Chick-Fil-A Mango Passion Drinks Review: A Refreshing Tropical Escape
Nothing says winter like curling up in a comfy chair by a roaring fire with ... a nice cold cup of Mango Passion Frosted Lemonade? That's the vision that Chick-fil-A is trying to sell us, anyway, with the release of its limited-time Mango Passion drink menu. The chain wants you to escape the cold embrace of winter by drinking in the tropical tastes of mango and passion fruit in a variety of refreshing, cold beverages.
Since I've never met a special-edition fast food drink I didn't want to try, I drove through a snowstorm to my nearest Chick-fil-A in order to try the three new drinks on the Mango Passion menu. For your benefit, I'm reporting my findings. For the most part, the beverages were a tasty escape from my chilly surroundings, though I liked some of them more than others. If you're planning to eat at Chick-fil-A soon, keep reading to find out which Mango Passion drinks you should be sipping alongside your chicken sandwich.
What's in Chick-fil-A's new Mango Passion drinks?
The winter Mango Passion menu consists of four drinks, three of which are new. The returning beverage is the Mango Passion Sunjoy, which is half lemonade and half sweet tea flavored with mango and passion fruit (a Sunjoy is basically just Chick-fil-A's version of an Arnold Palmer). The Mango Passion Sunjoy first appeared on the chain's menu in 2020.
As for the new drinks, two of them are simply the individual components of the Sunjoy. You can get either lemonade or iced tea by themselves with mango and passion fruit flavors if you'd rather not mix the two. The iced tea is available in sweet or unsweet versions, and the Mango Passion lemonade can likewise be ordered with sugar or in diet form.
The final member of the lineup is Mango Passion Frosted Lemonade, which is blended with Chick-fil-A's Icedream frozen dessert (which is essentially vanilla soft-serve). You can get this drink made with diet lemonade as well, but there's no diet version of Icedream.
How much do they cost, and where will they be available?
The Mango Passion drinks hit participating Chick-fil-A locations on January 8. Not every Chick-fil-A will be selling these beverages, so the company advises customers to check the restaurant's app or call their nearest location before heading out to buy a Mango Passion creation. The press release doesn't mention a specific end date for the beverages, only saying they'll be sold "while supplies last." The drinks are described as winter menu items, so don't expect them to stick around once spring comes along.
Each Mango Passion drink is only available in one size, except for the Sunjoy, which can be bought in a gallon-size bottle for $13.50. A glass of the Sunjoy or the lemonade costs $3.05. The iced tea is the cheapest option at $2.65, while the Frosted Lemonade is the most expensive at $5.49. Note that these prices are accurate in my location, but costs may vary depending on where you live.
How do they compare to other items from Chick-fil-A?
All of these drinks are variations of things that are already on the restaurant's menu. Chick-fil-A's lemonade, which is made with fresh lemon juice and contains just three ingredients, is an iconic offering from the brand.
At the moment, the Mango Passion drinks are the only special beverages you can buy from Chick-fil-A (although you can customize any cold drink with strawberry syrup if you'd like). In the past year, the company has cycled through other limited-time drink menus, including Watermelon Mint, White Peach, and Peppermint, but the chain seems to prefer having only one set of special drinks at a time rather than offering a bunch at once.
Chick-fil-A has a penchant for incorporating exotic fruit into its limited-time beverages and treats. In 2022, the chain put out a Frosted Lemonade flavored with cherry blossoms and cloudberries. I quite liked the Frosted Cloudberry Lemonade, so I was excited to try the Mango Passion menu.
Nutrition
The nutritional hit of these drinks varies widely depending on which one you choose. The most diet-friendly is the Mango Passion Unsweet Tea, which comes in at 25 calories. Honestly, I was surprised it even had that much, since unsweet tea is often calorie-free, but Chick-fil-A's version contains glycerine and vegetable juice and thus has a small amount of carbs and sugar. The sweet tea is a more indulgent option, with 130 calories and 27 grams of sugar.
The diet lemonade is another relatively low-cal choice, delivering 60 calories and 7 grams of sugar. The regular Mango Passion lemonade, in contrast, is super sugary — 38 grams, to be exact, along with 180 calories. Meanwhile, the Frosted Lemonade is more like a dessert than a drink, and it has the nutrition stats you'd expect for something that's basically an ice cream slushy: 300 calories for the version with diet lemonade or 380 for the full-sugar version. The latter option also contains 67 grams of sugar, well over the FDA-recommended 50-gram daily value for added sugar.
The Mango Passion Lemonade was too intense
I know lots of people love Chick-fil-A's lemonade, but I found it hard to drink more than a few sips unless I watered it down. I got the full-sugar version, and it was incredibly syrupy, to the point where it had a noticeably thick texture from all the sugar dissolved in it. Despite the excessive sweetness, it was also incredibly sour. Chick-fil-A definitely doesn't skimp on the lemon juice, and the passion fruit flavoring adds even more tartness.
On the plus side, the use of fresh lemons elevated the drink. I picked up strong notes of lemon oil, and the citrus taste was bright and fresh. I also enjoyed the tropical sweetness that the mango flavoring brought to the party. Overall, though this was my least favorite of the three new Mango Passion drinks, I still thought it tasted good — it was just too strong. It was more like a flavor concentrate than a ready-to-drink beverage. Once I mixed it with more ice water, it became quite enjoyable.
The Mango Passion Frosted Lemonade was a creamy dream
Of course, instead of cutting your lemonade with plain water, you could blend it with a creamy frozen dessert to mellow it out. And, surprise surprise, it turns out that soft-serve is tastier than water. The Icedream in the Mango Passion Frosted Lemonade smoothed out all the rough edges in the lemonade while contributing its own sweet dairy and vanilla flavor. It also gave the drink a beautiful texture — the Frosted Lemonade was perfectly smooth and creamy, with no large ice crystals at all.
Taste-wise, the Icedream really brought out the passion fruit flavoring while suppressing the mango. Moreso than in the plain lemonade, the tropical flavor additions tasted noticeably artificial in the Frosted version. I didn't mind the fakeness, but just know that this drink wouldn't convince anyone that it was made with real mango nectar and passion fruit pulp. The combination of artificial fruit and dairy reminded me of a cheap grocery store sherbert.
The Mango Passion Iced Tea was a tropical winner
I elected to go with the unsweet version of this drink so I could evaluate how the mango and passion fruit flavorings performed in the absence of added sweeteners, and I'm glad I did — the fruit flavors came through strong and added the impression of sweetness without a syrupy overload. It was a similar effect to fruit-flavored sparkling water. The aroma of the mango and passion tricked my palate into tasting sugar even though there was no sugar or Splenda in the tea. Unless you like your drinks very sweet, I would recommend ordering the tea unsweet and then adjusting the sweetener levels yourself, as desired.
The tea itself was super tasty even without the added mango and passion fruit. It was high-quality black tea that had been brewed strong enough to have a robust taste, but it wasn't bitter. I know the Mango Passion menu is all about sipping on tropical flavors in the middle of winter, but I would love to be able to drink this beverage as a refreshing sip in the summertime. The Mango Passion Iced Tea was my favorite of the three new beverages by far.