The Iconic Fast Food Chain That Serves Up The Absolute Best Sweet Tea

If you've spent any time in the South, you know that sweet tea can be sacred to some. It's even found its way into another Southern delicacy, fried chicken. And for that reason, it's also a staple at many a fast-food chain. However, if a fast food chain has bad sweet tea, whether the sugar ratio is off, or the tea clearly didn't steep long enough, or for too long, that chain can lose a customer permanently. And let's not even touch the lemon debate.

To find the best and worst sweet teas so you don't have to, Daily Meal sent a certified Southerner to 15 fast food chains to do some reconnaissance. There were plenty of big chains represented, including McDonalds and Burger King, and a few more localized ones, such as Bojangles and Culver's. At the end of the trial, it was a major chain that took the top prize: Popeye's.

Becki said Popeye's "Cane Sweeeet Iced Tea" was "both strong and sweet with a definitive tea flavor and a good amount of sugar. No one flavor overpowers anything else, but it's clear that you're drinking real, fresh brewed sweet tea."

When a dish or drink has a short list of ingredients, it's exponentially more important to use the best ingredients you can get. That's how Popeye's comes away with the best sweet tea, starting with the tea it uses. It's a blend of black teas, including orange pekoe, a medium-grade black tea. Even better, it's brewed fresh at each restaurant rather than delivered in concentrate or a similar method.

As for the sweetener, as the official name of the drink proudly proclaims, Popeye's uses pure cane sugar. While there are no real health benefits to using it over other kinds of sweeteners, it does have a better, more natural taste with a hint of fruitiness that goes well with the tea. If you don't have much of a sweet tooth, though, try ordering it half-sweet and half-unsweet like some Redditors suggest for all of the flavor with half the sugar.

With Popeye's at the victor's podium, the silver and bronze medalists are still widely available chains. The runner-up is Sonic's tea, with a flavor Daily Meal thought was "both earthy and somewhat floral." If you're feeling particularly adventurous, you could try mixing it with any of Sonic's other drink options. At third, is Taco Bell's, though it was too sweet for our Daily Meal writer to drink much of. Others seem to agree, considering how much tea one Taco Bell employee revealed they have to dump out at the end of each for quality control (hint: it's a lot).

You have to slide all the way down to number eight on our list to find the best sweet tea from a smaller chain: Captain D's. Daily Meal thought "The first sip was very promising, unfortunately, all of that wonderful tea flavor was lost to sugar pretty quickly." Then all the way at the bottom is Chipotle's sweet tea, which Daily Meal's writer thought was weak, not sweet enough, and made her mouth feel dry. Add it to the list of "don'ts" at Chipotle and head to Popeye's instead.