Chili’s New $6 Margarita Is Basically a Neon ’90s Time Machine

Chili’s is tapping into millennial nostalgia with its latest Margarita of the Month: the Radical ’Rita. The $6 cocktail — available all throughout May — is a swirling mix of dragonfruit, blue curaçao, and Lunazul blanco tequila that transforms from pink and blue into a bright purple hue when stirred with a themed swizzle stick.

Yes, there are swizzle sticks. And yes, they’re ’90s-inspired.

To help launch the drink, Chili’s enlisted actress and former teen icon Tiffani Thiessen, best known for her television roles in Saved by the Bell and Beverly Hills, 90210. In a campaign spot directed by SNL short filmmaker Mike Diva, Thiessen plays it cool while the restaurant around her goes full retro chaos — complete with scrunchies, slap bracelets, and oversized cordless phones.

“Everyone knows me from my days on America's favorite ’90s sitcom,” Thiessen says in the video, “but what they might not know is that I also love a great margarita — and some of my favorite early memories with my husband were made at Chili’s.”

According to food trend platform Tastewise, consumer interest in ’90s-themed foods and beverages has grown by nearly 40% year over year, as more brands tap into retro aesthetics to reach nostalgia-hungry millennials and Gen Z. From neon-colored drinks to throwback packaging, the ’90s revival is showing up on menus nationwide. And for those unfamiliar, in the ’90s, “radical” was a go-to stand-in for anything cool, bold, or just plain awesome.

The Radical ’Rita is part of Chili’s long-running Margarita of the Month program, launched in 2018. The Texas-based brand, which claims to sell more margaritas than any other restaurant chain in the United States, says it sold more than 25 million margaritas in 2024 alone. The rotating lineup has included past hits like the Witches Brew Marg and the Lemon Drop Marg, each served at a consistent $6 price point.

According to Jesse Johnson, Chili’s vice president of marketing, the new drink “takes a very on-trend flavor in dragonfruit and presents it in a way our guests have never seen before.”

The Radical ’Rita is available at participating locations nationwide through the end of May.