McDonald's coffee drinks not getting customers buzzed?

When McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) went into coffee, the fast-food giant went whole-hog (or bean?). The chain planned to add separate coffee bars to every one of its about 14,000 U.S. stores, and got to about 3,000 when the credit crunch hit and Bank of America pulled back on the availability of funds for its franchisees. This would be a relatively minor setback if it weren't for a problem:

McDonald's customers don't really like coffee.

In a Wall Street Journal article today, which examines whether the coffee rollout came at a bad time, I was struck by a couple of "tweaks" McDonald's has made to its coffee strategy. One, changing the title of the employee who prepares the coffee drinks to "beverage specialist" from "barista" betrays a generality that would indicate a widening of the strategy (if not baldly changing the strategy away from coffee to other drinks). The other is that McDonald's is testing drinks made without coffee (think blended cream beverages at Starbucks). "The strategy is to appeal to customers who like the idea of coffee drinks but not the actual taste. Chocolate "gives people permission to introduce themselves to these drinks," says Darci Forrest, a McDonald's senior director of marketing."