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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

All franchise brands do this once they have sufficient power relative to the franchisees.

Hotel brands force hotel owners to use only certain vendors, taking a kickback from the vendor. Same with restaurants/etc.

I can give a specific example. Roughly 8 years ago, IHG hotels required all of their branded hotels to only sell Coca Cola products. The only reason this would happen is if Coke paid IHG.

It has nothing to do with a person’s hotel stay. It just restricts hotel owners and hotel guests from being able to sell and buy their preferred products, such as Red Bull or Starbucks or Pepsi/Tropicana, for the benefit of Coke and IHG.

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If I'm following OP's question, it was basically that all of this makes sense from a "people are doing what benefits them the most" POV.

But some time went by and it morphed into being overall bad for the McDonald's brand, and that's the puzzling part of it. You would think Micky D's would have power to step in and say "enough is a enough, this is hurting our image, quit fucking around and fix the machines or we find another vendor."

I would agree Micky D's corporate probably does have sway here, so this problem probably just isn't interesting or important enough for them to do anything about it. Maybe ice cream is such a small part of their sales they don't see the point in raising a stink about it. Or maybe the vendor just happened to Game of Thrones their way into a little niche of power that Ronald can't do anything about.

And for the size that they are, I find that pretty interesting and puzzling as well!

> If I'm following OP's question, it was basically that all of this makes sense from a "people are doing what benefits them the most" POV.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that it makes sense, but it's no surprise that things break down when a bunch of people who should be working together each act selfishly. As you'd expect nobody really wins, but it's the little guy that gets screwed the worst. Customers don't get ice cream, employees deal with frustrated customers, franchise owners lose time and money, the shitty vendor gets worked around, and the corporation's image takes a hit for being the ringleader of this circus.

Is there such a thing as a franchisee Union?

A quick search suggests no for McDonalds.

It seems like there should be some trade group responsible for collectively bargaining with the main corporation, as a check against kickbacks.

Possibly apocryphal, but I'd heard the reason most Marriott (and their associated brands) have Pepsi vs. Coke is 'cause Marriott Sr. asked Coca-Cola for a loan some years ago and they refused him.

As the joke goes, "... is Pepsi okay?"

Most "Pepsi places" do have Coke on hand if they have a bar - a rum and Pepsi just isn't right.

I think they’d just make it with Pepsi and call it a “rum and coke” anyway. “Coke” is the generic word for all soda/pop, including Pepsi, in much of the US and world, and I think “rum and coke” also qualifies as a name in its own right.

>“Coke” is the generic word for all soda/pop, including Pepsi, in much of the US and world

I don't think this is even true for most of the USA, much less the world. I've never heard anyone refer to anything except a cola as "coke" although I heard that was the vernacular in some subset of the US... some southern US states?

A Fanta is a Coke.

not that there's anything wrong with that

It isn't that niche. Probably in second behind "soda" pop being in third place. Some areas have other names like "cold drink" that while seeming generic actually only refer to carbonated sweet beverages.

Edit: forgot map

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-prev...

Do they? Pepsi has been making a big push into "rich people places" (air ports, ski resorts, conference venues, that sort of thing) and the usual result is not that I ask for a Diet Coke and one appears, it's that I ask and one fails to appear, and continues to fail to appear at every place I visit on the entire trip/vacation and I simply must go without. Which is fine, it's just a flavor, but this is noticeable and repeatable and annoying and almost exactly the opposite of the situation where a bar has a strategic reserve of the good stuff.

The ones I've seen do - and pretty expensive hotels, too.

If you're running a conference and ask them to get some coke from the bar, they usually have been able to get it (it's also possible they have a secret "guest happiness" stash) - and I've seen them pour it at the bar - Pepsi is from the spigot machine, Coke from a can.

Rules are different if you are at a bar and paying bar prices for bar products, I get that, but it's not what I'm looking for. I could also go out of my way to buy from an unaffiliated store and schlep the stuff, but I'm just not that much of an addict. My point is that I don't think it's reasonable to be dismissive of Pepsi's "accomplishment" here -- they have arranged a substantial enough barrier to corral the behavior of someone with a significant (though not mountain-scaling) preference to the contrary. Significant enough that my fallback is usually water. Like out the toilet.

Is that an actual preference or just spite-driven? Nope, sprite is a Coke product, we don't serve that here! But seriously, it's a real preference, it holds for the generics too. Most generic colas seem to be based on the Pepsi taste. Ugh. RC isn't, so RC Cola is fine, but too rare to ever be helpful. Caring about this is a curse!

Most bars have generic cola on their soda guns.

I'm really surprised kickbacks haven't become illegal. It seems that a lot of really bad behavior can be traced to that especially in the medical field.

It also pretty much just hurts the consumer as well since competition (or lack thereof) is based on who gives the seller the most money.

Because there is plausible deniability that it is not a kickback. You call it a vendor quality assurance fee or something.

Beyond vendor kickbacks, hotel brands do have legitimate reasons to ensure a consistent guest experience regardless of which franchisee owns a particular property. Frequent travelers can be surprisingly picky about little things like soft drinks and they don't like surprises.

Then they would have required offering specific products. It would not require prohibiting other products.

Edit: to respond to tomnipotent:

I don’t see why a distributor is relevant. There are myriad to choose from. Hotel owners/operators can buy from the local Coke/Pepsi/whatever distributor, or Sam’s/Costco/grocery store, or Restaurant Depot/US Foods, etc.

Edit 2: note that IHG is not buying the beverages to sell in the franchised hotel, the IHG franchisees are. IHG does not suffer any costs from making an exclusive deal with Coke, or not making an exclusive deal with Coke.

> It would not require prohibiting other products.

You're forgetting about distribution and margin. Your distributor is unlikely to offer both choices, and keeping the original product means selling less of the new so you're getting less favorable volume deals with both. For the hotel, it makes sense to concentrate that sales volume into a single contract for better discounts.

It's definitely possible, and I've seen it done, but obviously for most businesses that have to answer the "coke or Pepsi" question pick one. Nothing is really preventing having both in the same soda machine, but it's rare enough that there must be a reason, likely exclusivity deals and discounts.

Gas stations will usually have both, for example. Fast food places won't.

Just imagine for a second if your hotel had Pepsi instead of Coca Cola. *shudder*. Not a world I want to live in /s

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