This past weekend, McDonald’s officially opened the doors to its new QSR spinoff, CosMc’s, in the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook, Illinois. Even more curious, the location’s focus is primarily on beverages that consumers can customize to taste with various inclusions like energy and Vitamin C shots, flavored syrups, and boba pearls.
CosMc’s won’t be entirely unfamiliar to fans of McDonald’s, and the menu will include some McStaples like Egg McMuffins and McFlurries, as well as less Mickey-D fare—think S’mores Cold Brew, Popping Pear Slush, and Chai Frappe. The food menu is designed more for snacking than full meals with a few sandwiches such as Creamy Avocado Tomatillo, bite-sized hash browns, pretzel bites, and cookies.
The new stores are a digital and drive-thru experience, meaning there’s no dine-in lobby at CosMc’s. It also lacks kid-friendly features like Happy Meals or McDonald’s playground areas. What’s more, the restaurant is cashless, and customers pick up their goodies via an assigned drive-thru window after they place their orders.
The branding is modern and as contemporary as its menu but grounded in the familiarity of McDonald’s. The Golden Arches and signature brand yellow are mated to a fun, new logo and dark blue. The capital “M” in “CosMc’s” is also another way to signal it’s part of the McFamily; it’s still McDonald’s, but in many ways, it isn’t. There’s enough distinction from Ronald to intrigue, but some brand elements are clearly anchored to the parent company, inviting longtime fans to try CosMc’s.
The cups feature the brand logo and the silhouette of a beverage cup, lest you forget that the entire idea is built around drinks. Meanwhile, food packaging for the McFlurry and the hash browns features some light, cosmic swirls, so nothing too over the top here.
According to a press release from McDonald’s, the concept aims to solve “the 3 PM slump.” In the QSR space, an industry term for “Fast Food,” the period between lunch and dinner is typically the slowest, especially for a brand like McDonald’s that focuses on meals and less on snack time. Still, folks get peckish during the middle of the day, and CosMc’s provides an opportunity to capture mid-afternoon business.
Combining technology like cashless payment, small footprint formats that are pick-up only, and a pared-down beverage and snack-forward menu, CosMc’s can provide consumers with a quick pick-me-up that doesn’t involve waiting tens of minutes in line at Starbucks.
Indeed, CosMc’s combines the best bits of its parent brand, McDonald’s, and competitors Sonic and Starbucks. Moreover, instead of needing buy-in from all the franchisees, McDonald’s can use CosMc’s to pilot and validate new operational processes, store formats, and menu items on a smaller scale. For McDonald’s, CosMc’s can be a trial balloon where they can test the market with new, contemporary recipes that can be quickly tweaked or replaced without having to do so across every US McDonald’s location.
So far, the lone wolf CosMc’s is close to the burger giant’s HQ, but McDonald’s plans to expand the concept to 10 locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio, Texas markets in 2024. With over 40,000 McDonald’s outlets worldwide, ten stores is a small experiment with relatively little risk to the brand. Moreover, with the small footprint and different branding and format, McDonald’s can take big swings under the CosMc’s banner with little risk to its burger crown jewel.
Competitors like coffee chains Starbucks, Dutch Bros, and Dunkin should take notice—as well as drive-up, beverage-heavy QSR Sonic—at the Clown Prince of Burgers’ latest move. But it’s still too early to tell if CosMc’s will take off or become another McPizza.