By Heather Haddon and Laura Cooper
Claude "Waddy" Pratt, a Coca-Cola executive, pulled up to a nascent hamburger chain in Des Plaines, Ill., where a man named Ray Kroc was spraying down the parking lot with a hose. The ambitious soda entrepreneur thought the McDonald's restaurants that Kroc envisioned stretching coast to coast needed a signature drink, and believed Coke could be it.
Their handshake deal in 1955 sealed a union between two brands that together went on to become icons of American capitalism, and America itself.
"Since then, our brands have been attached at the sip," Coke said last year in a LinkedIn post celebrating their 70th anniversary.
But like so many relationships, they're having problems. It's not that the two aren't committed to one another, executives say. It's just that McDonald's right now is no longer content planning everything around Coke alone.
McDonald's is on the hunt for new business. Growth in U.S. burger sales has slowed, and Starbucks and Dunkin are showing that drinks generate billions of dollars on their own.
McDonald's this spring introduced its own custom sodas and refreshers, and it is gearing up to launch a line of energy drinks anchored by Red Bull -- a first for the Golden Arches.
The burger chain's executives and operators say they have for years clamored for more options from Coke. Some past attempts to innovate, from selling bottled drinks to what Coke called a "Freestyle" soda dispenser that let customers create their own mixes, have sputtered. Meanwhile, the popularity of traditional sodas is hurting as younger consumers want exotic flavors and concoctions with TikTok-ready colors.
"Coke gets the message that we want more from them," said Jim Lewis, a former McDonald's franchisee who worked closely with Coke during his 32 years running restaurants.
Lewis, once the president of the chain's New York-metro franchisee co-op, traveled to Atlanta to meet with Coke executives in the 2000s, tested the company's Freestyle machine in his Queens restaurants in the early 2010s and was on a chain committee exploring bottled beverages at McDonald's, including Coke's Vitaminwater. He found the Freestyle machine took more work than it was worth and didn't move sales, and the test of Coke's Vitaminwater ended as well.
Working on the McDonald's account is a prestigious post at Coke's Atlanta headquarters. The group's president reports directly to Coke's CEO and is a 34-year Coke veteran who rose through the ranks across the globe; a former lead was the son of past Coke CEO Roberto C. Goizueta.
Henrique Braun, who took over as Coke chief executive in March, said that the company's partnership with McDonald's remains "fantastic." Coke has been involved in crafting McDonald's new dirty soda beverages, using Sprite and syrups to help concoct the brightly colored drinks.
"As we do with all our customers, we respect their decisions," Braun said in an interview, on McDonald's addition of Red Bull. "But we always try to push to continue to be the number one provider of every choice of beverages for all consumers, and it's no different for McDonald's."
The biggest burger chain in the world, with annual revenue around $27 billion, said it was committed to its longstanding partnership with Coke, while looking to broaden its network of suppliers to its 45,700 restaurants including 13,730 in the U.S. "We are guided by evolving customer preferences and emerging trends," a spokeswoman said.
At the National Restaurant Association's annual trade show in Chicago last month, Coke showed off a kaleidoscope of drinks it is currently testing including a rainbow-hued frozen energy drink and pink drinks geared toward younger consumers.
Traditionally, Coke wouldn't showcase beverages still under development, said Josh Gurley, Coke's head of transformation and strategic growth.
But the drink giant, with $47.9 billion in annual revenue, knows restaurants want more so it was passing out tastes of Strawberry Hot Honey Lemonade and Blueberry London Fog drinks. Traditionally Coke would have buttoned up term sheets before showing off new drinks.
"This is a little uncomfortable for us," said Gurley as people nearby tried plastic shot glasses of Fanta-infused orange shakes and Sprite mixed with pear syrup.
In 1955, when Pratt and Kroc crossed paths, they saw that standardizing the products the burger chain carried would help ensure uniform quality, and drive down costs by increasing purchasing power.
Pratt tasked a handful of executives to work with him on what became known as The McDonald's Division, or TMD for short. Coke focused on selling traditional Coca-Cola in McDonald's fountains, and the chain also sold its own beverages, including root beer and an orange drink.
Coke hired salesmen to serve McDonald's franchisees, and expanded its offerings to include Sprite in the 1980s -- bumping rival 7UP off McDonald's fountains. Coke representatives working on the McDonald's account called themselves "the keeper of the handshake," in reference to the original deal.
From the early days, McDonald's wanted a Coke poured from its fountain to taste better and fresher than anywhere else, even if competitors also sold Coke.
So McDonald's took unusual measures, particularly for something whose recipe is one the most famous secrets. McDonald's franchisees installed filtration equipment to ensure the cleanest, crispiest flavor. Soda syrup and carbonated water were kept just above freezing to trap more carbon dioxide and increase the fizz. McDonald's frequently calibrates its machines to ensure the right amount of Coke syrup concentrate in its sodas to help retain their flavor even after ice cubes melted in the drinks.
Coke instructed its technicians to conduct regular quality reviews of McDonald's equipment, scrutinizing everything from temperature to carbonation levels. They delivered Coke syrup in 75 gallon stainless steel barrels on trucks, pumped directly into McDonald's restaurants through hoses to guarantee freshness.
The collaboration paid off for both companies. In the 1980s, Coke executives advocated the idea of an extra value meal at McDonald's, bundling a sandwich, soda and fries at a discounted price. The concept -- now standard in the fast-food industry -- would generate more sales for both, Coke believed.
Coke helped fund McDonald's marketing, particularly for value meal campaigns, and Coke drinks became staples of McDonald's ads.
McDonald's moved in late 2002 to an a la carte dollar menu, which didn't feature Coke drinks as prominently as the value meals. It was a hard time for Coke. Soft drink sales were falling in the U.S., including at restaurants. Fast-food chains started testing teas, lemonades, smoothies and specialty coffees.
Around 2006 Coke launched a grab-and-go project to see if selling bottled beverages could boost sales at McDonald's. The soda company installed coolers in a handful of Texas locations, stocking them with Coke's non-soda brands such as Powerade, carbonated coffees and energy drinks.
Some franchisees started selling bottled PepsiCo drinks, stored in separate coolers, including Mountain Dew and Gatorade for the first time in McDonald's history.
Franchisees made less money off bottled drinks than fountain soda. And the bottled beverage tests with PepsiCo ended by 2009. But Coke executives took notice, and some worried about their company's top-tier status at the Golden Arches.
Then, McDonald gave spots in some soda fountains to Dr Pepper, largely bumping Coke's lesser-loved Mr. Pibb soda by 2010.
McDonald's had its own reasons to consider other partners. PepsiCo helped Taco Bell strike gold with Mountain Dew Baja Blast, a soda developed just for the chain that debuted in 2004 and would go on to wrack up more than $1 billion in sales a year.
Soda itself faced a new threat. Starbucks was expanding its iced and blended cold drinks, and its fruity Refresher beverages introduced in 2012 would grow to become a $2 billion brand. The Seattle chain turned cold foam and other custom ingredients into a billion dollars in annual revenue, capturing more younger consumers.
In 2015 Coke acquired a stake in Monster, a fierce competitor of Red Bull, and McDonald's tested Monster in a handful of U.S. restaurants.
The drinks didn't sell well. McDonald's instead opted to expand its McCafe premium coffee line.
McDonald's hired its current CEO Chris Kempczinski in 2015 as head of strategy business, development and innovation, joining the burger brand with his own beverage experience. Kempczinski came to McDonald's from Kraft Heinz, and had previously spent eight years as an executive at PepsiCo.
Kempczinski set his sights on selling more drinks. The global beverage market had nearly doubled in the prior 15 years to $100 billion, and he wanted McDonald's to grab a bigger piece of it. In 2023, McDonald's launched a new restaurant concept called CosMc's that served lattes, frappes, slushes and other novelty drinks.
CosMc's was short-lived -- its five locations closed roughly 18 months later -- but McDonald's soon started incorporating what it learned. Kempczinski in 2025 appointed Charlie Newberger, the executive who had led CosMc's, to oversee McDonald's beverage development.
"We need somebody who's single-mindedly thinking about what McDonald's beverage offering needs to look like in five years' time, given that the world is going to be different," Kempcinski said in a 2025 interview.
During a late April afternoon at McDonald's headquarters in Chicago, the company invited a few dozen social-media influencers for a sneak peek at its new beverage lineup rolling out this spring and summer.
Jennifer DelVecchio, head of McDonald's U.S. beverage strategy, said at the event that customers in early tests tended to order the new drinks instead of sweet tea, lemonade or other fountain drinks. Traditional sodas didn't take a bigger hit than other fountain beverages, she said.
During the May restaurant trade show, Coke showed off a new beverage machine for making so-called dirty sodas and other syrup-infused beverages at restaurants. McDonald's representatives examined the equipment when visiting the Coke booth, said Kaiser Sayers, a Coca-Cola innovation director.
McDonald's has tested new drinks in Colorado and Wisconsin, including a Sprite Lunar Splash, made with Coke's lemon-lime soda, along with drinks incorporating Red Bull and flavored syrups. Some restaurants also dabbled with beverages featuring a generic energy drink base. But Red Bull stole the show.
"Uh oh, I think I have a new addiction. This is actually really good," said one McDonald's customer in a TikTok post about the Red Bull test at McDonald's.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 12, 2026 22:00 ET (02:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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