Should be automatic. Your car doesn’t require you to manually calibrate your fuel injectors. It figures out how much air is flowing into the engine, injects the right amount of fuel, and checks the oxygen content in the exhaust, increasing the fuel until all the oxygen is burned.
There are ways to measure liquid flow or actively pump liquid in discrete volumes, the freestyle machines ought to correctly dispense the exact ratio every time.
Definitely tastes different to me. It’s usually still acceptable, though some places it seems to be flat or not mixed with enough syrup or something.
Soda fountains run at a huge profit margin, and movie theater concessions are a huge cash cow. What a total, flaming asshole that manager must have been to turn down the syrup ratio.
Most expensive part of Popcorn? The cup.
Reason the gallon cup of popcorn exists? To sell the 83oz cup–made more per oz with that one.
There are 2500 cups in a case of small cups. Figure the odds that only one case was open at any given moment–and they have to be counted twice a day.:smack:
Brixing was on my list of things to do–at least my soda didn’t taste like dilute carbolic acid.
I’ve always figured that, if there was going to be any off-flavor from a Freestyle machine, it’d be because you might be getting a few drops from whatever prior flavor had been selected by the last user. But, I’ve used these machines a fair amount, and never really noticed an off flavor.
In general (and, as I think other posters have noted), fountain sodas, in general, have a more variable output than you’d get in a bottled or canned version of that soda, because of either indifferent maintenance or intentional maladjustment. I’d guess that maybe 10% of the time that I get a soda at a fast-food restaurant, it doesn’t taste quite right, as a result.
I did vote “different but both good”, but I do admit that proper maintenance is needed.
My local machine, the one I go to, has run out of certain items and towards the end, they do start to taste a bit wonky.
It was actually out-of-order for 3-4 months before Coke came in and replaced the whole unit. The store told me it had been terrible from the beginning. The new machine seems to work better.
I was also surprised how quick Coke Zero became Coke No Sugar. Mello Yello Zero is still called that. FYI.
Yes, yes, and yes.
One of our assistant managers had actually done the math. The actual cost of a large soda (cup, water, syrup, CO2, ice, lid, straw) at our theater in 1990 was approximately 3 cents. The customer paid $2.50.
I am a huge coke enthusiast. I am in my 40s now, and believe I must have had coke in my bottle as a child.
My family protested our bottler’s during the “new coke” fiasco, dumping 2 liter bottles at the entrances so all the employees would track sugar water throughout the buildings. Then drove hours to a small country store that still had stock of “old coke” and bought them out.
I have shown employees of my favorite restaurants how to calibrate their fountains, when I could tell the mix was off.
So yeah… I’m a pretty heavy consumer (type 2 diabetes here I come!)
In 2007 I visited the Coca cola museum in Atlanta and they had the new freestyle machine. I tried the original coke as well as various fanta flavors. They all tasted horrible. I remember asking the attendant “why it tasted funny” and she said “yeah, we hear that all the time. We think it’s because you get a little mix frim the last person who used it”. But I have tried “flushing” the machines by pouring 4-5ounces and dumping it, then filling my cup with freah and it still tastes like crap.
My belief is that they are so complex to “tune” that they never are done. I have tried probably 30 machines since they started mass distribution over the past 5 years in the markets I have been and I have NEVER gotten a good coke. Now, I gave my history above to ahow this is not “in my head”. It has definately been “off” with every machine I have used INCLUDING THE COKE MUSEUM ITSELF.
This has bothered me so much that I have written coke themselves asking why their product tastes so bad out of a freestyle machine, and never got a response. Now, I just avoid any restaraunt that has them… it’s a pitty too because the only fast food chain that has resisted the freestyle machines is McDonalds. They even did a subtle add a year or so ago using amazon echo’s voice prompts, where the TV spot would say “alexa, where can I get the best coke” which would link the echo to an add saying how mcdonalds always has the best cokes…
I really wish that coke would have replied to me… to find out if there is a way you can check for the last calibration, or instructions on how to calibrate to inform the vendor, or even hust to admit it’s a design flaw and they are working on it. In any of those cases, it would give me hope that there is a solution for funny tasting cokes from those machines… but as there is no hope, I just consumer vote and give my dollars elsewhere… or when I go there, I demand a bottle of water or milk with my meals as I know the profits are lower.
Fountain machines are notoriously filthy with germs and mold, and like theme parks with rollercoasters, are overseen by bored and inattentive teenagers.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/01/08/soda.fountain.bacteria/index.html
Shoulda, coulda, woulda. In a perfect world, yes, these machines would clean themselves. But they don’t. Call me wacky, and I rarely drink soda, but when I do, it’s always from a bottled or canned product.
I don’t drink Coke, but I love the freestyle machines because it’s great to have a hundred choices for what to wash down your fast-food burger with, instead of just six or eight.
There are sodas you can’t even get in the store because the distributor’s decided they don’t sell enough of it in your part of the country. But you can get them in the freestyle machine.
Only problem I ever had with them was getting behind a bunch of little kids who could NOT decide when faced with all the choices and kept cycling back and forth trying to decide.
I saw a video a while ago that showed how to hack into the Freestyle machines; you had to press a certain bubble on the startup screen or something. I suspect Coke has closed that particular loophole, but check the web; there may still be a way to access the calibration and history information.
For me it goes:
can/bottle > Freestyle machine (usually) > fountain
Fountains have a massively wide range, from utterly undrinkable up to tolerable. Freestyle machines are usually quite good, but once or twice I’ve had one that was quite off.
(This is for Coke Zero, not regular Coke).
I don’t mean to disparage my fellow humans, but I swear most can’t taste their food. I have been ranting about these machines since they went in. Tasting every citrus drink and root beer in my coke!!! I thank McD’s for not incorporating them because they make the best fountain coke because of their filtration systems. I boycott stores and BYOD if I am going to one all the time.
I could accept thinking it’s different than bottled/canned Coke, but not a regular fountain. Certainly not worse.
But come to think of it, I’ve never had it from a freestyle without adding a flavor to it…
The first time I saw this was quite a while ago in the Coke museum / exhibit in Atlanta. They had a large room with these machines, where you could get coke products from around the world for free - some quite bizarre.
I just used one at a Wendy’s, and it tasted fine to me, though I don’t remember if I got a Coke or something more interesting from it.
I wrote Coke several times when the Freestyle machines came out about how nasty Coke tastes from them. It’s a binder agent, or sweetener in them, a fruit type flavor to any drink I get out of them. They wrote me back each time telling me that some people can taste the difference but that it was a small percentage and have some coupons for two cases of canned Coke.
Sadly, any McDonalds that is being remodeled is having their fountain drink systems replaced with the Freestyle machines. Wendy’s and now McDonalds, alas, looks like I’ll be drinking more water.
T
I can’t say they’re all set up right - it’s quite likely that a specific machine might be malfunctioning. And you have to be careful about blowing out the lines before you fill your cup. I’ve had Coke with the distinctive flavor of root beer many times.
Given that, I’ve never noticed a systemic difference in freestyle machines vs straight vending or bottles. I do think both regular Pepsi and Coke Zero taste bad in cans. They have some sort of metallic taste that isn’t there in fountains or plastic bottles.
I hate the Freestyle machines. I don’t care about 100 different flavors, because all I want is Diet Coke. And out of a Freestyle machine, my Diet Coke always (ALWAYS) is tainted with either a root beer or Dr. Pepper (black cherry?) flavor. And I can’t stand root beer or Dr. Pepper. You’ve got one spigot. And some flavors, like the aforementioned, just overpower everything else that runs through that spigot.
There is a WaWa and a 7-11 up the road from my house. The reason I choose 7-11 (the *only *reason), is because they have dedicated fountain spigots, and WaWa has Freestyle.