Then you set the extras next to/on top of the napkin dispenser where everyone acts like they have napkin-polio or something and refuses to touch them. People are weird.
And no doubt if management gathered up the loose napkins and put them back in the dispenser, someone would call the health department.
If anything I have seen MORE of these items in the lobby as self-service increases. McDonalds near me has a lot of napkins and stuff and you get your own cups for your drinks. Arby’s has increased the number of sauce dispensers. Wendy’s has all the different spoons, forks, sauces, napkins. Five Guys as always has several bottles of vinegar, ketchup, salt, pepper, sugar. I know for awhile McDonalds has put a limit on and charged extra for nugget sauce in some places but I don’t really get those. When I pick up pizza, they always offer plates and napkins even though I’m taking it home to eat. if anything, most places push their sauces on you and look at you like you have 2 heads if you don’t want extra sauces for things that already come with sauce.
When I did the obligatory fast food job as a kid, way back in the Dark Ages, we didn’t hand out ketchup packages.
If you wanted ketchup, you came up to counter and asked for it. We’d squirt some into a paper cup. “Thank you, come again.”
Mustard and relish were in plastic packages under the counter and you had to ask for those, too.
Only many years later were the condiments out in the open for customers to take.
The little packets of ketchup cost (wholesale) about 1.5 cents each. Other packets can be had for a little more (you can buy mayo packets from Amazon for $9.53 for 200, or 4.76 cents apiece) but I suspect that the bulk buyers get a better deal than you can.
A case of 6,000 brown, recycled paper napkins ends up at about 1.8 cents per napkin, but as above, I’m sure the big chains pay far less.
Bigger dipping cups of course cost more, which is why they only give you one or two and don’t leave them sitting out for people to take a dozen of them.
Then there’s Taco Bell, which throws a dozen sauce packets in the bag every time I buy a couple of tacos.
It’s gotta be some type of fallacy to argue about how cheap an individual item is while neglecting to take into account that you have to multiply that cost by the amount of items that are being talked about.
For example, you found napkins for 1.8 cents. Let’s say a big chain, like Hardees/ Carls Jr, pays .5 cents. If it’s fair to say that 100 napkins are wasted each day because people take far more than they need, that’s 50¢/day. Multiply that by 365 days, $182.50 and times their 2000 stores and you have $365,000, literally thrown in the garbage.
When you look at it like that, it seems like putting those types of things behind the counter and handing each customer a few of them is a good way to cut costs.
Even if napkins are .1 cents and only 10 are wasted each day, you’re still looking at over $30k/year.
And you can add in the condiments and anything else the customer can grab for themselves.
I work in a cafe and you would not believe how some folks behave. So we have sugar and lemon packets out, and creamers, folks will try to take handfuls, not to use then but later at home. We have a napkin dispenser that you can pull out one at a time, it is up near the register. This has cut way down on napkin use, folks used to take handfuls again, and either take them home or waste most of them. Same for butter PC containers, salt and pepper, anything like that. Folks will alway be able to get as many as they truly need from us, but it is expensive if you are not careful.
What is a PC container?
There’s a Burger King in Washington DC that charge for ‘extra’ dipping sauce for chicken nuggets and will not give you free ketchup packets unless you make them put it in the bag. They don’t charge extra for it, as of now. It’s quite annoying to find this out when you get back to your hotel with the food.
I’ve heard of charging for ketchup packs in the UK but never run across it myself.
Our local Bob Evans has fluctuated over the last year or two with “extras”… For a while they would bring a “basket” of rolls/biscuits to the table for everyone. And usually bring another if requested. Now that’s been stopped and each individual gets 1 or 2 rolls/ biscuits with their order. Of late there are seldom any individual jelly packets or honey bottles on the table. When asked we were told customers were emptying entire jelly pack containers into (purses? or pockets.) So they took them off the tables until requested. So the few ruined it for the many. That said, I’m usually shocked by the handfuls of napkins I get in sacks from several places.
PC stands for portion control. They are those little individual packets of restaurant condiments, salt, sugar, butter, jelly, honey, peanutbutter, sugar, salt, pepper, and so on.
In my experience , the condiments in the lobby are not individual serving size packages. They’re pumps ( for ketchup; mayo, etc ) or bottles ( malt vinegar sauce ) with little paper cups or in trays (relish). Why does this matter- because this
only works with individual, shelf stable packages. You might be able to store a plastic cup of red pepper flakes with a lid in your desk- but storing this in your desk full of ketchup won’t work.
The main problem is people “stealing” . I put it in quotes because it’s not technically stealing since the restaurant has in effect given you permission. But they didn’t intend for you to take 6 plates and sets of cutlery because you bought one chicken dinner. Or 20 ketchup packets for one burger. Some people will take enough condiment packages so that they never have to buy any condiments- I’m not talking about keeping an extra package or two in your desk. Or my own personal favorite, and why lots of places don’t just put lemon and sugar out- ask for a cup of water - with cold water, make your own lemonade. With hot water add your own teabag that you brought from home. The only way to combat these problems ( and how big a problem they are varies by location) is to control distribution.
In Aus most of the ethnic-Australian 
fast food places charge for ketchup. And they do make a profit on it. Was different 30 years ago. Dunno about Mc. Most people here wouldn’t even know that.they have ketchup.
I tried that stuff for the first time recently. Quite spicy for Taco Bell!
Not that it’s particularly significant, but I can’t help mentioning that last week I bought a burrito from a regional chain called Fuzzy’s Tacos, and when I got home I found NINETEEN sauce packets of different heat levels in my bag. NINETEEN.
I stopped going to a certain chicken restaurant named for a New England town (which I’m not naming, so as to deny them the opportunity to push ads at me) when they took away napkins, forcing one to ask for them.
That’s a chicken restaurant. Chicken. That you eat with your hands. With no napkins readily available. Buh bye.
That said, free refills seem to be the norm now, which it wasn’t back in the day. Not much of a ketchup guy, so I never noticed stinginess there. But the napkin thing is worrying and I hope it doesn’t catch on.
McNuggets used to be a pretty standard part of my McDonald’s order, but I don’t get them all that much anymore because I’m just not all that eager to go through the whole routine of begging for sufficient sauce packets. I go there to enjoy some junk food, not negotiate a goddamn treaty.
You have to balance that against slowing down the line or hiring more employees or dealing with the irate customer who always eats 7 ketchup packets with his fries.
Particularly, when you do the switchover, you’re potentially going to get a lot of annoyed people in the drive-through who used to get ketchup (or whatever) automatically, and get home to find they didn’t get it.
Or you have to start asking every person, which slows you down.
I’m not saying that fast food places shouldn’t do this, but there are costs to it as well.
The refills are free, but that’s because you’re paying for first drink. It would be a like a restaurant telling you that you can have as many napkins as you need, but the first one is $3.00.
You’re paying $2.00 for a big soda that cost the store 25¢ in syrup (and a little in water/gas). When you go back for refills, you’re (likely) reusing the straw, lid, cup and at least some of the ice. Even if you get two more refills, they’re still coming out way ahead.
On top of all that, in many cases, they don’t even own the equipment. Pepsi/Coke leases it to them.
Taco Bell, the place that’ll give you 20 sauce packets for 2 tacos always asks if you want any sauce.
But when it comes to drive thougs, the condiments will always be ‘behind the counter’, there’s no where else to keep them. And they can’t just toss a few of everything into every bag.
I often think these kinds of decisions are short-sighted and made by accountants who just see a number on a balance sheet. As a customer, I’m bothered by the hassle of having to get napkins from behind the counter instead of just having them readily available at the table. So maybe the store saves 5 cents because I didn’t take extra napkins, but the hassle is one drip of aggravation that may lead to me not going to the store again. Another example is credit card minimum charges. While I can understand the rational, I don’t want to deal with the hassle of meeting that minimum if my order doesn’t meet it.
It’s not that a single thing like lack of napkins will cause me to give up a store, but it’s more that a place like that will move lower on my likability scale and I’ll be less likely to go there. Then a year later I’ll realize I never go to “Stingy’s Subshop” anymore because it just fell out of the lunch rotation.