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Beverage Tracker: A summer of watermelon, cocktails, mocktails and cold brew coffeeBeverage Tracker: A summer of watermelon, cocktails, mocktails and cold brew coffee

New drinks have been introduced at Abuelo’s, Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar, Chick-fil-A, Del Taco, Dunkin’, Dutch Bros, First Watch, Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers, Gordon Biersch, Jamba, Lemonade, Logan’s Roadhouse, Main Squeeze Juice Co., Nekter Juice Bar, Ocean Prime, Pollo Tropical, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Pure Green, Robeks, Roy Rogers Restaurants, Rusty Bucket, Shake Shack, Smashburger, Smoothie King, Smokey Bones, Sweet Chick, Sweet Paris Crêperie, Taco John’s, TGI Fridays, Tim Hortons, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Wayback Burgers, Which Wich and Wow Wow Hawaiian Lemonade

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

August 4, 2021

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bev tracker aug 4

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There are a lot of new watermelon drinks on offer this summer, including beverages from Abuelo’s, First Watch, Jamba, Main Squeeze Juice Co., Nekter Juice Bar, Shake Shack, Smoothie King, Tropical Smoothie Cafe and Wow Wow Hawaiian Lemonade.

There are also new cocktails at Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar, Jamba, Logan’s Roadhouse, Ocean Prime, Pollo Tropical, Rusty Bucket, Smokey Bones, Sweet Chick, Sweet Paris Crêperie and TGI Fridays, and a new beer at Gordon Biersch.

Dunkin’s has rolled out an array of new additions to drinks, such as sweet cold foam and popping bubbles. It also has smoked vanilla cold brew, among other things, as a limited time offer, and its testing cold brew coffee with coconut water in some markets and kombucha — yes, kombucha — in others.

Taco John’s has cold brew, too, now, and Roy Rogers has it as an LTO, while Dutch Bros. and Tim Hortons are testing new versions of that coffee genre.

Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen has a whole new lemonade platform, Smashburger has a lemonade shake, Wayback Burgers has tangerine lemonade and Lemonade the fast-casual chain has several new flavors of its namesake drink.

Del Taco is offering several chocolate-flavored drinks, Chick-fil-A is reprising its peach shake and Freddy’s Frozen Custard and Steakburgers has a Key lime pie shake.

Pure Green has a new drink with spirulina, Robeks has Keto-friendly smoothies and Which Wich has a collab with MTN Dew.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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