Caramel apple lattes shake up PSL season
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Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios
The pumpkin spice latte is back. But this year, it's got company.
The big picture: Caramel apple, brown sugar and maple lattes are all on the rise — even though PSL has powered fall menus for two decades.
The latest: McDonald's dropped its longtime PSL and instead rolled out caramel apple pie coffee drinks this season, saying: "Step aside pumpkin spice, there's a new flavor in town!"
Caramel, apple and cinnamon are the three most-ordered fall flavors on DoorDash, ahead of pumpkin, per data shared with Axios.
- And searches for "caramel apple iced coffee" are at an all-time high, according to Google Trends.
What they're saying: "Pumpkin spice will always be a classic people keep coming back to, but consumers are also craving interesting alternatives that deliver surprise and comfort," Yelp's VP of community expansion and trends, Tara Lewis, tells Axios.
Other flavors spicing things up:
- Brown sugar overtook pecan as DoorDash's breakout fall flavor of 2026, the delivery service tells Axios, with orders up 58% year over year.
- Maple latte searches on Yelp rose 65% in July from a year earlier, while searches for "salted maple latte" jumped 591%. Google searches for "maple latte" are also at a record high, though interest could be boosted by a viral cosmetic shade with the same name.
- Cardamom, peanut butter and hazelnut are also among Google's top-trending latte searches.
Zoom in: State by state, latte orders change throughout the year.
- By late July last year, PSL was already the top-searched latte in several states, according to Google Trends — but matcha and chai claimed plenty of territory in late fall.
Yes, but: Pumpkin spice isn't going bad anytime soon.
- "Pumpkin spice latte" is the top-Googled latte in the U.S. this August, and Yelp searches for "pumpkin spice latte" are up 301% from a year ago.
Between the lines: Instead of choosing between pumpkin or another trending flavor, you could drink both.
- Starbucks offers pumpkin spice mixed with matcha and chai — and also introduced banana bread latte drinks to their fall menu.
What we're watching: Whether banana coffee's big summer spills into fall.
