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McDonald's is quietly ending the era of self-serve soda fountains nationwide(foxbusiness.com)
10 points by not4uffin 21 hours ago | 18 comments
makeitrain 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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

vlucas 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

FrankWilhoit 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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 6 hours ago | parent [-]

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

Ancalagon 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

prepare for paid bathrooms next

silexia 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

ungreased0675 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What is a dirty soda?

dlcarrier 5 hours ago | parent [-]

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 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

hollandheese 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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 9 hours ago | parent [-]

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 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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 13 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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

eesmith 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No more half Sprite half Fanta option?

coldtea 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And everything continues to turn to shit

pseingatl 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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