It’s been several years since McDonald’s introduced single-serve milk jugs in its franchises. The approval of parents and children is obvious from the increased sales: before the plastic milk jugs, McDonald’s sold 625,000 cardboard containers weekly, now the restaurant sells more than 4.25 million jugs a week! There’s a good story about this on MediaPost from Friday.

Other fast-food restaurants are joining in the “panning for gold” – Wendy’s, Burger King and now Sonic Drive-In and Subway.

Next time you hit the drive-thru, be sure to join in rush – nothing beats a refreshing, cold glass of chocolate milk!

“The word we’re getting is that milk is a gold mine,” says Chris Moore, vice president-food services for Dairy Management Inc., the industry board that is working with quick-service restaurants to promote milk. A year-long DMI study of more than 100,000 school-age children found that kids prefer milk when it is served cold, in plastic bottles and in a variety of flavors. The new bottles are resealable and, equally important, they fit in car-seat cup-holders. Chocolate milk has been especially popular in quick service chains, outselling white milk at a ratio of 3 to 1.