If it’s not on the board you’ll probably get the hot water straight from the tap and a bag a good 18 months years past it’s useful life. 
Granted, you may have 20 coffee drinkers for every tea drinker, but a request for tea shouldn’t begin to raise eyebrows.
Also, tea is just about the easiest beverage to offer, all it takes is a cup, hot water and a tea bag. You don’t have to brew it in advance like most coffee, you don’t need dedicated machinery, you don’t need to keep it cold. You can have 100 servings stored for weeks, costing you $3 and taking up 2" of your shelf space. It’s hard to imagine an item that has as little up front effort and as high a margin as hot tea.
I’m not sure what these Ma & Pop fast food stands are? Are you talking small take out restaurants?
McDonald’s has hot tea.
But a taco place? No way, I’m thinking of the little taco joint in my neighborhood, and no way would I expect hot tea. The only tea going on is the Snapple in the beat-up cooler by the register. However, the pancakes thing muddles this up again – I also can’t imagine something I would describe as a “taco joint” selling pancakes. So now I just don’t know what to expect.
Yeah, I wouldn’t order tacos at a pancakes place, nor pancakes at a taco place. Weird.
Regardless, if they have a comercial drip coffee machine, it likely has a tap on the side for dispensing hot water. That and a box of tea bags is all you need to have hot tea.
Good thing she left instead of jumping up on the table and shouting “anarchy!”
Hot tea at a taco joint
A play in three acts featuring audience participation.
I didn’t realize that. I looked at the McCafe menu and I didn’t see it there. I guess it’s just not on the online menu.
I feel like they’ve had it forever, too – I don’t drink coffee, so over my entire career when coworkers would grab coffee at McDonald’s for an early morning meeting, I’ve always been able to get a hot tea. I like how I’m now measuring my life in terms of resentment – because I’m sure I would have resented it more if I had to go without a beverage.
Count me with those who think it bizarre that someone would expect hot tea to be available at a USA (or Mexican, for that matter) taco joint.
I worked at McDonalds in the 80s and they had tea then.
Personally, I think it’s more bizarre that you can get pancakes at a taco place.
Yes, as unlikely as I think hot tea would be, pancakes are even more crazy. The likeliness of tea > pancakes.
I don’t know, but I kind of want tacos and pancakes now.
Maybe some kind of Mexican McGriddle - breakfast taco in a pancake.
Here in Texas, where many tacos are sold, ice tea will generally be on the menu. It’s made with giant tea bags. No, I wouldn’t expect hot tea.
The bitch in the OP “walked out” of a taco place because it didn’t serve hot tea. Why didn’t she say “Gosh, I’d really like your food. Wish I could get a cup of tea here”? They would have picked up a box of Lipton teabags to be ready for her next visit. Now, they won’t.
Count me with scabpicker. I don’t think I would ever patronize a Mexican place that served hot tea. Just doesn’t seem like a good idea.
The woman that complained is nuts/entitled/stupid. Pick 'em.