3 min read- Johnsonville and Dr Pepper teamed up on a new Dr Pepper-inspired sausage, and I had to try it for myself.
- The smell gives you both sausage and flat Dr Pepper energy, but the flavor on its own is more subtle than the packaging suggests.
- It’s a fun gimmick-y buy, but if you’re hoping for a full-on Dr Pepper flavor bomb, this probably won’t scratch that itch.
I’ve always been a sausage guy. Sausage and peppers, sausage egg and cheese, sweet sausage, spicy sausage, breakfast sausage—I do not discriminate. If it comes in a casing and promises a good time, I’m at least listening.
And these days, brands know that being pretty good isn’t enough anymore. You can’t just throw a familiar product in slightly different packaging and expect people to sprint to the store. You need innovation and the kind of idea that makes people stop mid-scroll.
Which is exactly how we got here: a sausage soda (or is it a soda sausage?) with Johnsonville’s Dr Pepper-Inspired Sausage.
The collab officially launches March 1 and is rolling out nationwide, including Walmart, Kroger, and 7-Eleven. It’s available in fully cooked and uncooked versions, and yes, the internet discourse has already arrived. Some people are intrigued. Some are horrified. Which, honestly, is exactly the kind of reaction this product is built for.
So naturally, I had to try it.
Before I even cooked anything, the smell hit me as soon as I opened the package. You definitely get the usual “just-opened sausage pack” funk, but there’s also a faint, flat-soda sweetness in the mix. It’s giving Dr Pepper that’s been sitting out for a while, for better or for worse. There’s the cola spice with a little vanilla, and maybe a touch of caramel-y sweetness, but it’s muted and less fizzy-fresh fountain than I would’ve liked.
I heated the fully cooked sausages for about 6 to 8 minutes, then did some cutting action for one, left the other plain, and dressed up my third. Johnsonville sent condiments to play around with, so I went full-on little gremlin lunch and built one on a Hawaiian bun with Funyuns and a little hot honey-BBQ sauce.
On its own, I didn’t get a huge Dr Pepper moment. It mostly tasted like…sausage. Perfectly fine sausage! But sausage. If anything, I kept thinking maybe I should’ve gotten some better grill marks on there to wake it up.
The funny part is that once I added toppings, I actually started noticing the soda-inspired angle more. The sweetness from the bun and BBQ, plus the oniony crunch from the Funyuns, seemed to pull out whatever Dr Pepper-ish notes were hanging back in the sausage.
But if I’m being honest, if you’re going to put Dr Pepper on the package in giant letters, I want Dr Pepper. I want to be hit over the head with it. I know the label says “inspired,” but my brain still showed up expecting a stronger soda-forward flavor.
So where does that leave us? These are weird in a way that makes for a good group taste test or backyard cookout conversation starter, and I can absolutely see them being a hit when an array of toppings and sauces is in the mix.
Will I be roaming the grocery aisles, demanding the soda sausages be thrown into my cart like it’s Black Friday and there’s only one pack left? No, I don’t think I will. Respectfully, you can have them.