5 Reasons KFC Switching To Coca-Cola Is A Big Deal

If you haven’t already heard, KFC recently announced that all 3,600 of their U.S. restaurants will switch to serving Coca-Cola products by spring 2027. This has huge implications not only for KFC and Coca-Cola, but also for Pepsi, Taco Bell, and fried chicken as a whole. We narrowed this development down to five reasons you should care, including one reason Mountain Dew Baja Blast fans should be nervous.

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1. Mountain Dew Sweet Lightning

The most obvious ripple effect of this change will be the death of Mountain Dew Sweet Lightning. This Honey Peach variant was formulated to taste great with KFC’s menu items, just as Mountain Dew Baja Blast was formulated for Taco Bell. Mountain Dew Sweet Lightning has been a mainstay in KFC soda fountains since it launched in 2019. Coca-Cola doesn’t have an equivalent brand that produces chain-exclusive variants as often as Mountain Dew. Considering Coca-Cola’s recent shift away from partnering with Dr Pepper in their soda fountains, could we see a KFC-exclusive Mr Pibb flavor? Maybe that Punchin’ Peach variant comes back exclusively in fountain form at the Colonel’s house…

2. Drips by Pepsi

Earlier this year, KFC’s spinoff chain Saucy launched a batch of handcrafted beverages under the “Drips by Pepsi” label. Drips by Pepsi is PepsiCo’s platform for specialty dirty soda recipes featuring branded syrups, mix-ins, and toppings. The Drips by Pepsi platform has slowly rolled out to chains like Regal Cinemas and Saucy since launching in 2024. While I haven’t received explicit confirmation that Saucy by KFC will switch to Coca-Cola alongside its parent brand, I have to assume it will follow the leader. Pepsi’s dirty soda brand hasn’t made a huge impact over the last 2 years; any loss in visibility must be a mood killer, to say the least.

3. Coca-Cola’s Fried Chicken Dominance

As of spring 2027, KFC will join Popeye’s, Chick-fil-A, Raising Cane’s, and Zaxby’s in serving Coca-Cola products. According to my research, the largest fried chicken chain still serving Pepsi products at that time will be Bojangles–not the biggest player in the game. When did Coca-Cola become the only name in the fried chicken pairing game? The Southern influence in most fried chicken brands would support loyalty to the OG cola, but I can’t think of another fast-food genre so squarely one-sided in a soda shop’s flavor.

4. Yum! Brands

While Yum Brands no longer owns a long list of restaurant concepts, it has held onto two major players: KFC and Taco Bell. KFC will be the first of Yum! Brands’ two largest chains to ever offer Coca-Cola products. The clearest example of how big a shift this is from a corporate perspective is that PepsiCo used to own Yum! Brands. If Yum! Brands can’t reach a good deal with PepsiCo, what does that say about PepsiCo’s strength as a partner? The corporate parent’s confidence in moving forward with the other side of the cola wars, something previously thought all but impossible, could ripple through the future of another Yum! Brands chain’s soda fountain…

5. Mountain Dew Baja Blast

This is the big one: Mountain Dew Baja Blast could be at risk. Before you grab your pitchforks, note that a PepsiCo spokesperson recently said they re-signed a 10-year deal with Taco Bell as their exclusive beverage partner. That said, ten years isn’t forever. We don’t know all the explicit details of the arrangement between Mountain Dew and Taco Bell; if Taco Bell switches sides in the cola wars sometime in the 2030s, Mountain Dew may have to take Baja Blast off shelves at that time. I don’t see a world where Mountain Dew Baja Blast joins Bojangles’ long-lost Mountain Dew Southern Shock in discontinued soda heaven, but it’s objectively more plausible now than it was before this development.

How do you feel about KFC switching to Coca-Cola products? Are you more or less likely to eat with the Colonel with Coke on tap? Let me know in the comments below.