Do You Want Fries and a Red Bull With That?

By Margaret Lyons in Food on Jun 9, 2008 8:37PM

McDonald's is going to start selling Red Bull and a variety of other beverages in 150 test markets, and might revise its "beverage plans" in the next year or two. They could start selling boiled kitten juice and we wouldn't care, as long as they don't change their magical Diet Coke recipe—DCs from McD's just taste better than all other Diet Cokes for some reason.

Along with Red Bull, other new drink choices include Vitaminwater, Mountain Dew (a Pepsi product), and "'virtually the entire Coke product line,'" according to AdAge.

Larry Light, founder of Arcature and former global chief marketer of McDonald's, said the company realized several years ago that it wasn't meeting consumers' needs in that regard. "We were seeing [customers] buy food at McDonald's and then go buy their beverages at 7-Eleven, or they'd go through a drive-through with the beverage already in their car," he said.

Also, the Oak Brook–based giant has temporarily stopped using tomatoes on its sandwiches as a precautionary move following an outbreak of salmonella.