 800 drive-thrus in 16 states but its headquarters haven’t left Grants Pass.
Dutch Bros has its biggest presence in Oregon and it has a large California footprint, too. But its current growth is focused on Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma and other parts of the South and southeastern United States.
The chain hopes to have 4,000 Dutch Bros drive-thrus nationwide by the early 2030s.