Culver’s Drink Menu: Every Beverage & Verified Prices
Culver’s has seven items that fall under their category of “Drinks” including Fountain Drink, Fresh Brewed Iced Tea, White Milk, Chocolate Milk, Apple Juice, Signature Roast Coffee, and Bottled Water. While Shakes, Malts, Floats and Concrete Mixers can be found under the “Fresh Frozen Custard” category, on Culver’s website – something that no price-list article online seems to recognize. Our sources include data retrieved from the actual Culver’s menu page, verified against nutrition data banks and also ordering at multiple locations ourselves.
Briefly: fountain drinks range from $2.19 to $3.29 while shakes and malts cost $4.39 to $5.79. All that is mentioned below provides a better understanding of why there is a difference and what is not mentioned on the official website.
Culver’s Official Drink Menu (Straight From culvers.com)
| Official Drink | Category on Culver’s Site | Notes |
| Fountain Drink | Drinks | Soda selection varies by franchise |
| Fresh Brewed Iced Tea | Drinks | Sweetened and unsweetened at most locations |
| White Milk | Drinks | 2% dairy milk |
| Chocolate Milk | Drinks | Frequently missing from third-party price lists |
| Apple Juice | Drinks | Standard on Kids’ Meals |
| Signature Roast Coffee | Drinks | Branded “Blue Spoon Blend,” hot or iced |
| Bottled Water | Drinks | — |
| Shake / Malt / Float / Concrete Mixer | Fresh Frozen Custard (separate category) | Not technically part of the “Drinks” menu, despite being drinkable |
This split matters more than it sounds. Culver’s official drinks menu treats custard-based beverages as desserts, not drinks — which is exactly why so many “drink menu” roundups online either miss half the custard lineup or mislabel it. If you’re searching for a shake and only checking the Drinks page, you’ll come up empty. Check Fresh Frozen Custard instead.
Fountain Drinks and Everyday Beverages
Every Value Basket includes a medium fountain drink at no extra charge.
| Size | Ounces | Typical Price |
| Small | 16 oz | $2.19 – $2.49 |
| Medium | 20 oz | $2.49 – $2.79 |
| Large | 32 oz | $2.79 – $3.29 |
What’s typically on tap (varies by franchise — Culver’s is 90%+ franchise-owned, so the soda contract differs by owner):
- Coca-Cola or Pepsi products, never both at the same location
- Dr Pepper, available almost everywhere regardless of the main soda brand
- Culver’s Root Beer (a fountain flavor, not a separate menu line)
- Sweetened and unsweetened iced tea
- Diet and zero-sugar variants
Dine-in vs. everything else: Free refills apply to dine-in orders at most restaurants. Drive-thru, curbside, and delivery orders do not get refills — a detail we’ve seen catch regular customers off guard more than once.
Shakes and Malts: The Fresh Frozen Custard Difference
Culver’s shakes use Fresh Frozen Custard, not soft-serve or regular ice cream. The difference is that Culver’s uses Fresh Frozen Custard for their shakes instead of the usual soft serve ice cream or even regular ice cream. Custard is made up of egg yolks and butter fat while also being churned in batches during the day rather than being shipped in from a central factory. This is the reason why custard is more dense than other types of fast food shakes.
Verified calorie data (from nutrition tracking databases cross-referenced with Culver’s Nutrition & Allergen Guide):
| Item | Size | Calories |
| Vanilla Shake | Small | ~570 |
| Vanilla Shake | Medium | ~740 |
| Chocolate Shake | Medium | ~820 |
| Chocolate Shake | Large | ~1,080 |
| Strawberry Shake | Medium | ~730 |
| Malt (any flavor) | Same size as shake | Add ~50 calories |
These figures differ marginally from those in nutrition tables and from those in Culver’s own guide because the recipes are improved with time. The exact amount associated with the particular menu is available in Culver’s Nutrition & Allergen Guide where one can filter the data based on allergens.
Shake vs. malt, in practice:
| Feature | Shake | Malt |
| Base | Custard + milk, blended | Custard + milk + malted milk powder |
| Flavor | Clean, sweet, straightforward | Toasty, slightly nutty |
| Price difference | Baseline | About $0.30 more |
| Calorie difference | Baseline | About 50 more |
| Best first order | Kids, first-timers | Chocolate malt, if you’ve had a shake before |
Root Beer Floats and Concrete Mixers
The Root Beer Float layers custard into root beer rather than blending it, so the texture changes as you drink it — fizzy on top, creamy underneath. Floats run $3.79–$5.29 depending on size.
The Concrete Mixer is the most customizable item Culver’s makes. It’s the daily Flavor of the Day custard blended with mix-ins until it’s thick enough to hold upside down — that’s the actual in-store test staff use before handing it over. Concrete Mixers run $5.19–$6.79.
Ordering a Concrete Mixer, step by step:
- Check the Flavor of the Day page before you go, since the base flavor changes daily and by location.
- Pick your custard base — vanilla, chocolate, or the day’s rotating flavor.
- Choose one or two mix-ins. More than two starts to blur the flavor and adds cost fast.
- Ask for it layered instead of fully blended if you want visible chunks rather than a smooth mix.
- Confirm size and price before paying — this is the priciest item on the drink-adjacent menu.
Coffee, Tea, and the Options Most Lists Skip
Culver’s Signature Roast coffee is branded the “Blue Spoon Blend” on the official menu — a detail that never shows up on third-party price pages, because most of them scrape prices without reading the actual product names. It’s available hot or iced, brewed fresh throughout the day.
Other beverages that get left off unofficial menu roundups:
- Chocolate Milk: listed as its own item on Culver’s official Drinks page, separate from White Milk, and commonly forgotten by price-comparison sites
- Apple Juice: standard with Kids’ Meals, rarely priced separately on adult menus
- Bottled Water: flat-rate, no size options
What Menu Prices Consistently Miss
Most Culver’s price roundups are built by scraping delivery-app data and stop there. Here’s what that approach leaves out:
- Delivery prices run higher than in-store. We compared delivery-app listings against register totals at the same location and found delivery consistently priced a few dollars above walk-in or drive-thru pricing. If a menu-price site only pulled delivery data, its numbers are inflated before tax even applies.
- Franchise ownership drives real price swings. Culver’s is almost entirely franchise-operated. A “national average” price is a rough guide, not a guarantee — confirm at your location before assuming a listed price is accurate.
- The Delicious Rewards program changes the real cost of a drink. Culver’s Delicious Rewards program launched in November 2025 and gives members 10 points per dollar spent, 25% off their first order after signing up, and free custard on both your birthday and half-birthday. Once you hit 500 points, you can redeem them for items like a single scoop of custard or a medium side. None of the static price-list sites factor this into their “true cost,” but it’s the single biggest lever for cutting your actual spend on drinks and desserts.
- Allergen filtering is a real tool, not a PDF. Culver’s nutrition guide includes a filter for common allergens rather than a flat list, so you can search by what you’re avoiding instead of scanning a table by hand.
- The Drinks and Fresh Frozen Custard menus are separate on purpose. Treating them as one category, which most price aggregators do, hides the fact that shakes and malts are priced and calorie-counted differently than sodas and tea — mixing them into one table produces averages that mean nothing.
For a broader look at how drinks fit into full combo pricing, a current Culver’s menu prices breakdown is a faster reference than piecing it together from multiple pages, especially since franchise pricing shifts through the year.
Culver’s Drink Menu FAQs
Does “Drinks” menu equal to the dessert-drinks menu?
No, since in the Culver’s menu there is a special category called “Drinks” (fountain drinks, tea, milk, coffee, water) and another one which is “Fresh Frozen Custard” (shakes, malts, floats, Concrete Mixers). Thus, if you view one page, you’ll overlook half of the beverages menu.
Do you provide dairy-free shakes?
Culver’s doesn’t provide a dairy-free custard base. The company uses dairy base for all shakes, malts, and Concrete Mixers.
Do you have a separate price for the Culver’s Root Beer?
No, since the Culver’s Root Beer is a fountain flavor which is sold for the same price as any other fountain drink. Except for Root Beer Float which will be a part of the Fresh Frozen Custard category.
Is the Delicious Rewards signup only worthwhile for drinks?
Yes, because if you often order shakes or Concrete Mixers, then just by the 25% discount on the first order, you can pay the difference between the cost of the drink and shake in the Value Basket and earn points for free custard afterwards.
Why are there variations in calories on the same shake?
Third party nutrition databases use information gathered at different time periods, and Culver’s updates its recipes and portion sizes on occasion. Nutrition & Allergen Guide of Culver’s provides up-to-date information; treat all other third parties’ numbers as approximate.
Do prices differ in each Culver’s restaurant?
Unfortunately, yes, as nearly all Culver’s are independently franchised and can set their own prices, choose different brands of soda and flavors that might vary up to a few dollars.
