Review: Skip The Sheetz Buzz Beanz Energy Coffee Drinks For Literally Any Other Coffee Drink

Life might be a highway, but it sure can be exhausting. This fall, when you're jetting between scenic locales taking in the changing leaves, you'll find a new way to energize at Sheetz Bros Coffeez locations in the Northeast. Joining a host of other highly caffeinated coffee drinks in Sheetz's coolers, the convenience store is adding Buzz Beanz energy coffee.

Sheetz Buzz Beanz energy coffees come in five flavors: Chocolate peanut butter, mocha, chocolate banana, cinnamon churro, and blueberry muffin. It's quite the sweet collection of flavors, sounding more like the muffin selection at your favorite bakery than a line of canned coffee energy drinks. Harboring something of a sweet tooth myself, I was eager to try Sheetz's new coffees to see if these are a must try or skip. I wondered how close the coffee would taste to a chocolate peanut butter cup or even blueberry muffin, so I dove right into this taste test. 

To try these coffees firsthand, the PR team at Sheetz Bros Coffeez sent over a can of each flavor. I sampled them one right after another to taste the difference in flavors and get a real good picture on whether you should give these a try. Ultimately, I made my decision based on how the coffee tasted. In order for them to be coffee I could recommend, I would need the flavors to be enjoyable and the type of taste I would want to drink a whole can of. If the coffees failed to be enjoyable, they wouldn't be ones I could recommend.

Some recommendations are based on first-hand impressions of promotional materials and products provided by the manufacturer/distributor/etc.

The Sheetz Buzz Beans collection of drinks offers a rather unexpected spread of flavors. Perhaps the most basic of these coffee drinks is the mocha flavor. Since this was the first can I tried, it was also the first time I opened one of these cans. The side of each can recommended that I give it a shake before opening. So, I duly followed the directions to the letter, but I was met with a fizzy, explosive opening, teaching me that in future can openings, I would need to be much gentler in my shaking.

In any case, this was the most basic flavor, but it was also the one that tasted most like coffee. It tasted something like the bottled Starbucks mocha Frappuccino drinks I enjoyed as a high schooler. Since those days, my coffee tastes have significantly changed, and I now find this flavor to be much more sugary than necessary. The Sheetz Buzz Beans mocha offering was closer to chocolate milk than the mix of sweet and bitter chocolate you would ideally get from a tasty mocha sauce, and, while it wasn't the most offensive of the flavors I tried, I also didn't take more than a few sips.

Like peanut butter and jelly, chocolate and peanut butter just go so perfectly together. After all, Reese's peanut butter cups are some of the first to get eaten amongst Halloween candy, at least in my house. I was eager to try Sheetz's play on this combination to see how the coffee would tune into the chocolate and peanut butter mix. Unfortunately, it was something of a letdown.

After very carefully (and less aggressively) shaking the can and cracking it open, I noticed an immediate strong scent of peanut butter. Based on this smell, I expected the flavor to be a whole lot better than it was. Unfortunately, Sheetz's version of chocolate and peanut butter mixed together isn't going to draw in any Reese's fans. I likened it to the difference between store-bought, prepackaged peanut butter cookies versus fresh ones with that adorable criss cross design on top. They may smell similar, but in taste and texture, there's simply no comparison. Not to mention, since this was allegedly to be a coffee drink, I was more than a little stunned that I didn't notice any coffee taste at all. The peanut butter did a rather thorough job of covering it entirely.

Once upon a time, I would have balked at the concept of banana with coffee. However, one of my newer favorite concoctions at Starbucks uses the banana cream cold foam as one of its primary elements. Today, I am more than a little bit curious how to make coffee and banana work well together. Unfortunately, for Sheetz, the chocolate banana canned coffee from this collection didn't do it well enough to come even close to my favorite at Starbucks.

Just as the peanut butter chocolate flavor reminded me more of a somewhat stale, prepackaged cookie, the chocolate banana coffee smelled and tasted much more like hard banana candies than a tasty mixture of the fruit with chocolate. Banana chocolate should have something of a partial banana split feel, but this just reminded me more of a banana candle than it did a coffee drink. Not to mention, the coffee taste didn't make much of an appearance here, something I began seeing as a trend with Sheetz highly caffeinated Buzz Beanz beverages.

Though several Sheetz Buzz Beanz flavored coffees weren't exceptionally enjoyable, the blueberry muffin coffee was perhaps my least favorite of the bunch. Like the banana chocolate, I immediately noticed a strong scent coming from the coffee, but was more tentative about my expectations after my banana chocolate experience. In this case, the blueberry scent was, as the flavor of the coffee advertised, more of a blueberry muffin scent rather than simple blueberry. It reminded me of the aroma I get when I open a package of those mini blueberry muffins my son absolutely loves.

As you might expect, the coffee taste was entirely absent, but the blueberry flavor certainly presented a strong case. Unfortunately, blueberry drinks aren't typically some of my favorite offerings, and for this reason, I likened it quite a bit to the Dunkin' Refreshers blueberry drinks I've tried in previous tastings. While this wasn't my favorite of the Sheetz Buzz Beanz coffee drinks, given how popular the banana flavor is with some Dunkin' customers, I can imagine it playing well to other coffee drinkers.

Fortunately, the Sheetz Buzz Beanz coffee drinks do have one winner. The cinnamon churro coffee was easily my favorite of the bunch. Of the collection, it was one of the few I actually took more than a couple of sips from, and could even imagine purchasing it from a Sheetz Bros Coffeez outlet on my next road trip if no other items jumped out at me.

Though I found the name, cinnamon churro, to be something of a misnomer, the flavor itself was enjoyable. Instead of having an über sugared taste to it, as you might expect from a churro, it reminded me of a bite of cinnamon toast crunch cereal. The cinnamon wasn't overdone, but instead gave it just enough zest to make the coffee interesting. In fact, I thought it was a little smoother than some of the other flavors, perhaps because the various elements felt better integrated overall.

Unfortunately, the Sheetz Buzz Beanz energy coffees were a skip for me, even if the chain offers one of the better gas station coffees you can find. I only found one of the five flavors enjoyable, and the other four were forgettable, at best. Granted, I'm something of a spoiled coffee drinker. My husband has been known to take our manual espresso machine on long road trips in the car with us, making stops at gas stations for coffee a much more enjoyable experience than grabbing a ready to drink, canned coffee from the case.

Still, if you're hoping to enjoy a ready to drink canned coffee on the next leg of your journey, I recommend going for a double shot from Starbucks. It'll do the job, and the espresso goes down much smoother. For energy drinks, you can't do better than Red Bull. There are so many flavors in the collection now, and since all of them are enjoyable, it's hard not to find a flavor you might like. At the end of the day, refrigerator cases in convenience stores are precious space, and though Sheetz might feature its own brand of coffee, I recommend skipping right over it in favor of something else. Before you go though, try a favorite breakfast menu item from Sheetz, the Shmagel; you won't regret it.

Sheetz Bros Coffeez locations began offering this range of five energy coffee drinks on August 1, 2026. You'll find the cans in Sheetz refrigerators for $2.99 apiece. If you happen to use the MySheetz Rewards app, you can purchase two of the cans for five dollars, saving one dollar overall when you purchase two. Compared to other brands, this is on the lower end of the price spectrum, but completely reasonable overall.

Sheetz' locations are isolated to seven states in the Northeast, even if it is one of those regional convenience store chains we wish were everywhere, so compared to other convenience stores that have locations throughout the country, its reach is limited. Not to mention, it's not a brand of coffee you'll be able to pick up on a grocery run, but only at a Sheetz convenience store. This will no doubt impact the frequency with which you'll have convenient access to the new canned coffee, compared to comparable coffee drinks from Bones Coffee Company, Starbucks, and La Colombe, for example.

The five flavors of canned Sheetz Buzz Beans energy coffee drinks shared many nutritional data points. Each of them had 3 grams of fat, 5 grams of protein, 35 grams of sugar, and 180 milligrams of caffeine, per can. For calorie count, there was a tiny amount of difference. Chocolate peanut butter, mocha, chocolate banana, and blueberry muffin each had 200 calories in each 325 milliliter can, and the cinnamon churro had 190 calories.

Make no mistake about it: The drinks are not simply coffee drinks; they are robust energy drinks with an impressive caffeine content. Compared to a Red Bull, for instance, which has 114 milligrams of caffeine, Sheetz Buzz Beans energy coffee drinks pack a substantial caffeine punch, a handy benefit to a beverage available to those looking for coffee at a convenience store. Just be sure to go for the cinnamon churro variety for something truly tasty.