The Best Stock to Invest $10,000 in Right Now

If I had $10,000 sitting in cash right now, looking for one consumer stock to put it behind, I'd buy Dutch Bros (NYSE: BROS).

I'll say up front that this isn't a sleepy, set-it-and-forget-it dividend stock; it's a growth story, and growth stories carry real risk when the market decides a company has to be perfect. But the numbers behind Dutch Bros right now are hard for me to ignore, and I think the next several years give investors plenty of reasons to be excited, with a few worth watching closely along the way.

It's important to flag that the stock price has plunged about 40% despite strong growth, mainly due to valuation concerns, slower foot-traffic growth, and investor worries over expansion spending, but all this may be an overreaction.

Image source: Getty Images.

What Dutch Bros has actually been building

Dutch Bros isn't just opening coffee stands faster than almost anyone else in the industry; it's changing how people order from them. Mobile ordering and order ahead accounted for roughly 16% of transactions last quarter, and management has been candid that there's no specific mix target it's chasing; the real goal is simply to give customers one more easy way to show up. That's a meaningful shift for a drive-thru-heavy brand that built its identity on friendly baristas and personal interaction at the window, and I think it's the right kind of expansion rather than a distraction from what made the company work in the first place. It makes the business stickier.

The bigger swing is food. Dutch Bros has run a food program in roughly 300 shops across 11 states, and it's now rolling that out nationwide, with a full launch targeted by the end of 2026, according to QSR Magazine. Food attached to a coffee ticket can lift average ticket size (think ordering alcohol at a restaurant) at a coffee chain, and if this rollout performs the way management is hoping, it becomes a real bonus for same-shop sales growth beyond just opening new locations. It's also worth noting that an operational lift could strain kitchens and service times if it's rushed, which is the kind of execution risk that's easy to understate when a rollout is still this early.

The growth numbers behind the stock

Second-quarter revenue came in at $551 million, up 32% year over year, with company-operated same-shop sales rising 8.3%, including 3.4% transaction growth, not just higher prices doing the work. Management raised full-year guidance on the back of it, now projecting total revenue of roughly $2.1 billion to $2.13 billion. On the store count side, Dutch Bros now plans to open at least 185 new shops in 2026 alone, part of a stated goal of reaching 2,029 locations by 2029, which would represent a massive expansion from where the company stands today.

Doing the math on $10,000

Dutch Bros shares closed around $38 in early to mid-October. A $10,000 investment buys roughly 258 shares at that price. If the company executes anywhere close to its own 2029 store count target while holding same-shop sales growth in the mid-single-digit range it's currently guiding toward, the combination of more stores and more sales per store is the kind of compounding that's turned other restaurant growth stories into genuinely life-changing investments over a decade.

This whole setup has similar vibes to Cava Group (NYSE: CAVA) in its earlier innings, for better and for worse. Cava posted 9.7% same-restaurant sales growth in the first quarter of 2026, with 6.8 percentage points of that coming from actual guest traffic rather than price hikes, then followed it with a 9% same-store sales beat in the second quarter, numbers that sound a lot like the kind of traffic-driven growth Dutch Bros is putting up now. Cava also leaned on menu innovation the way Dutch Bros is leaning on food, rolling out items like its Pomegranate Glazed Salmon, which actually pressured margin rate on higher input costs but still added to margin dollars thanks to the higher price point it commanded.

None of that stopped Cava's stock from being genuinely wild to hold, swinging from around $95 a share down to roughly $52 within a few months as the broader restaurant sector sold off and investors grew more cautious about paying a premium multiple for growth that occasionally cooled quarter to quarter. If Dutch Bros follows a similar path, and I think the early signs point that way, investors should expect real turbulence layered on top of real growth, not a smooth climb in a straight line.

Why now, and what I watch

Coffee is about as habitual a purchase as exists, which gives Dutch Bros a demand floor most retail growth stories don't have. Combine that with a brand that's still relatively unknown outside its core markets, a nationwide food rollout just getting started, and a store count still far short of its own long-term target, and I think the setup favors getting in before the chain's name recognition catches up to its ambitions elsewhere in the country. Whenever I'm traveling out west, I pull into a Dutch Bros if I see one. I know I'm getting good coffee and good service. As these stores continue to go east and north. I don't see a bad time to start dollar-cost averaging into this company.

Micah Zimmerman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Cava Group and Dutch Bros. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.