The Specific Lemonade Starbucks Uses In All Your Favorite Drinks

While it's best known for coffee and lattes, Starbucks has a variety of non-coffee drinks, including several made with lemonade. The chain uses the citrusy beverage in its popular refreshers and teas, and also serves it on its own. It's impossible to perfectly recreate Starbucks lemonade at home, as the brand uses its own concentrate that isn't sold in grocery stores.

Starbucks makes its lemonade by diluting its branded concentrate with filtered water. The concentrate is fairly simple, as the Starbucks website lists the drink's only ingredients as water, lemon juice, sugar, lemon oil, and ice. It is used in four of the brand's Refreshers (though these can be ordered without lemonade), the Blended Strawberry Lemonade, and several flavors of tea lemonade. While the lemonade itself is caffeine-free, some of the drinks that include it are not.

Opinions on the taste of the lemonade are mixed, with some saying it makes drinks sweeter and others saying it makes them more sour. On a Reddit thread, some users stated they find Starbucks' lemonade to be too sweet, while one person said, "Strawberry refresher w/ lemonade is one of my go tos and IMHO the lemonade adds a bit of tartness to the drink not sweetness."

Starbucks is not alone in its process; using a branded concentrate is standard when it comes to cafés and fast food joints. Dunkin's allergen guide lists its lemonade as being made from lemonade and lemon juice concentrate, though its rendition features citric acid and also incorporates orange juice concentrate. In addition, Panera Bread, Wendy's, Popeye's, and McDonald's make their lemonade with lemon juice concentrate. Some restaurants even serve outsourced lemonade, such as Minute Maid. McDonald's used to belong to this camp, but in April 2025, it switched from Minute Maid to its new "premium" lemonade that uses real lemon juice, though it still comes from concentrate.

In contrast, Chick-fil-A proudly lists on its website that its lemonade is made from real lemon juice, not concentrate. This may be why the brand's lemonade is so beloved, and its seasonal releases, such as the new Peach Frosted Lemonade, are celebrated. Another brand that skips the concentrate is Raising Cane's, with its site proclaiming the drink is "freshly-squeezed daily." However, if you truly want the freshest lemonade, you can always make it yourself with this simple lemonade recipe.