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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

> just don’t use straws

This is what I do. Not sure why straws are so popular. I heard restaurants pushed them because it made people drink more/faster, but most places have free refills these days so that doesn't really make sense anymore.

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It's kinda hard to drink a soft drink with ice cubes without a straw. Get rid of the ice cubes, and you don't need a straw anymore. Or you could use a (paper!) lid similar to that on coffee-to-go cups.

> It's kinda hard to drink a soft drink with ice cubes without a straw.

What's hard about it? I seem to have no trouble.

I can’t recall the last US restaurant that didn’t have free drink refills. Why would they want to push people to consume something they refill for free faster? Is it possible people just like straws?

There was a time when drink refills were not free, you had to pay for another drink. The arugment was, they gave you straws so you would drink more and buy larger or more drinks.

At some point restaurants realized they could offer free refills as a competitive advantage, (or save labor and have customers fill their own drinks) and now everyone does it. At that point, straws were just something that was expected.

Can you prove this at all? I’m seeing White Castle offered free refills in the early 60s and plastic drinking straws didn’t become popular until the same time period.

I worked at McDonald's for several years in the 1980s, they did not do free drink refills (coffee excepted) at that time. As I recall, most other restaurants did the same.

They're really great for drinking while driving without spilling your drink on bumpy roads.

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