McDonald’s called its coffeehouse-style branding concept McCafé when it first launched in Australia in 1993.
The first McCafé opened in Melbourne, Australia, as a branded café area connected to a McDonald’s restaurant. The concept was designed to give customers a more specialized coffee experience while using McDonald’s existing restaurant network. It later spread to other countries and became a major part of the company’s beverage identity.
The name combines “Mc,” McDonald’s familiar prefix, with “café,” signaling a coffee-focused offer. It is a brand name, not simply a generic description of McDonald’s coffee. McCafé locations and menus have varied by country, so the concept has not looked identical everywhere.
The launch is sometimes incorrectly dated to the United States or to a much later global rollout. Australia was the origin of the McCafé concept in 1993; international expansion came afterward.