McDonald's Holiday Drinks: Five Reported for November 3, Three of Them Cookie Butter, and No Price Named

Two of the five are built on frosted cranberry:

· Frosted Cranberry Splash with Sprite — Sprite with orange and cranberry flavours, topped with cold foam and cranberry sprinkles. · Red Bull Frosted Cranberry Energizer — cranberry flavour with cold foam and sprinkles, made with Red Bull, and offered with classic Red Bull or Red Bull Zero. Complex quotes McDonald's describing it as "made for packed holiday schedules and festive adventures".

The other three are the same cookie butter flavour in three formats, each described with caramel cookie crumbs and sweet vanilla whip:

· Cookie Butter Frappé — the blended version. · Cookie Butter Latte — the espresso version. · Cookie Butter Iced Coffee — the iced coffee version.

Every outlet carrying the lineup describes the three cookie butter drinks in the same words, which is what coverage drawn from a single announcement looks like. Counted honestly, that is one report rather than a dozen, and this page records it as one.

No price has been given for any of the five drinks. Dexerto states plainly that McDonald's has not announced pricing, and no outlet carrying the lineup prints a figure attributed to McDonald's. McDonald's drink prices are set by franchisees and vary by restaurant, so this page carries no price at all.

No end date has been given either. The drinks are described as available for a limited time at participating locations, with no last day attached — the same gap that this site has had to record on McDonald's seasonal McCafé drinks before.

One limitation belongs on the page rather than in a note. Outlets say McDonald's announced the lineup on October 27 and link to a McDonald's corporate page, but mcdonalds.com and corporate.mcdonalds.com both refuse automated requests from this system and return an access error rather than a page. This site's rule is that a launch date enters the structured record only with an official source behind it, so the November 3 date is reported here, attributed to the outlets that carried it, and deliberately left out of the structured facts. If McDonald's own announcement becomes readable, the date will move into the record with that source attached.

The timing is worth recording because this site is tracking both sides of it. McDonald's three cookie butter coffees are dated November 3. On October 28 — the day after the McDonald's lineup was announced — Dunkin' announced its own holiday menu, built around the return of Cookie Butter, beginning November 4.

That is two national chains putting cookie butter drinks on menus on consecutive days. Neither company has said anything about the other, and nothing here suggests either was responding to the other; what can be said from the sources is the plain fact of the dates. Dunkin's side is officially sourced, from its own release, which names six Cookie Butter beverages. McDonald's side is not, for the reason given above.