While the majority do now, I have seen fast food restaurants where you still have to ask for a refill at the counter, even at chains that normally do have self-serve at most of their locations including McDonalds.
Is this a space thing, where maybe the restaurant was built before self-serve became a thing in the 1990’s and they just never updated the space to include room for self-serve machines, or is this a money saving thing to prevent people from using the soda machine too much?
More than likely it’s for a lack of space or because the restaurant has been around since before self-serve was in vogue. A cup of soda costs the restaurant literally pennies to serve and they sell it for several dollars, so even if you were to chug three or four cups worth they’d still be making money off of you.
Some years ago the owner of one of my local (non-chain) restaurant used to have one for customer self-service but removed it due to vandalism and waste issues. Apparently, the last straw was when over a couple of weeks there were several incidents of teens fighting in the lobby by throwing full cups of soda around. The teens naturally knew with absolute certainty that it was all just in fun and that the gallons of pop all over the floor couldn’t possibly mean that they were responsible for anything. When one of the shift managers called the police to break up one of the last disturbances, some of the teens and/or their parents filed protests claiming harassment despite video camera footage showing the teen’s actions. Unknown individual(s) returned that night after closing, smashed several windows and set the contents of the trash dumpster on fire.
The lobby soda machine was gone by the weekend. The owner almost removed fountain pop entirely and just went with single use plastic bottles.
Yep, the amount of refills people will have isn’t the issue, it’s the amount they’ll play around with and the costs of cleaning that up, plus damage to the machine from ‘experiments’ (like trying to figure out how to get a cup of flavour syrup) or people straight up trying to break it, and some people will try and just fill their own containers and not pay at all. Especially in places with unaccompanied kids or teens, the place could well have to keep a staff member dedicated to keeping an eye on the machine when it’s busy, completely negating any benefit to the company of having it self-serve.
Putting it on the counter in a very visible spot will cut down on the damage, but that’s likely a spot which could be selling something else, rather than being used to make it slightly faster for people to get free stuff, especially if there’s not all that much space.
I doubt there’s any one reason, but another could be that the owner doesn’t want to run multiple machines for dining room and drive-thru customers.
Chick-fil-a doesn’t have them and honestly I like it better that way. It’s kind of annoying to stand in line to place a food order and then have to stand in another to get your drink. Not to mention the public are usually a bunch of slobs and the drink stations can get fairly disgusting.
And it wouldn’t hurt a lot of people to lighten up on the refills. Exactly how many ounces does one need to go along with their value meal.
Are you certain the places without self-serve machines will give you refills at the counter? Before self-serve machines became popular, most fast-food restaurants did not give free refills, even after it became common for sit-down restaurants to give free refills. Not giving free refills reduces the frequency of two (or more) people sharing a single drink - which is probably much less commonly done in sit down places than fast-food/ movie theaters/amusement parks.
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Where do you live that these constitute the majority? I haven’t seen any fast-food restaurants with self-serve drinks in twenty years.
What? The only fast food I know that doesn’t have free self-serve refills is Sonic. Of course it would be hard for them to do self-serve.
Anecdotal point: west suburbs of Chicago. National / regional chains whose locations in this area mostly, if not entirely, have self-service drink machines:
Where do you live that you don’t see them at all? (Edit: I see that your profile lists you as being located in Europe. In the US, they’re pretty common, though it would not surprise me if it varies by region.)
I don’t know of any chains that do not have any self-serve locations except White Castle- and that could well be because my sample size is 2. Which is kind of my point- sure, most of the McDonald’s that I have actually been to do not have self-serve refills. But I’ve only been to about 5 locations in the past five years ( the one closest to home , 2nd closest to home , and a couple while I was shopping or whatever) and there are 250 in NYC alone. How can I possibly make a statement about “the majority” based on my experience without restricting the statement so much that it’s meaningless?
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In my region, Maccas doesn’t have self serve but at least some BK do. Haven’t been in a Wendy’s for a while and never into Carl’s Jr so don’t know about them. Not in KFC and there aren’t any soda machines in Pizza Hut or Dominos, so bottle sales only.
Here in Ireland, fast food restaurants do not have self-service drinks, nor do they offer free refills. That includes American chains such as McDonalds, Burger King and KFC. You specify your drink as part of your order at the counter (or at the touch-screen ordering station) and it is served along with the meal.
Yes, this has been my experience pretty much everywhere in continental Europe and the UK. No self-service and no free refills, including at American chains. Subway might be an exception, though it’s been ages since I’ve been to one of those. The OP’s observation might be true for the US, or certain parts of it, but I doubt it holds for fast food restaurants generally.
The only place that has self serve with free refills that I’ve found in the UK is IKEA, for some reason. Though they only do one cup size, and it’s pretty small.
It’s not a place that normally attracts groups of teens or unattended kids, which is probably why they do it.
98 percent of any restaurant style in so cal has refills comes in handy when its 112 in july…… but Ive read where visitors from other countries are confused and appalled at the all you can drink fountains
just like a lot of convenience stores and gas mini marts have special reusable cups that you buy that lets you get half price or less refills …… but since the whole super size thing they’ve made fountain sodas smaller