At Daily Coffee News, we see a lot of press releases. And every season, as the weather turns, nearly every large coffee chain in the U.S. rolls out a new “seasonal” menu, usually led by fun, flavored drinks.
Yet as seasons have turned into years, and years into decades, a quiet storm has been brewing behind the cloud-pink foam, brownie sprinkles and pillowy vanilla cold caps.
That’s why it stood out last week when U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called out large coffee companies at a MAHA rally in Austin, Texas.
“We’re going to ask Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, ‘Show us the safety data that show that it’s okay for a teenage girl to drink an iced coffee with 115 grams of sugar in it,’” Kennedy told the crowd. “I don’t think they’re gonna be able to do it.”
It was a characteristically odd request. Why a teenage girl? Can drinks be tied to “safety data”?
Still, the comment points to a real and widening gap in the coffee business: the distance between coffee as a beverage category and “coffee” as it’s increasingly sold. On one side are traditional coffee drinks — brewed coffee, espresso, americanos, cappuccinos. On the other is a growing wave of sugar-forward beverages, energy drinks and soda-adjacent “refreshers,” plus a new layer of add-ons such as sweet foams, toppings and “functional” boosts.
The 115-gram figure is not hypothetical. Although Kennedy did not identify a specific beverage, Dunkin’s current nutrition guide includes a medium “Mocha Swirl Frozen Coffee with Cream” listing 115 grams of total sugars and 111 grams of added sugars.
A Daily Coffee News scan of the latest seasonal menu releases from seven large chains — Starbucks, Dunkin, Dutch Bros, Peet’s, Scooter’s, Black Rock and Caribou — turned up 57 featured drinks. Nearly all of them were framed around sweetness: syrups, sauces, purées, flavored cold foams, toppings, candy or dessert cues. (Note: Dunkin’s newly announced Dunkin’ Zero energy drink line was not included in this count.)
Starbucks’ spring launch leans into toasted coconut, ube and lavender, much of it topped with sweet cold foam. Dunkin’s spring menu makes banana “the flavor of the season,” built around banana syrup and banana cold foam. Scooter’s is promoting a permanent “‘Licious” lineup featuring caramel, mocha, vanilla, salted caramel, honey, strawberry and white mocha, and a Lavender Ice Berry Red Bull Infusion finished with lavender cold foam and sprinkles. And that’s just a sampling.
The market explains a lot of this. As cold beverages have become a focal point for large chains, “coffee” has expanded into adjacent categories: energy platforms, refresher-style drinks and frozen blends. Meanwhile, cold brew and iced espresso drinks are increasingly treated as canvases for syrups, sauces, toppings and foams — sometimes lightly, often heavily.
Is there anything wrong with that? I suppose RFK Jr. will be the judge.
What nags more is the disconnect between the industry’s “coffee can be healthy” messaging and what the biggest purveyors are most aggressively promoting. Whatever the sales mix is, the seasonal attention is overwhelmingly on sweet, flavored, topped and boosted drinks.
Under the FDA’s most recent guidelines for coffee — which were written and approved during the Biden administration and formally adopted during the second Trump administration — coffee can be labeled as “healthy” in the United States, with the caveat that “healthy” drinks cannot exceed 5 calories.
Chains aren’t typically splashing the literal FDA word “healthy” across menu boards. Instead, many have leaned into looser language: wellness, function, energy, even purpose. Yet concepts are often intertwined with the latest sugar-blast concoctions.
The coffee industry has always included fast caffeine stops masquerading as something more. What feels new is the confidence with which “wellness” language is being applied to drinks that look and taste like candy.
This is not necessarily a question about “safety.” The more interesting question may be, why has so much “coffee innovation” become sugar innovation? And what can specialty coffee purveyors do to cut through the candy shell?
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Nick Brown
Nick Brown is the editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.
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