There's no need to head below the Mason-Dixon line to enjoy delicious sweet tea. McDonald's
has brought the drink nationwide to all of its locations. Here's everything you need
to know about McDonald's sweet tea.
McDonald's sweet tea, according to the chain's website, is made with orange pekoe. Unless
you are a tea aficionado, it is totally plausible that you ordered the beverage expecting something
that tasted like Orangina. But then you took one swig to realize it's just plain tea with
sugar and ice. So what's the deal with "orange pekoe" then?
Orange pekoe is a grade of black tea sourced from India and Sri Lanka. Tea is graded depending
on whether it includes broken leaves, buds, or the "finest" tips of the tea plant. Each
grade looks and tastes different. Broken leaves make for a stronger tea, tea buds give the
tea a golden hue, and so on.
Orange pekoe is the basic one, consisting of whole tea leaves. Pekoe is Chinese for
the downy hair found on the sides of young tea leaves. As explained in the Boston Tea
Party Ships and Museum website, Dutch traders bought this tea from Chinese merchants and
gifted it to the House of Orange — the royal family of the Netherlands – calling it “Orange”
pekoe. Little did they know that the name would stick, and become a menu constant in
one of the biggest fast food chains in the world.
No matter how many ice cubes you add, McDonald's sweet tea can be shockingly sweet. Even if
your taste buds don't complain, your arteries might have a different story to tell. Analyzing
the nutritional data of a sweet summer drink can be a buzz killer. But if you are a McDonald's
regular, it would be wise to acknowledge that when you knock back a large sweet tea, your
sugar quota is done for the day.
Here's why: a large sweet tea has 38g of sugar in it, according to McDonald's official website.
That's more than the daily intake recommended by the American Heart Association, which states
that men can have up to 37.5 grams, and women, up to 25 grams of sugar per day. Anything
above that increases your chances of attracting a grim set of diseases, such as obesity, type
2 diabetes, and general heart issues.
McDonald's uses a different type of sugar, though. "Medium invert sugar," as it's called,
is slightly sweeter and doesn't crystallize like normal sugar. However, Healthline notes
that nutritionally speaking, they are all the same — sweet and dangerous.
First of all, if you are on a diet and still find yourself at a McDonald's drive-thru,
you'll probably just cheat and order the chicken McNuggets. But if you are still mindful of
the calories, order a sweet tea instead of a Coke to wash it down. One small sweet tea
has 90 calories, which is much less than a Coke or Minute Maid Orange juice that packs
150 calories each. Of course, the ideal choice would have been water or Diet Coke, but, who
are we kidding?
The problem with beverages like sweet tea, however, is that it's sometimes hard to stop
with one cup. And since refills are allowed, you may go for a second, without realizing
that consuming two large sweet teas is the calorie equivalent, or even more, of devouring
a solid cheeseburger.
Sugar-sweetened drinks, like sweet tea, contribute about 37% of our total liquid calorie intake,
according to a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. But the worst part
is that drinking beverages scarcely makes us feel guilty, and so there is no red signal
from the body. As a result, most often, people don't balance the quantity of food they eat
to compensate for the soda they drink.
In August 2020, an ex-employee of McDonald's took to TikTok to spill some tea about potential
hazards regarding how the sweet tea is made inside the chain's kitchen. Those who are
swilling a large cup of it while watching this video might want to set it aside for
just a second. Ex-employee, Dessy Joseph, said that, at least at the McDonald's chain
where she worked, the mop bucket was kept right next to the sweet tea bucket. Joseph
added that the only thing differentiating the two was a tiny label on the tea container.
"Yeah, guys, they're stored on the floor, next to the mop buckets, at my location."
Joseph told Insider,
"[T]here was no way that somebody didn't mix that up one day."
This claim casts McDonald's in a bad light when it comes to the question of hygiene,
but according to Insider, the chain declined to comment. Joseph followed her TikTok post
on sweet tea buckets with two more that featured tweets and photos supporting her claim.
Joseph's 30-video series on McDonald's secrets turned her into a mini celebrity, but even
before her, ex-McDonald's employees have been discussing these infamous sweet tea buckets
on Reddit. As one Redditor wrote:
"[T]ea is brewed in 2-gallon red and green buckets which are then emptied into the tea
urns as needed. Brewing tea is all those containers are used for, but they do look suspicious[ly]
like mop buckets."
In what seems to be a bizarre and unexpected turn of events, a customer in South Carolina
got his cup of sweet tea with a surprise ingredient: marijuana. Parrish Brown had ordered his tea
with less ice and extra lemon at a McDonald's drive-thru. According to a report by The Island
Packet, upon drinking his tea, Brown discovered several bags of marijuana had been included
with his beverage.
Brown subsequently notified the cops, who confirmed that it was indeed three bags of
marijuana, and took it as evidence to further investigate the incident. Responding to the
incident, McDonald's told Fox News,
"Our biggest priority is always the safety and wellbeing of our customers. We are fully
operating with law enforcement on the validity of this claim."
In yet another sweet tea mishap, an Indianapolis police officer fell ill after drinking a mix
of McDonald's sweet and unsweet tea, as reported by ABC News. The tea, according to the report,
contained a, quote, "heavy duty degreaser" that caused a severe burning sensation in
his throat.
"The situation is such that it could've been avoided. It just doesn't make any sense."
The chain owner said they were looking into the matter, and taking the claim seriously.
These are, however, two isolated incidents which suggest no trend, but drive home an
important point: if you smell something other than the fresh smell of lemon wedge and tea
leaves in your drink, take not a sip more.
McDonald's sweet tea has played a big role in making what was a quintessentially Southern
drink into a nationwide phenomenon. The chain first started offering the beverage in the
Southern States in 2006, but after two years, made it a constant on their menu throughout
the country.
McDonald's decision was instrumental in making sweet tea a popular drink beyond the South,
according to a report by market research and consulting firm Technomic. The report states
that iced tea's abundance on menus jumped 23.1 percent from 2010 to 2015. Prior to 2008,
Serious Eats reports, sweet tea was not common in the non-Southern States. If you wanted
it in New York, you'd have to find a Southern-themed restaurant.
"You gotta get your sweet tea fix every once in a while."
Sweet tea brought sweet profits for Mickey D's. The timing of its launch couldn't have
been better. It was 2008 when McDonald's splashed the billboards with $1 sweet tea ads nationwide.
That was also the time when the country was grappling with a recession. Consumers were
spending their money judiciously on food, going for options that offered more for less.
Spending $1 on a 32-oz drink seemed nominal for even those who were financially hard-pressed.
Naturally, the company saw an increase in the sales of $1 sweet tea, as well as other
items from the Dollar Menu, The New York Times reported in 2008. Just in the first year since
its introduction to the menu, a McDonald's corporate representative told Knox News that
the chain sold more than 1.5 billion cups of sweet tea.
According to a McDonald's restaurant owner in Knoxville, Tennessee, sweet tea had become
so popular by 2009 that customers came in asking for about four to five sweet teas at
a time. Everyone wanted a sip of it, and McDonald's was lovin' it. In 2008, AdAge reported that
McDonald's saw a boost of 3.5% of same-store sales in the second quarter of the year because
of the popular drink. Ralph Alvarez, the chain's then-president chief operating officer, noted
sweet tea as a major component in McDonald's turning around its $711 million loss from
a year prior.
Sweet tea was born as part of McDonald's dollar menu, priced at a crisp $1. The math was easy:
a large tea for $1 please? However, if history tells us anything, it's that McDonald's has
a habit of constantly tweaking its Dollar Menu, ever since it launched the concept in
2002. According to The New York Times, sweet tea was part of the chain's $1 menu promotions
in 2008, along with specialty coffees and double cheeseburgers. But it slid off the
bracket in the years that followed, and people just couldn't accept the change.
In 2016, Brandy Lyn started a petition on Change.org to bring the price of the beverage
back to $1 from $1.19. Well, 19 cents extra for a drink might seem like a measly amount,
but Lyn had probably foreseen that comment, for she wrote:
"A family of four that stops at McDonald's daily and orders four large sweet teas has
quite a yearly increase when paying for those four teas."
Lyn added that it would amount to $277.40 a year. She also went on to say that the amount
is a week's pay for some people. Get Menu and Prices mentions the price of one large
sweet tea as $1.79, though prices differ based on location, and franchise. Whatever the price
is, it seems like a rip-off when you compare it with what it would cost you to make a cup
at home — only about 4 cents.
All you need to make a refreshing sweet iced tea at home are some tea bags, sugar, water,
lemon, and ice. However, before you set out to make the replica of McDonald's sweet tea,
it would be wise to familiarize yourself with the difference between "sweetened" and "sweet
ice tea." The former is when you add sugar to your cup of tea after it is brewed. And
the latter refers to the tea made in the traditional Southern way, which is to add sugar while
the tea is boiling hot.
This might seem like a minuscule difference, but carries with it the baggage of a tradition
that Southerners are proud to call their own. The process is fairly simple, as laid out
by the many copycat recipes of Mickey D's sweet tea out there: soak the tea bags in
hot water for 15 minutes, then pour the concentrate in sugar and mix well. Add lots of ice cubes
and serve. Maybe squeeze in some lemon juice and add a pinch of baking soda. Baking soda
helps reduce the bitterness and cloudiness in tea.
There is no one perfect tea brand, some suggest Bigelow English Teatime, and some suggest
Lipton tea bags. It doesn't matter, as long as you have sugared it up well.
A quick run through McDonald's website today shows exactly two options for tea lovers:
sweet and unsweet, but an expansive list of frappes, lattes, and macchiatos for those
who favor the coffee bean. The chain has, however, tried out experimenting with its
tea repertoire in the past, launching strawberry and peach tea for a limited time during the
summer of 2015. They went away with the season, leaving the only constant behind: the plain
sugary tea.
As mentioned in Huffpost, McDonald's had also introduced fruit tea fusion drinks – such
as blackberry raspberry sweet tea and peach berry sweet tea – to dip its toe in the
iced tea war among fast food chains. Despite other chains, such as Jack in the Box, Dunkin
Donuts, and Starbucks, boasting a vast selection in the iced tea department, McDonald's has
seemed to be a tad docile in ramping up its own.
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