• huf [he/him]
        hexbear
        26
        1 month ago

        mcdonalds has never had free refills here. welcome to eastern europe.

          • huf [he/him]
            hexbear
            16
            1 month ago

            i think kfc and burger king have free refill... just not mcdonalds

              • huf [he/him]
                hexbear
                11
                1 month ago

                what do mcdonalds burgers look like in the west? cos you know here in eastern europe everything has that blueish eastern european color, right? so the burgers look pale and colorless. but i'm assuming they look normal and you know, like food in the west.

                • Alaskaball [comrade/them]
                  hexbear
                  14
                  1 month ago

                  They're all big, yuge, and stuffed full of so much freedom and democracy that every time you take a bite, red-white-blue rays of light shoot out of your mouth as the national anthem plays in your soul while you chew.

                  They're so nutritional and filling that you'll get all your needed nutrients and vitamins your body's starving for, like ketchup and electrolytes, that's what plants crave!

                  Every time you have a REAL PATRIOTS burger you gain more muscle mass and move closer to becoming the modern Adonis you could become, for only a small micro-payment installment plan of 100 payments of 29.99 per burger.

                  BECOME A REAL AMERICAN TODAY!

    • huf [he/him]
      hexbear
      52
      1 month ago

      I can't remember if I cried
      When I read about his widowed bride
      But something touched me deep inside
      The day the refill died

    • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
      hexbear
      9
      1 month ago

      I'd easily bet on balkanization within 25 years. Certainly inevitable before 2075. All it will take is one Katrina level disaster with people not having access to food and water. Texas snowstorm and COVID were very early previews of what it will look like. Replace the looting for toilet paper with real militias hijacking national guard trucks carrying food.

      Realisticaly maybe even under 15 years given 99% chance the current climate trend will continue to worsen.

  • Adkml [he/him]
    hexbear
    56
    1 month ago

    How the fuck are mcdonalds not going out of business.

    Every day I see people complaining it's garbage food that costs more than actual restaurant food and every day they do more and more to jack up prices and lower value.

    But I can't rember the last time I saw a closed McDonald's.

    • FlakesBongler [they/them]
      hexbear
      42
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      They're entrenched

      For every Wendy's or Burger King, there's like four McDonald's

      When it's 3:25am and you want a hot, vaguely food-themed thing to put in your mouth to satisfy the primal need for salt and fat, it's liable to be something from McDonald's

      • anarchoilluminati [comrade/them]
        hexbear
        13
        1 month ago

        Yes. The last time I ate a McDonald's burger was about a year ago around that time of night when a friend and I were drunk and he insisted we go to McDonald's. I objected because I thought it was going to be shit, but I have to admit it was surprisingly all actually pretty damn delicious. Keep in mind though that I was very, very drunk and very hungry. Before that, I hadn't eaten a McDonald's burger meal for at least a decade, likely longer. I think they are kept afloat by people who are either very poor or very drunk.

    • RoabeArt [he/him]
      hexbear
      24
      1 month ago

      Every McDonalds I see constant has a huge line of cars in the drive through, and almost every parking space is filled. Yet at the same time I always encounter people who talk about how they haven't gone to McDonalds in years.

      I don't think I've ever seen a McDonalds permanently close either, unless it was moving to a new location down the street or something. They always manage to stay open even in neighborhoods where everything else shuttered long ago.

    • Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]
      hexbear
      24
      1 month ago

      I think McDonalds owns a bunch of food and agro infrastructure that actually makes them the bulk of their profit, so as long at the brick and mortar stores are barely profitable or break even they can stay open.

        • TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]
          hexbear
          10
          1 month ago

          exactly this, and for good locations the central office will own the land and if necessary just sell it or sit on it while the mcdonald's makes it look valuable

      • D61 [any]
        hexbear
        1
        1 month ago

        Pretty sure a chunk of their income is being a landlord, they own the property the franchisee is running a McDonalds shop on.

    • RedWizard [he/him]
      hexbear
      15
      1 month ago

      Are they still one of the largest real estate companies in America? That was the initial grift with franchising.

    • CommunistBear [he/him]
      hexbear
      8
      1 month ago

      Because the slop IS still cheap and tbh the quality is the same as it ever was. If you use the app you can still get a full meal for like $5-6 if you're aiming for it and avoid the new trendy stuff. Yeah, the dollar menu is gone and everything is more generally more expensive but frequently there's a BOGO deal or a half off on a certain thing

      • Adkml [he/him]
        hexbear
        9
        1 month ago

        "It's actually not that expensive if you also just hand over all your personal info and give them access to all your data" is incredibly draconian and not a reasonable solution

        • CommunistBear [he/him]
          hexbear
          8
          1 month ago

          I mean yeah, it's incredibly dystopian and I hate it. But we're living in a dystopia and I'm broke enough to eat the slop in the first place

  • EstraDoll [she/her]
    hexbear
    41
    1 month ago

    I used to work fast food like 6-7 years ago now and it is shocking just how much it's gotten visibly worse since. If you keep charging $15 for a combo and dropping service even further, people are just not going to go get fast food anymore. People already were balking at our prices back in 2017, now those prices would be a fucking steal if they were that today

    • JohnBrownNote [comrade/them, des/pair]
      hexbear
      12
      1 month ago

      If you keep charging $15 for a combo and dropping service even further, people are just not going to go get fast food anymore

      good lol

    • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]
      hexbear
      6
      1 month ago

      That's kind of how capitalists and their 'businesses' work. If something becomes not profitable enough, one of the available strategies is to reduce expenses on that thing. If there is no way to draw profit from it any further, they can just close the relevant filial, or stop the production of the relevant commodity, or stop the relevant service.

      This is actually a literal textbook example of what a capitalist would do, covered in introductory economics courses.

    • supafuzz [comrade/them]
      hexbear
      55
      1 month ago

      fountain soda barely costs anything, this isn't about saving money so much as it's about extracting more out of the customer

    • EstraDoll [she/her]
      hexbear
      31
      1 month ago

      About $7 over the course of an entire day of operation. That honestly might be too high, come to think of it

    • Yuritopiaposadism [none/use name]
      hexagon
      hexbear
      30
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_refill#:~:text=Due%20to%20the%20extremely%20low,refills%20as%20a%20sales%20gimmick.

      Due to the extremely low cost of fountain soft drinks (especially the beverage itself, not including the cost of the cup, lid and straw), often offering a profit margin of 80-82%, establishments tend to offer free refills as a sales gimmick.

    • RoabeArt [he/him]
      hexbear
      20
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      When I worked at Pizza Hut (early 2000s), for shits and giggles I calculated the actual cost of a glass of Pepsi. Accounting for the syrup bag, the CO2 cylinder and water (the latter being the cheapest since it was filtered tap from the city main) it was like $0.14 a glass.

    • ryepunk [he/him]
      hexbear
      31
      1 month ago

      A second plane has hit the Golden arches of freedom

  • Parsani [love/loves, comrade/them]
    hexbear
    15
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    If either Biden or Trump run on getting them to reinstate the free refills, their poll numbers would go up by like 5pts. This is an attack on the American way of life.

  • sir_this_is_a_wendys [he/him]
    hexbear
    15
    1 month ago

    What? This is fuckin bonkers. It seems almost unenforceable and it costs them like fractions of a penny per cup. This is legit too far.