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McDonald's is quietly ending the era of self-serve soda fountains nationwide

foxbusiness.com

11 points by not4uffin 2 days ago · 20 comments

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makeitrain 2 days ago

Are mcdonalds locations losing money on soda, or is this just a way to get franchise owners to cough up more to corporate?

FrankWilhoit 2 days ago

Makes no sense, because labor dominates, as it always has. But every so often, some executive has a fit about a single, isolated cost statistic and this kind of thing is the result.

  • joquarky 2 days ago

    They don't get that removing all slack from a system makes it brittle.

vlucas 2 days ago

Educated guess on why this is happening:

All the people who get free water cups, then fill them with soda. Happens increasingly often now.

We are moving towards a low-trust society faster each day.

Ancalagon 2 days ago

prepare for paid bathrooms next

eesmith 2 days ago

No more half Sprite half Fanta option?

ungreased0675 2 days ago

What is a dirty soda?

  • dlcarrier 2 days ago

    It's the equivalent to the mat shot term in mixed drinks, which is a mix of ostensibly spilled ingredients into a new drink. In practice, it's not usually a mix of everything but is a mix of multiple syrups that go well together.

SJetKaran 2 days ago

self-serve soda fountains are supposedly unclean and harbor lot of bacteria in many places, so this is probably a good thing

  • hollandheese 2 days ago

    How? They're just using the same machines to fill up your drinks and not letting you have access to them for refills. They're not getting rid of soda fountains.

    • suburban_strike 2 days ago

      The change is about theft, but I've seen kids fill their cup to the point of submerging the nozzle, then do it again when they go for a refill after drinking it. Self-serve should never have been a thing.

      • hollandheese 2 days ago

        I'm not sure what you're complaining about here. People using a service that they paid for? How is that theft? Further, any "theft" of soda from a soda fountain would be only costing the company pennies basically.

        The change is about McDonald's not wanting to staff enough to have people actually in the restaurants. They're slow rolling a change to only take out.

      • HaZeust 2 days ago

        And if that's what you care about, do you think an unskilled laborer will be much more hygienically-responsible with his low-wage role? I've seen pickles that fell on the kitchen floor continue to be used if the "floor was cleaned recently". The bar of "acceptable behvaior" between a layperson and an unskilled laborer is negligible.

  • dlcarrier 2 days ago

    Soda has almost no nutrients, and is acidic and high in sugar. This is not only bad for your health, it's also bad for bacteria's health, so it's practically impossible to get bacteria to reproduce in spilled soda or on the soda nozzles.

  • estimator7292 2 days ago

    The fountains behind the counter get cleaned exactly as often as the ones in front (read: approximately never)

silexia 2 days ago

High trust societies cannot allow illegal migration from low trust societies without becoming low trust themselves.

coldtea 2 days ago

And everything continues to turn to shit

pseingatl 2 days ago

This is awful. Where are homeless people going to go to fill up on Pepsi?

  • jfengel a day ago

    The homeless don't fill up on Pepsi at McD's. Practically all McDonalds' serve Coke. Same with Burger King.

    If the homeless prefer Pepsi, they have to go to Taco Bell or Subway.

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