Okay, a definition question thrown in here, just so everybody is talking about the same thing:
Does Soda refer specifically to a special kind of water /somtimes/ always, or is Soda always/mostly the broad category of non-alcoholic drinks e.g. mineral (non-tap) water, lemonade, cola?
Because I’m not sure if everybody here is referring to water or soft drinks…
In the U.S., “soda” (aka “pop” or “soda pop,” depending on regional variations) almost always refers to any carbonated soft drink (e.g. Coke, 7-Up, black cherry soda).
Carbonated water is called “soda water” or “club soda” or “sparkling water.”
In China, there were no free refills at McDonalds and I even asked once. No big deal, it just is the way it is.
Yes, before dessert, but it is understood that you drink it during dessert - and often after, with the refills. This does not only happen with fancy dinners, unless one were to consider anything above fast food fancy. It is even standard for st down catered lunches and dinners at conferences.
Mine also - though there was always free refills on ice tea, even before this time. It has always been treated more like coffee than soda.
Does anyone have a link to a McDonalds free refill policy? I’ve never thought they’ve had one. At least some fast food places I’ve been had signs explicitly prohibiting free refills, and the fact that they sell different soda sizes would seem to argue against them. (Except for takeout.) The small increment in price for giant cups is almost a free refill, and you’d expect a place giving refills to have only smaller cups to cut down on waste. Buffets, like Sweet Tomatoes with free refills, have fairly small soda glasses.
Slightly different opinion:
Free refils everywhere (in the US) started happening when new fast food outlets and old ones were built with the soda fountain available for the customers to operate.
In the past, you had to use staff time, but somewhere someone realized it would be more efficient use of resources to let customers do this themselves. Funny, the price of soda did not go down, but the reluctance to allow refills did.
Sit down restaurants followed to compete.
Any fast food place without fountains out front has not been remodeled in probably at least 15-20 years. Locally, once such McDonalds underwent such a remodel in the past year.
I know of one in San Jose, on Winchester just north of Hamilton, that seems due for a remodel soon on this account alone. Given the other McDonalds in the Bay Area, this one is getting close to “The McDonalds that time forgot” territory.
I often will go to Subway or elsewhere, including local take out/eat in joints, and order the smallest soda with my meal, drink enough Diet Coke to caffeine me into next week, and refill it on the way out. No one has ever objected in the least.
Yeah, I don’t get that. Why would anyone order anything other than the smallest cup with free refills?
Drive through doesn’t have free refills, so different sizes are need there. And a larger cup lets you take more pop with you.
Free refills are pretty much standard around here. Even places without self serve will refill if you ask, and at sit down places, they usually just bring full glasses without even asking.
Yup. 
The fun and joy of learning about different cultures.
I didn’t realize mentioning McDonald’s would start off an interesting conversation like this lol.
Often I order the smallest cup and get my one refill (as I mentioned, I’ve seen signs in various McDonald’s saying just 1 refill) and the fountains aren’t where someone can just walk up to them and pour one. That was a slight novelty to me when we went to Florida For whatever reason Subway’s tend to have you fill your own drink and you can fill what you want (though again, I have seen signs limiting to one or saying it’s 75 cents for a refill… of course unless they are watching you, you could get away with not paying).
Most of the time when I eat out it’s family style restaurants, and when I worked in one we served free refills. I can’t comment on slightly higher end ones as I rarely eat at them and when I do I’m not usually the one paying the bill. I’m also usually drinking alcohol, not pop. Pub style dining varies IME (depends on the pub).
It varies.
What an interesting conversation.
In Australia at least, “soda” (soft drinks) are considered children’s drinks and are pretty much only sold in cans or bottles. The US thing of having a soda fountain in the public area of the restaurant, and you go up and fill your own cup, is only found in fast food chain restaurants. So, there aside, no refills, free or not.
Huh. This makes sense, but I recall the order the other way - I saw others getting free soda refills (I’m an iced tea person) in sit-down restaurants before I ever saw a self-serve fountain anywhere besides a convenience store. Maybe I just didn’t eat at fast food that much when this transformation was happening…
And Voyager - the only time it’s occurred to me to order coffee at a place like Chili’s is if I’m freezing cold. Just doesn’t seem right, even with dessert! I really never looked around at other tables but I’ve never eaten with anyone else who did so either. Hmmm. Maybe it’s regional. Or maybe it’s just me. 
I have arthritis, and some days it’s quite painful for me to get out of my chair. On those days, I have to limit myself to ONE stop while going out. That is, I can’t go shopping AND out to eat both. I can’t get in and out of the car that many times. So getting a large or extra large cup means that I will only have to fill that cup once. Maybe I will fill it again when I leave (and usually, I fill it with water). The price difference is not worth worrying about, to me. I haven’t been out to fast food lately, but the difference is what? Half a dollar? For that half dollar, I don’t have to grab my stick and get out of the chair.
It used to be, in this area of the country, that coffee was the default drink. Visitors were offered coffee when they stepped into the house. People drank coffee from the time they got up until just before they went to bed. Decaf was unheard of. Then, the default slowly switched to iced tea (the “d” is silent, by the way), and it came already sweetened and it had a lemon slice in it and you had to order “unsweet” and “no lemon” if you didn’t want sugar and lemon in your tea. This was at locally owned restaurants, you understand, at Denny’s and similar chains you usually got a lemon slice, but you had to sweeten your own tea. My father tells me that back in damyankee country (the Northeast US), coffee used to be served with cream and sugar already in it, unless it was specifically ordered black and/or without sugar. My dad is 77 years old, and moved to Texas over 50 years ago, so that will help put it in perspective.
I do remember being charged for each new glass of soda when in a restaurant. I also remember Denny’s advertising its bottomless cup of coffee, meaning that unlike other restaurants, it didn’t charge per cup, the diner simply ordered coffee and the server would refill it endlessly. I can remember, too, people who would abuse this policy. They and I were in our early 20s, and they’d sit in a Denny’s for hours on end, drinking coffee and ordering absolutely nothing else. I guess that they were few enough that Denny’s was able to make a profit anyway.
I can’t say I ever saw any free refills growing up in Montreal. That was always one of the things that was strange about the States to me.
It’s not silent. It’s people that think it’s silent that have led to such an awful prevelence of “ice tea” being written everywhere you look. ::shudder::
McDonald’s doesn’t have any official policy on worldwide free refills (I just received this back from them):
Laziness, partially. I get food to go more often than I eat in at fast food restaurants, and obviously a free refill doesn’t apply when you’re not going to stay at the restaurant. Then there’s the fact that most fast food places do the combination thing where you get fries and a drink with your entree, and you can opt to make the combo large or extra-large (which has recently been downgraded to medium and large, I’ve noticed), which increases the size of both the fries and the drink. The way most places do the combos, it’s possible to ask for a small drink and a large fry, but again, I usually get it to go, so I have no incentive to do that. Then on the few times I eat in, I don’t really think about it and just order a large combo.
Plus, being a portly decadent American, I don’t like to have to get up two or three times during a meal I’m trying to enjoy. 
Who calculates profit like this? It’s marginal profit (i.e., revenue less cost) divided by marginal cost.
I can concur with this experience.
Free refills were a marketing tool. Give away something that’s very cheap in order to be perceived as offering a better value.