- Taco Bell is expanding its Live Más Café concept, opening 30 more locations before this fall. The fast food chain is betting heavily on increased beverage sales. The move comes a month after McDonald’s shut down its CosMc’s spinoff.
McDonald’s might be grounding CosMc’s, but Taco Bell thinks there’s still a lot of potential in the specialty beverage space.
The company has announced plans to add 30 more Live Más Café locations by the fall of 2025. Those will be located in Southern California, Dallas and Houston. Officials say this is the start of a multi-year transformation for the company.
The goal, the company says, is to boost beverage sales to $5 billion by 2030.
“We’re seeing today that people, especially younger consumers, are reaching for refreshing drinks as part of their lifestyle,” said Liz Matthews, Taco Bell’s global chief food innovation officer in a statement. “So, we’re making big investments to become the ultimate beverage stop.”
In conjunction with the move, Taco Bell will debut a new Refrescas menu nationwide, which will feature six different takes on agua fresca.
The first Live Más Café launched last December in San Diego. Taco Bell collaborated with Diversified Restaurant Group (DRG) on the new concept. DRG is a franchisee that has been instrumental in getting Taco Bell to innovate. With over 300 units, at present, DRG has been a part of several new concepts, including the Cantina design and the introduction of several new specialty beverages.
The expansion comes just one month after McDonald’s pulled the plug on beverage-focused CosMc’s, closing all five of the chain’s locations after less than two years in business. Some of the most popular CosMc’s drinks will make it onto the menu at standard McDonald’s. The company did not say which those would be, but the most popular offerings as of late January were the Sour Cherry Energy Burst, the Churro Cold Brew Frappe and the Island Pick Me Up Punch.
