from UK, only place I have seen this is Ikea
This. I can’t remember walking into a Macca’s in my country with self-serve drinks. And contrary to what you would expect from someone describing the place as “Macca’s,” I live in The Netherlands.
The mcdonalds near me removed self serve soda during the pandemic and never brought them back. I can still request free refills but a staff member does it from behind the counter.
I will bet they never implement this change.
If they do implement it, I will bet they reverse it in six months.
Makes sense. I’ve watched homeless people bathe in them (using the water dispenser), I’ve seen people take 8+ refills, I’ve watched people bring in their own buckets from outside and refill them.
I don’t make excuses for shitty corporations, but humans are unhinged these days, and ruin shit for everyone else.
I’ve seen people take 8+ refills
Well look who woke up and decided to be judgy on the internet. I’m busy self-medicating, if you don’t mind.
Such an American thing
I will miss my drink concoction
You can still ask for it but there’s no guarantee that the proportions will be right.
By 2032?
Who gives a shit?
Fuck em. Don’t eat there.
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Lol
Sit outside one and watch the amount of people going there.
It’s insane
McDowell’s is better
You can spot it by the gold arcs.
I work in a restaurant and ever since COVID the health inspector has been SUPER cautious about our soda machine. We run a clean ship but it’s always the first thing they look at, and they go over it with a fine tooth comb.
Even before covid the soda fountain was the thing they could get. I remember that being a big target back when I worked fast food 20 years ago.
That’s crazy, you literally push the cup against the trigger. Flesh doesn’t even need to touch it!
The lid/straw area, however…
I don’t think this is about cleanliness, I think this is about McDonalds limiting free refills.
This is 100% about pinching pennies. Gotta find new ways to post those “record breaking profits” every year.
McDonalds isn’t really a fast food company. McDonalds makes most of it’s money via real estate investment. The suckers who open franchise locations are the only ones who care about pinching pennies on food and drink.
Pinching pennies tends to be a really bad way to improve profits, though. Especially if you’re lowering customer satisfaction or attraction in the process.
Not that companies and managers won’t still try doing just that.
Welcome to the era of enshitiffication.
Customer satisfction and attraction aren’t numbers on a spreadsheet, so I guess the effects of shitty policies like this don’t exist
Well if they don’t make record breaking profits they won’t be useful to investors on the stock market and thats the real game
the main reason i even go to chains like mcdonalds in the first place is the soda fountain. it’s (usually) much better than retail product in bottles or cans.
if i have to wait 10 minutes to maybe (they will have zero incentive to wait on you) get a refill, after already waiting 10-30 minutes for my food in the first place (wait times have gotten really bad the last few years… for “reasons”). i won’t even go there anymore at all unless i’m traveling (which i don’t really do much of either). the ridiculous and constant price increases already got me down from a once-a-week treat to maybe once every month or two.
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it’s actually because they dont want you to go there and buy stuff if you buy stuff then they have to spend money to restock stuff and that hurts profits!
I find the wait times have gone up as they prioritise both drive thru and delivery options ahead of people actually at the counter.
Food safety and theft prevention…
Great so now you get to have your drink prepped from a machine that’s never been cleaned by the sweaty, overworked teen behind the counter who’s handled everyone’s dirty money and cards all day instead of going over to the machine that’s never been cleaned and touching the machine that all those same dirty people have touched.
All because McDonald’s is worried about saving literally pennies to “food theft” which is just a fancy way of them saying they don’t want you getting free refills anymore.
Whos paying at the counter and by money in Maccy Ds in 2023? You order on the big touch screen thing and tap your phone/card to pay.
It’s just an excuse to squeeze more profit…
They’ve operated wonderfully and made billions in the decades before this decision. It’ll get to the point where corporations won’t even try to sugar coat these moves.
“We’re removing food wrappers and packaging because we make more money that way” we’ll be seeing this in the headlines in the next 5 years.
It started with defaulting to not putting ketchup packets in your bag without telling you, and even now if you ask at the drive thru 50/50 you get it anyways.
Imagine how much waste was generated giving people ketchup packets they might not want and end up throwing away. This sounds like an example of doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
I have never encountered any place (except IKEA) that allows you to refill using those unless you pay a bit extra.
That’s the European thing, most fastfood restaurants in America allow it. The two places in Czech Republic that allow it(KFC and Burger King) have people save their cups and refill them days later so I imagine that kind of theft is why more places don’t have it. Also, European restaurants in general monetize drinks a lot more. In the US it is common for sit-down restaurants to refill your drinks for free, and water is always free (to the point where California passed a law requiring a restaurant asks if you want water before bringing it, to conserve water)
Where do you live? In California it’s commonplace that self-serve station refills are free.
The main exceptions are touristy places like Disneyland. But most places have the dispensers on the dining room side (not the cash register side) so you can get free refills.
Ohio here, refills are free as well.
.
Those things are fucking nasty anyway.
That’s always been my impression of them. They are rarely kept up very well and often extremely messy.
Buddy, if you’ve eaten at a restaurant, you’ve had worse.
Once they are back behind the counter you won’t see how gross they are.
Now if McDonalds would just go away altogether that would be good news.
