McDonald's is getting rid of self-serve drinks and some locations may charge for refills
McDonald's is getting rid of self-serve drinks and some locations may charge for refills
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.
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.
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.
Cans/bottles take up too much space compared to a plastic bag of concentrated stuff hooked up to a fountain.
they can water your drink down with ice if they control the dispenser.
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.
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.
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.
A large coke from McDonald's has 290 calories of sugar.
Maybe this will unintentionally help a bit with America's obesity problem.
And 80 grams of sugar. That is 16-20 sugar cubes.
Yea holy shit, the recommended daily sugar intake is around 110 calories / 28g
Hmm. I'd think that that'd make sense if people were just lingering and sipping sodas and they were trying to decongest the restaurant, but the article says that the opposite is true:
Still, the company announced earlier this year that foot traffic to its restaurants had slowed as inflation increased.
EDIT: Hmm. This recent article says that apparently Burger King is running off with their value customers:
As it loses customers to rivals, McDonald's shifts its focus to value
The fast-food giant appears to be losing the battle for customers looking for lower prices to Burger King and Domino’s. McDonald’s wants a national value offer to change that.
By Jonathan Maze on Apr. 30, 2024
McDonald’s appears to be losing some customers to rivals like Burger King and Domino’s as inflation-weary consumers cut back on their dining and focus more on value offers.
That has the Chicago-based fast-food giant working to develop a national value offer that will resonate more with customers than its current batch of local and digital deals.
“It’s a street fight,” CFO Ian Borden told analysts on Tuesday. “Everybody is fighting for fewer consumers. We have to make sure we have that street fighting capability.”
The company is working to develop a national value platform that will be “net neutral” to franchisee profitability.
But executives also said that store profits have returned to pre-pandemic levels, which should give the company the ability to offer that kind of value.
“We’re in a strong position,” CEO Chris Kempczinski said. “Franchisee cash flow is at the second highest levels ever.”
McDonald’s has been signaling a more concerted value focus for months, particularly since February when Kempczinski suggested the brand was losing lower-income customers to grocery stores.
Maybe they're trying to figure out what they can do to cut prices to bring back customers, and they're looking at shaving off perks or services that presently exist to see what they can do to get their prices down.
Still, the company announced earlier this year that foot traffic to its restaurants had slowed as inflation increased.
It's not just foot traffic I'm sure. That's what happens when a business sees a temporary 9% inflation bump as a good time to increase all prices 30%+ across the board. McDonald's is nearly as expensive as Five Guys in my area now. They forgot what market niche they were filling when they got greedy. What used to be a $3 meal off the dollar menu is now $8 for the same items, and the "deals" all suck unless you want those specific 3 options or a discount equivalent to the sales tax.
For my $, Wendy's is winning the value competition. Their value deals are cheap and decent, their reward system is better, their online deals are better. Subjectively, I like the taste better, so that's nice too.
BK and McD offer better deals at volume than for a single person meal, but even then it's not better than Wendy's. Single person it's just not even a contest.
BK has been offering 2 sandwiches for the price of 1 deals since the pandemic, and also printing bargain coupon sheets in the weekly coupon flyers, along with KFC, Taco Bell, and Subway.
BK has been working hard to capture the value fast food market, while McDs has been... installing self serve kiosks?
Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen self-serve soft drinks at a McDs around here.
LOL that's a sure way to increase foot traffic /s
I'm pretty sure they could get their prices down by not being such greedy fucks.
Fun fact: In later editions of the movie, Demolition Man, references to Taco Bell were replaced with KFC Pizza Hut. Thanks @JordanZ@lemmy.world for the correction.
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.
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)_/¯
It used to be the standard in the U.S. too. When I was a kid, it was not self-serve at McDonald's and there were not free refills.
It is the standard damn near everywhere except the US.
It's good to know the U.S. leads the world in something worthwhile.
That's honestly odd. A refill costs nothing as compared to the initial cost of the cup/lid/straw.
Jesus how cheap could they be? Fountain drinks are far and away their highest profit margin item on the menu.
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.
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.
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.
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.