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Dunkin’ explores beverage trends with coffee and tea tests in restaurants in the NortheastDunkin’ explores beverage trends with coffee and tea tests in restaurants in the Northeast

The quick-service chain is offering new drinks in select stores in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

July 2, 2020

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This summer quick-service chain Dunkin’, headquartered in Canton, Mass., is testing a variety of trend-forward beverages in the northeastern United States, where the bulk of its restaurants are located.

Among the new drinks is bubble tea, which originated in Taiwan and has gained popularity, particularly on the West Coast. Also called boba tea, the drink contains chewy tapioca balls, often sweetened with brown sugar, that are slurped up through fat straws. Dunkin’ is testing a brown-sugar variety in communities in Massachusetts and upstate New York and a strawberry one that’s designed to burst in your mouth in parts of Maine and Massachusetts. 

Dunkin’ is also trying its hand at a new form of shandy. Shandies are typically beer with lemonade or other soft drinks added, but for these drinks, which are being tested in parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts, the base is either coffee or tea. Coffee-citrus mixtures have been on display at trade shows in recent years, and some ready-to-drink versions are now available via retail. Tea and lemonade, on the other hand, are a long-standing tradition, but Dunkin’s test is with green tea and blueberry flavoring.

Sparkling coffees and teas are also being tested, as are social media-friendly teas topped with fruit juice for an attractive color contrast.

Read on to see these and other tests that Dunkin’ has underway.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected] 

Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

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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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