Its crazy because soda is basically free. Sugar, water, and carbonation are pennies on the gallon to produce. There's no real cost to "Free Refills" given that they're selling you 64oz cups for $5/ea already.

[–] tactical_trans_karen@hexbear.net 30 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Something something, rate of profit declining...

[–] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 21 points 2 years ago

There is a tendency.

[–] edge@hexbear.net 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Even then, they’d be saving next to nothing and likely losing more business than they save. So it’s not extracting a few extra pennies so they can say profits went up, it will probably lose them money.

[–] WhatDoYouMeanPodcast@hexbear.net 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It almost makes me wonder what the concern is. That shit probably costs less than a minimum wage worker each year.

[–] doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They first started phasing them out mostly to look like they gave a shit about COVID, as they could conceivably be vector for infection.

I think the reason they're sticking with it is mostly to reduce maintenance and related overhead from running the machines rather than the actual cost of soda.

[–] WhatDoYouMeanPodcast@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

I totally see it as a disease vector. With that in mind, I can accept the existence of a set of circumstances where I agree they should be done away with. If it wasn't part of an overarching push to privatize every space in society and you could readily expect to get a refill without being hassled, sure

[–] zifnab25@hexbear.net 5 points 2 years ago

At some point, I think its just someone saying "We shouldn't give anything away for free" up in corporate.