How Chick-fil-A Really Makes Their Lemonade

It really pains me to give Chick-fil-A their flowers. I try (and very often fail) to be an unbiased writer though, so let’s talk about Chick-fil-A’s lemonade. It’s the real deal. You won’t find any lemon concentrate that’s ready to be shot out of a soda fountain. Just real lemon juice, waiting to be mixed up by hand.

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Real Lemon Juice From Real Lemons

As we often do, we were recently browsing the Chick-fil-A Reddit and stumbled onto this gold. A thread of insiders sharing all the details about the CFA lemonade. It’s made with bags of real lemon juice, pulp included.

While the bag may be a little new, Chick-fil-A has actually always made their lemonade with lemon juice. Back in the day they used to actually juice the lemons in store. Times are a changin’ though so they had to cut a few corners―but the basic principle still remains.

That’s Why It’s So Damn Expensive

The lemonade at Chick-fil-A is shockingly expensive. It is, however, as Reddit commenters were keen to remind us, a premium price for a premium product. There’s a lot of extra work that goes into making lemonade with lemon juice instead of the streamlined process of a soda machine. 

Chick-fil-A’s lemonade is made by hand. For every single batch made in store, they mix together a honkin’ bag of lemon juice, a ton of water, and enough sugar to balance things out. That’s why a gallon of CFA lemonade costs over $12! Just imagine how much it’d cost if they were still juicing the lemons in store.

You’re Getting A Better Deal Than Fountain Soda

The markup on fountain soda is truly hard to fathom. A single 32oz fountain drink typically costs about 15 cents to produce when you factor in the syrup, filtered water, carbonation, and the cup itself. Most stores would sell that same drink to you for $2.50 or more. That means it costs just 6% of the charged price to produce that drink.

One math-happy Redditor calc’d Chick-fil-A’s lemonade to have an expected cost to produce of 23.8%. That’s not even taking labor into account, which we already mentioned is already a large factor on its own. I will take the calculations with a grain of salt considering a bit of guess work, but it’s certainly a strong educated guess.

I’ll Give Chick-fil-A This One Win

The end result is still the same. It costs significantly more to make the lemonade at CFA than it would if they just passed off a bit of Tropicana to their customers. I guess it’s the least they can do to tip the scales back in their favor.