Can you get an espresso shot at McDonald’s? (Sort of)

Adding a shot of espresso to your drink with the app

QUESTION: Can you get just an espresso shot at McDonald’s? I heard their McCafe is pretty good, but I pretty much only drink plain espresso. – Alan H

CLEARLY COFFEE REPLIES: This is a good question and I didn’t know the answer, so I tried to order one and here’s what I found out.

1. If you order one of the latte drinks or an Americano, you can easily ADD one or multiple shots of espresso to your drink. No problem. You can even do it on their mobile app.

2. I initially thought you could order a separate espresso shot too, because I looked on their national menu and I saw it listed there. But it turns out that’s mostly just there as a calorie guide and not because people are able to order plain espresso shots at McDonald’s.

Don’t be fooled by the McDonald’s web site. Although they show it for calorie purposes, you can’t order an espresso in a cool, tiny McCafe espresso cup like they are showing here. Frustrating, but true!

So no, you can’t order just a plain espresso shot at McDonald’s, but you can easily add one or multiple espresso shots to their McCafe espresso based drinks.

McCafe McDonald's coffee
I was able to add an espresso shot to an Americano, and you can also add them to the hot and cold latte and cappuccino drinks.
McDonald's black coffee with no option to add an espresso shot
At Starbucks and Dunkin, you can add an espresso shot to your plain coffee. At Starbucks they call it a “Red Eye” or just “adding a shot,” and at Dunkin they call it an “add on shot of espresso.” But it’s not an option at McDonald’s! What you can do instead is simply order an Americano, which tastes almost the same as black coffee and is the functional equivalent. Then you can add as many additional shots of espresso as you’d like.

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