McDonald's to retire self-service soda fountains by 2032 | Hacker News Reader

McDonald's to retire self-service soda fountains by 2032

sj-r.com

37 pointsbookofjoe65 comments

The writing between the lines is that McDonald's is preparing to do away with human order-takers altogether, replacing that role with a food runner that can occasionally take an order but mostly just takes food to people's seats. The ordering will move to digital kiosks and online.

And when you do all of that, having the fountain machine on the customer side makes almost no sense.

A lot of McDonalds around me are already like that. There is no ability to place an order at the counter. They still have a register and menu but all in-store ordering is via the kiosk.

The one I visit the most already removed the self-service fountain drink station and you need to ask them for refills.

This is mostly due to understaffed (cough underpaid staff at) locations needing to help in the kitchen so often that having a cashier only increases frustration for customers that are waiting in line and don’t see it moving. Easier to place a sign saying “order at kiosk” to make sure the kitchen has enough staff to keep up.

I haven't experienced it at a McDonald's, but twice in the last 2 years I've attempted to walk into big chain fast food restaurants during normal business hours only to find the doors locked, even though I can see workers inside and the drive-through window is open. I suspected this is because they're understaffed and/or swamped with orders and can't be bothered to also open the dining area.

One such time was at a Taco Bell, and I was trying to go inside because I saw that the drive-through line was massive. There was a hastily-drawn note on the door that said "go to drive-through for online pickup orders," which I thought would be pretty frustrating if you had ordered ahead! (Not that I blame any of the workers, of course.)

In Chicago this happens regularly for the reason you've stated, and also because there are so many fights inside McDonald's restaurants in Chicago.

The solution I use is to order on the app and then they have to give you your food, either by bringing it out or by pushing it through the drive-thru window.

A Taco Bell and a McDonald's in my vicinity have seemed to have closed their dining rooms permanently.

I think another reason for this is that it is also the easiest solution for handling the homelessness crisis. Requiring all orders go through the drive through by someone in a car is one way to avoid dealing with unhoused people looking for shelter/restrooms/water for a few hours and not spending money that they don't have.

Their kiosks area pain and confusing to use, and I consider myself a savvy UI type person.

They're only there for people that don't want to install the app, just sit down at a table and order it right to your seat.

I'm in Singapore now and all the main fast food brands do this.

There's one or two normal "registers" and like 3-5 touch screens.

I'm not sure how that change would result in self-service soda fountains making any less sense. Surely it would still be cheaper to let the dine-in customer fill their own cup regardless of whether humans take orders. Unless of course McDonald's got rid of dine-in altogether.

The old process was: Order at counter --> Stand there until your order was ready --> Fill your own drink --> Sit down and eat (or leave with your take out bag)

The new process is: Order via kiosk/app --> Sit down and relax --> Food delivered to your table --> Now stand up again and get your own drink

The last step is kind of awkward and inefficient. So, it kind of makes sense for them to bring your drink with everything else.

The faster you can move customers out of the restaurant the more money you make during the busy hours, so efficiency matters.

Source: I worked with McDonalds 20 years ago as a vendor. They're pretty obsessed with efficiency. They even hire "actors" to simulate customers to test out new technologies, food items, and procedures in their test kitchens so that they can objectively measure the impact of various tweaks.

Funny how self serve soda machines have really taken off in the last 5 years or so in most of the newer franchise operations.

I can't help but think they (McDs) are struggling to hire people to keep those stations orderly and frankly the last few times I went into a mcds those stations are all disgusting and disordered.

I would add that all the mcds I've been in recently are actively hostile to the dine in experience now. Cold, dirty, and the furniture is awkward.

I'm glad it's unappealing because it's a deathtrap for health, but growing up it was a friendly place for kids with the clown and cartoons, even some animatronics and interactive electronics here in los angeles, later the playplaces, now in their struggle to fight starbucks of all things they look like tombs, mausoleums of their fun past. Good riddance I guess? Can't deny they're consistent and everywhere and addictive.

The dirtiness of fast-food restaurants is something that shocks me every time I go to the US. Things like sticky, rubbish-strewn floors even behind the counter that, as a food-preparation area, especially ought to be kept clean. The staff themselves are often slovenly and morbidly obese.

McDonalds on other continents are noticeably cleaner, and considering that McDonalds has standardized the entire process and technology of operating their restaurants, what is the reason for this discrepancy? Surely it cannot be blamed on the recent staff shortages, as I have noticed this phenomenon since the late 1990s.

I think the real divergence in quality between McDonald US and Europe date from Hennequin's tenure. He pushed for higher prices, and this helped tremendously in the long term.

So when a franchise is only a couple of restaurants and the owner is present, you generally end up with a well run and clean place. Over time, franchises turned into a huge investment opportunity and you have folks that have hundreds of places, so there's no owners there and the entire experience suffers.

Bar and restaurant tables are generally sticky and disgusting because of a lack of hygienic cleaning. Using the same dirty, wet cloth with only water is not the same as using soap.

It's kind of funny. It varies. There are two McDonalds within 3 miles of my home. One is in a lower middle class area and it's an absolute dump. Dirty, food is poorly prepared, employees are stressed and kind of disheveled.

The other one is in an upper middle class suburb. Very clean with friendly employees and the food is perfect.... well, "perfect" by McDonalds standards.

I try not to eat at McDonalds more than maybe 5-6 times a year. So I'm not an expert. But I have noticed that McDonalds in "nice" areas tend to be "nice."

Another nail in the coffin of McDonalds. Their price increases put their food on par with other better quality burger joints. McDonald's was great because it was cheap. Now at this price point I'll just go to somewhere else.

This is just an attempt to reduce the free refill brigade. Penny pinching, but pinching nonetheless. You will be less inclined to go up and get a refill because you'll have to wait in line.

They also purposefully overfill their beverage cups with ice so you get less soda. I'll just tell them no ice out of spite.

The final straw (pun intended) was when they reduced the sizes of their fries. A medium fry is now a small. Not even worth it anymore.

Sorry for the passion here, but I used to love McDs on the road. I'll seek my road junk food elsewhere.

I used to work for McDonald's Corp., I was told by some one in operations that the rationale for self-service drink station was that customers actually used more ice than the actual soft drink and was as a result more profitable over time/scale.

Which is of course why you can fill a cup in 1 second, but takes several seconds to fill with a drink. Also the ice comes out forcefully enough that you have to do the ice first if you don't want to make a mess.

Nice theory but I don't think that's true. They mix the syrup and soda water at or right before the nozzle. The ice just gets dumped from a gravity feed hopper.

If the soda water was dispensed faster it would bubble over even more so then now.

And the same exact dispensers are used behind the counter. Why would you hamstring your employees the same way.

Speed of filling isn't related to liquid velocity, but velocity x stream size. Bubbling isn't related to change in volume, but liquid velocity (and turbulence). You could double the width of the stream and fill it twice as fast with no more bubbles.

You can bet that if ice cubes cost 4x the soda that they would make difference decisions on the drink machine.

Isn't the bubbling/foaming due to the CO2 coming out of soda water?

Yes, but the rate is related to turbulence which generally scales with velocity. Try to fill a drink glass with high pressure soda coming through a straw would just make a fountain of foam. Poor it slowly and there will be minimal foam. To speed filling without increasing velocity widen the stream.

Somewhat related, some measure the quality of a tea kettle by the height you can pour a laminar flow into a tea cup.

I don’t think that’s correct. Sure, filling up a cup with ice can increase the margins on a drink but a hefty amount, but the margins on soda are already excellent, and most customers expect a staff made drink to be fairly full of ice to begin with. I would suspect the real reason is that filling a drink is sort of slow and you can serve more customers if they fill their own drink.

This article made me grieve the loss of my precious chicken selects. Damn those were good. And my angus third-pounder with red onions.

I noticed it mentioned that in the article. Did those get discontinued in the US?

They're definitely still a thing in the UK, along with the McPlant (which I'm not sure was ever successful stateside). It's interesting how the menu differs geographically.

The actually edible chicken option was taken off the menu in my area a long time ago, I'd guess around 2015.

I never liked the McPlant burger in the US. Much worse than Beyond Meat or Impossible Burger.

https://www.tiktok.com/@chefmikeharacz/video/726618587648763... has a guy talking about how McDonalds choose the latest chicken sandwich. It doesn't bode well that they just ignore data in their decisions.

The new chicken sandwiches taste terrible. I'd take the simple mcchicken over them any day.

https://archive.ph/lcbJb

McDonald's have become nasty, locally. anti diners. managers have an anti-customer mindset, like we're a big bother to impose ourselves on them. us, the source of the revenue which flows into their paychecks. McDs wasnt like this even 10 years ago. they broke

They broke what?

I wonder what the primary reasoning is. They mention health concerns, theft, and delivery orders but all three seem like fairly weak reasons to justify the increase in labor and the cost of a new cup each time.

Also, I don't think I've been in a McDonald's since they've started offering self serve soda. For some reason, when I stopped being interested in the playroom, I completely stopped going inside, even though I will with other fast food. Not really sure why.

Cost and Profit. A corporation very rarely, if ever does anything for health reasons.

That's a given, though health concerns can drive down profits. I'm wondering specifically, given the increased cost per refill.

Self service (unlimited) refill seems to be mostly a US-only thing btw. I've never seen one in anywhere else. If you want more drinks you have to pay more, which also presumably covers the cost of the extra paper cup.

Some fast-food chains in the UK, like Burger King and Five Guys, have self-service soda machines (Coke Freestyle). They don't say "free refills" explicitly, but there is nothing to stop you...

Also, there's the cafes at IKEA, which have free refills in all countries, AFAIK?

McDonalds has one of the most extensive food safety programs in the restaurant industry and a sterling track record. McDonalds is perhaps the meal least likely to give you food poisoning of anything in America

Don't forget liability. Why risk customers damaging or contaminating something that might hurt other customers?

No need to worry about waste from refills when you don't staff the counter or give any visual indication that refill requests are welcome. That's the current case at any McDonald's remodeled in the last decade.

They automated drink filling behind the counter so they don't need your free labor any longer.

As I mentioned, I haven't been in a McDonald's in years, don't they still need someone to initiate the refill and hand you the drink?

One of the key considerations is how quickly you can move customers in and out.

Ever work at a busy diner? One of the little tricks of the trade is to make sure the coffee's not too hot. You want the customers to suck it down immediately, not sit around an extra 3 minutes waiting for it to cool.

It's probably more efficient and streamlined to give customers a drink rather than having them mill about at the fountain, and it's definitely more efficient to clear out loiterers who are hanging around and sipping free do-it-yourself refills.

I don't think I've ever seen a self-service soda fountain in a McDonalds in the UK, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter. That's a Burger King thing!

The US has had self-service, unlimited free refills at most fast-food establishments since at least 1980. The cost is in the cup, lid, and straw, not the syrup.

Most likely, this is yet another move to extract more money or to deter loitering.

Disclaimer: I haven't set foot in a McDonald's in 5 years.

A Chick-fil-a near me recently remodeled and moved to a dine-in model where you don’t order at a counter- you sit down and someone comes to take your order on a tablet. I suspect we’re 5-10 years out from McD and others trying to incentivize tipping for order takers, and eliminating dine-in from some locations entirely. McD fries just aren’t the same when delivered!

Those tablets also help speed up the drive-thru line (and huge lines in malls) by taking orders and payment from anywhere in the line.

They run (or did, last I heard at least) kubenetes at the edge from an article I saw years ago.

> "McD fries just aren’t the same when delivered!"

Pro tip: reheat them in an air fryer.

Tangential: I went through a McDonald's drive thru yesterday and there was a robotic machine filling up our drink orders.

I'm not sure how much human intervention it required. A human had to place the lids on the filled cups. I didn't see if it had a hopper to drop empty cups into the filling area, or if humans had to do that part.

my local one's robot loads it's own hopper

I don’t remember when was the last time I had to serve myself a drink at McDonald’s. Always got it from the counter. Could be my specific situation of being in Canada and rarely going to McDonalds that almost always happen to be either smaller urban locations or part of a larger highway service centre.

I have so many crazy stories of McD visits the last few years. they'd sound insane if someone told me it happened to them. deeply weird and broken culture in their mgmt staff now, and a segment of their diner base too

I dont see it at other ffood places

It's to be replaced with the new never clean Taylor unit, that only has to go down for 4 hours every 2 weeks. It however breaks often requiring service calls, so no soda for anyone in the area.

Doing our part for a healthier world! -Ronald

Didn't Dean Kamen invent those to get funding to make water purifiers.

You're talking about the "coke freestyle" machines. Yes that story is true for those machines, but McDonalds doesn't use them.

(Burger king does)

McDonalds did have them for a few years. Allegedly they went back to the tried and true because the maintenance costs were too high.

Essentially yes. Distribution, instead of funding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_Freestyle

"The Freestyle's beverage dispensing technology was designed by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway, in return for Coca-Cola distributing his Slingshot water purification system."

If only they can fix their milkshake dispensing machines.

It works fabulously. If a McDonalds has a "broken" milkshake machine it most likely means the workers did not maintain it in a hygienic manner. Stop eating food from that store. Requiring these machines in the stores is a hidden gift from McDonalds corporate to your intestinal tract.

That's not necessarily the case

https://youtu.be/2uCpY3tFTIA

You have to exercise your immune system ;).

The enshitification of all things marches on to save a few pennies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com