Didn’t know if this should go here or in CS, but here goes:
Nearly every restaurant I’ve been to, even ones that don’t offer free refills, offer free refills of iced tea. I wonder why this is.
Of course, you generally get free water too, but iced tea is the only one I notice that you pay for yet still get free refills of.*
*At least I’ve never been to a place where you don’t.
It’s cheap. Even more cheap than soda.
And soda is very cheap.
Tea is a very inexpensive beverage so they aren’t being so magnanimous. Of course I am used to free refills of soda at most sit-down restaurants as fountain soda is
…cheap too.
In Canada, there are a few places that charge more for Iced Tea than regular soft drinks. I’m not overly sure why. Most places don’t anymore (include it with pop now), but over the last few years, I’ve seen it.
I’ve read that, for all of its inherant evils, Carl’s Jr. pioneered the concept of having the drink machine in the lobby and allowing free refills from it.
There’s a local buffet at which they have drink service exclusively by waitstaff; when the glass is half-full, they immediately come by and ask if you would like a refill, and then become scarce by the time the glass is empty.
I recall that in 1995 Atlanta, refill service was nowhere to be had. When asking of a server for a refill, more often than not they interpreted this as a personal request and often said something like “I’ll see if I can get you one”. Does this still go on there?
Then there were the few restaurants that met the customer one-quarter of the way and offered one free refill. Thankfully, these dark ages seem to have passed.
The McDonald’s by me allows free refills from the lobby drink machine.
Right. We’ve Carl’s Jr. to thank for that, apparently.
Free refills on coffee are still quite common.
Coffee and tea are dirt cheap for restaurants. From what I remember of my high school McDonald’s days, the first cup sold paid the cost for the whole brew. Therefore, giving out free refills was an easy, cheap way to make customers happy.
I regularly patronize a restaurant that offers free refills of everything, including iced tea and lemonade.
But charges for refills of Arnold Palmers. (A mixture of iced tea and lemonade.)
Go figure–is it because of the wages involved because someone has to mix it?
AFAIK, the MCdonalds recently changed the fountains to be lobby accessible.
On campus, we had a Krystal, that had free refills (With lobby accesible fountains)
Recently, they went back to what the rest of the cafe does, with Half price for Refills.
I don’t see where they get off on this.
I guess Sudexho has college students by the balls.
Sometimes iced tea is the only drink you don’t get free refills on (well, along with juice and alcoholic stuff). Can anyone explain why a restaurant would do that?
I’ve never been to a restaurant that didn’t have free refills on hot tea, and almost all of them offer free refills on coffee. Around here, at least half of the restaurants have free refills on soda pop, too.
I’m thinking of some restaurants that make a big deal about their iced tea, that it’s “fancy” or “gourmet” or fruit juice-sweetened, not your typical Lipton stuff. Those places might not offer the free iced tea refills that they give for soda, and the iced tea may cost more than soda in the first place.
Wow. I can’t think of any restaurant that doesn’t give free refills on soft drinks (inluding tea, coffee, lemonade). Granted, I don’t go to a lot of fast food restaurants, and guess ones without lobby dispensers would have the biggest problem with it. And now that I think of it, I usually avoid restaurants entirely that don’t have beer, meaning I only drink beer (which doesn’t have free refills, regretably), so, maybe I’m just out of touch with the common, non-beer-drinking people. 
Which restaurants don’t give refills?
The overwhelming majority of places in my area won’t give you refills on anything, save perhaps coffee. I usually associate refills with fast food places (there are fewer chain fast food places around than in the country at large to my understanding) and coffee refills at diners. My friends and I frequently go for one beverage and refills on water.
I asked my mom, who owned a restaurant in the wee small years of the 70s. With coffee, if you don’t use a pot relatively quickly it will just sit there slowly becoming tar. So you give it to customers rather than pouring it down the drain and making a new pot when someone complains. Same goes for tea. Although iced tea won’t get undrinkable within a couple hours like coffee, it will go sour pretty quickly in a hot, humid, southern-restaurant kitchen. Better to give it away than throw it out. Cheap, easy to make, and keeps customers happy.
There is a local non-chain Pizza place. They serve unique and tasty pizza. Unfortunately, they have moderately pricey & small soft drinks- and no free refills. I like lots of soda to wash my pizza down, so I no longer eat there. I wonder if they know how much business they are losing because of this? I have called a couple of times to ask if they have "changed their re-fill policy’ but they don’t seem to get the hint… 
Plus, tea has a short shelf life, especially when kept in that unrefridgerated (sp?) cannister/dispenser you typically see.
They throw out what they don’t use at the end of the day.