• rockSlayer@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Jesus how cheap could they be? Fountain drinks are far and away their highest profit margin item on the menu.

    • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      The thing that pisses me off, is while I don’t eat McDonald’s so it doesn’t directly affect me, I just know that other restaurants will see that it’s making them more money and will follow suit.

      • OpenStars@discuss.online
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        4 months ago

        In many rural areas, they have run out the mom & pop stores, plus people will pay for convenience, so I expect that they expect to totally get away with this.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          I was explaining something about this to my daughter. Starbucks came in to a lot of smaller towns and drove out the local coffee shop because it had the advantage most of those coffee shops didn’t: A drive-through.

          The good news is that now, local places have figured out that’s all they have to do to get customers to opt for them instead of shitty Starbucks coffee. And they can get away with charging less.

          • OpenStars@discuss.online
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            4 months ago

            People traveling between cities will opt for the comfortable, safe, familiar places. And sheeple that go to McDonald’s just do what they’re told. I imagine the CEO would not risk their shares unless they thought they’d get away with doing this to their poor customers.

            A lot of businesses do this, purposefully aggravating their customer base, and then say - it’s Biden, he made me do it. So for a Magat, going to McDonald’s might even be a source of pride!? (Except delicious Chick-fil-A already occupies that niche!?)

      • Spacehooks@reddthat.com
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        4 months ago

        Let’s hope it forces then to fail faster. I like frappes when I’m on the road but I always fill up on soda before I leave. If they stop soda I’ll just go to another place that offers me a drink for my extended trips. They are already in decline to burger King and dominos apparently.

        • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          That is soooo much sugar you are consuming. Even a small frappe is 10-15 sugar cubes. Add in a soda and you are looking at another 10-15. Maybe refill with water.

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      I kind of view this as a good thing, honestly. People do not need another 20 oz of sugar water. A medium Coke has 12-15 sugar cubes worth of sugar. The US is pretty much the only place where free refills are common.

  • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    How does removing drink fountains make anything more consistent? I’d be shocked if they got rid of them in the back and switched to cans or bottles. Seems like a blatant grab to get more money from consumers for something that is by far the cheapest cost thing on the menu.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      How does removing drink fountains make anything more consistent?

      Consistent between company owned stores and franchise stores, so that neither will have self serve drinks. In other words, they’re lowering all stores to equally bad experience.

      • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Guess if you don’t eat in-store anyway it doesn’t matter. Wonder what the ratio is of eat-in vs take-out is.

    • Zorsith
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      4 months ago

      Cans/bottles take up too much space compared to a plastic bag of concentrated stuff hooked up to a fountain.

  • sudo42@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    On top of all this, they’re trying really damn hard to close the dine-in and force customers to order either online or via their kiosks. I’ve been to multiple locations that have removed their dining rooms, removed their drink fountains or have disabled their cash registers.
    All that and their prices are through the roof.

    F ‘em. I’m done with McDonalds. Let ‘em go the way of Red Lobster.

    • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      red lobster didn’t make dumb choices that made them go bankrupt. they were devoured by a private equity firm against their will.

      but yeah, fuck em.

      where I am, we lost all our self-serve drink machines in covid/2020 and they never came back. for everywhere.

      • sudo42@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        red lobster didn’t make dumb choices that made them go bankrupt. they were devoured by a private equity firm against their will.

        Agreed. Both are headed in the same direction in my opinion.

  • apex32@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    A large coke from McDonald’s has 290 calories of sugar.

    Maybe this will unintentionally help a bit with America’s obesity problem.

  • Ulrich_the_Old@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    I have not been in a mcdonalds since I managed to convince my kids that there were better options. This happened about 30ish years ago.

  • Ansis100@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Some westerners may be surprised that here in Eastern Europe this is the standard. I’ve only seen free refills in IKEA.

    Burger King opened and started offering free refills. It was awesome. And then they stopped doing it and started charging for every drink. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯