{"id":524,"date":"2026-05-19T11:33:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T11:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/durhammovinghub.com\/?p=524"},"modified":"2026-05-19T11:33:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T11:33:15","slug":"we-tasted-20-top-nc-fast-food-sweet-teas-here-are-the-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/durhammovinghub.com\/?p=524","title":{"rendered":"We tasted 20 top NC fast-food sweet teas. Here are the rankings"},"content":{"rendered":"

AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.<\/p>\n

Read our AI Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n

Sweet tea is the nectar of the South, an icy glass of sunshine and sugar.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll find this suppertime staple on many kitchen tables every night in the Triangle.<\/p>\n

Read more What NC State grad, astronaut Christina Koch said about the Carolina Hurricanes<\/a><\/p>\n

Beloved as barbecue, sweet tea is at every picnic and tailgate, in countless cupholders and in the hearts of many who started sipping on it since childhood.<\/p>\n

Because of how it\u2019s made, even fast food sweet tea is special. In almost every case, sweet tea is brewed fresh, sweetened while hot and then cooled down, the ice hissing and popping in the cup.<\/p>\n

There are some iconic sweet teas and some serious sleepers.<\/p>\n

We needed to know who brews the best sweet tea in the Triangle, so we gathered 20 fast food favorites for the ultimate Sweet Tea Showdown.<\/p>\n

A team of reporters went out and gathered 20 different fast food sweet teas, without ice. We then met up at a picnic shelter at Dorothea Dix park and iced the teas. Reporters Drew Jackson and Twumasi Duah-Mensah, each sweet tea devotees, tasted and ranked all the teas.<\/p>\n

Note: Due to a styrofoam incident, one sweet tea (Cook Out) was lost during the initial tasting. Drew made a pit stop a few days later to sample on his own.<\/p>\n

Here are the results.<\/p>\n

Setting aside water, which they say is essential to survival, there\u2019s no liquid on earth I\u2019ve drank more of than sweet tea. We brewed it every night for dinner. Sweet tea was simply a fact of life.<\/p>\n

I assumed that I\u2019ve safely consumed a swimming pool\u2019s worth of sweet tea in my lifetime, but in fact checking this I found it would actually take 109 years to drink that much sweet tea.<\/p>\n

So, not that much. But a lot. Probably somewhere between 17 bathtubs and a small tanker truck.<\/p>\n

A beautiful thing about sweet tea is it\u2019s always a little different. I\u2019ve had sweet tea from most of the fast food joints on our list, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes fresh, sometimes old, sometimes bitter, sometimes so sweet your toes curl.<\/p>\n

The word for the subtleties flavoring the edges of good, and great sweet tea is love.<\/p>\n

This is why fast food tea is important. It\u2019s made the same way at McDonald\u2019s as it is at a fine dining restaurant. There\u2019s no other way to make good tea other than brewing it, adding sugar while it\u2019s hot and then chilling it over ice. It\u2019s made by human hands and consumed by our hearts.<\/p>\n

Waffle House<\/b>, I was unfamiliar with your game. The 24-hour diner is a bit of an outlier in our list, but the tea touches on everything I\u2019m looking for. Its sweetness is balanced by a rich brew, but the flavor is a sunny kind of brightness, drinking fresh and light.<\/p>\n

Hardee\u2019s<\/b> was balanced, leaning towards sweet but complex and refreshing. This is suppertime tea from a drive thru.<\/p>\n

Read more These NC towns rank among the nation\u2019s best places to live. Here\u2019s why<\/a><\/p>\n

Cook Out<\/b> was very sweet but deeply flavorful, making North Carolina proud.<\/p>\n

Whataburger<\/b> has gotten a lot of press since moving into the Triangle, but props to this Texan newcomer. The tea is as fresh as they come, subtly sweet with a depth that lingers.<\/p>\n

Expectations were high for the legends of sweet tea, perhaps unfairly so. I\u2019ve loved each of these for many years but Bojangles, Popeyes, Chick-fil-A and McDonald\u2019s struggled in our taste test. Each was out of balance, weak and carrying off flavors. Maybe it was an off day for the icons.<\/p>\n

Arby\u2019s<\/b> is dead last on a technicality. They served us unsweet tea. There isn\u2019t anything wrong with unsweet tea, many people love and prefer it. But in a sweet tea taste test not only is unsweet tea going to suffer, it\u2019s going to be exceptionally tannic and bitter.<\/p>\n

As far as actual flavor, Culver\u2019s<\/b> was probably the weirdest one, with a sweetness nodding towards bubble gum. Bubble gum tea? Sounds like a horror movie villain.<\/p>\n

I entered Thursday\u2019s taste test with no favorite. Reverence for the greats of the game? Sure. But I believed the differences in rank between 19 sweet teas would be so marginal to render the entire exercise arbitrary. All<\/i> sweet tea is good sweet tea, I thought.<\/p>\n

Now, as I reflect on how many tea stains my dentist will scrape off, I\u2019ve come to appreciate the competition a taste test created \u2014 and its necessity. A Bojangles sweet tea may be perfect for washing down a three-piece combo and biscuit. But on a windy day at Dorothea Dix Park, does it prove to be more than sentimental?<\/p>\n

And while my taste buds could sense the intentions of familiar formulae, on gameday, your sweet tea is only as good as the hands that brew it. And my job as a journalist is not to salvage preconceived hagiographies of the greats when they fall short \u2014 it is only to reflect the record as it is.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, let the record reflect the following rankings:<\/p>\n

As you cycle through sweet tea after sweet tea and try to justify to yourself why you drank so much caffeine to make yourself shiver in 70\u00b0 weather, you come to appreciate the journey every tea takes you on.<\/p>\n

A subtle, refreshing exposition. Waves of sugar with the right jolts and simmers. A firm yet calm closing argument for the taste buds to ponder. I knew teas oversaturated with sugar would not seize the day going into this, but I have a greater appreciation now for chains whose symphonic brews leave more to adore beyond the fawning saccharine.<\/p>\n

These revelations opened the door for blacker teas that let the flavor do the talking and the sugar hit the high notes. My top five chains fit that description, though there was still room in my heart for lighter, brighter teas like Waffle House whose sparkles of sugar shredded riffs your taste buds could dance to.<\/p>\n

Other chains \u2014 even ones my subconscious marked as favorites heading in \u2014 and their contrived brews sent flavor to the back and chose instead to headline sugars so artificial it could feel like tasting bubblegum tea. Ew.<\/p>\n

That tells the story of the bottom eight, with particular ignominy reserved for teas that either didn\u2019t taste sweet \u2014 gameday jitters, I assume \u2014 or \u201chow do you mess this up?\u201d kind of flavor. (Burger King. Really, just Burger King.)<\/p>\n

Read more Clayton man charged with murder for allegedly stabbing his mother<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We tasted 20 fast food sweet teas in Raleigh, North Carolina to rank the brews \u2014 from Chick-Fil-A to Whataburger and beyond from best and worst.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-read-todays-edition"],"yoast_head":"\nWe tasted 20 top NC fast-food sweet teas. Here are the rankings - Durham Moving Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/durhammovinghub.com\/?p=524\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"We tasted 20 top NC fast-food sweet teas. 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