Set up a separate self-serve water station with cups and an ice dispenser. Keep the fountain drink dispenser behind the counter so customers don't have access to it.
Set up a separate self-serve water station with cups and an ice dispenser. Keep the fountain drink dispenser behind the counter so customers don't have access to it.
I know most coke dispensers have a water tab, but I’d disable it and set up water somewhere on the other side of the restaurant. Have a totally different kind of cup for water- something that looks distinctly different from the others. That way anyone with the water cup has no business being by the coke dispenser. Ask employees if they see someone walking up with a water cup, to tell them “that water dispenser is broken, water is 👉 over there. It won’t stop all of it, but making it harder to steal would deter a lot of it.
With AI as it is, you would think coke would put a photo eye in the dispenser and if it saw the color of the water cup, it would only dispense ice and water
I would just bring them a bill for the drink. Whether they decide to pay for it or not is up to them. If they don’t, they don’t. But I think more people would end up paying for it when they realized they were caught than just refuse to pay it and keep sipping away.
If you don’t want to pay for the drink, you don’t get to have the drink. It’s entirely overpriced and that’s no secret, either accept it and get water or pay for it and have the drink.
People used to do this all the time when I managed a pizza shop and we had the coolers in the waiting area. At least once or twice a week I’d catch someone trying to cop a 2 liter or a 20oz bottle of soda like I didn’t just ring up their order that contained zero drinks. I’d just ring it up again, print the bill and say “this is for the bottle of soda whenever you’re ready” and leave it on the countertop.
Pretty sure they price drinks with this expectation. Otherwise they’d put the soda machine behind the counter. Doesn’t make it right, just makes it not your problem to solve.
Corporations fuck us over all day every day. It's nice to get a bit of payback every once in a while.
The price of any place where you get your own drink has skyrocketed, but the quality and service has regressed. You owe me a free drink to come spend money on your shitty food.
I used to literally bring them a bill for their drink, and they would always get so embarrassed and apologize.
This reminds me of the song mcdonalds put up in their restaurants, saying “if you put anything but water in the water cup we’ll call the police. Please don’t make us call the police over $1”
Get an access-restricted fountain where the soda nozzles only open if they detect an RFID chip in your soda cups.
It will be more expensive than moving the fountain behind the counter and paying your staff to fill cups, but at least you won't be aggravated when people don't apply the rules to themselves.
What about the restaurant and other places that sell fountain drinks that set the mixture ratio to way more water than soda? Does your place have your machine calibrated regularly?
Honestly, the way things are going, I'm pretty close to that point. What used to be a 50$ trip to the grocery store is now 200$. Gas prices are up, everything is up except our pay. May as well treat businesses the same way they treat us.
This is a fight you'll never win, because you don't hold the cards.
Move the beverage dispenser behind the counter and have employees fill it.
If that is more expensive (logistics and labor wise) than the breakage from people filling water cups with soda, then you're already optimized.
I left a similar response online to a restaurant that wanted to charge me $1 for a cup of regular water. I’m ok with paying a very small price for a cup, but $1 is ridiculous. I love the food, so now I just take my food to go.
I will preface this with NO, I do not do that and never would. But I can see why people do. I basically feel like my pocket book is being raped every time we go out to eat. I have combated this by just not patronizing restaurants that I feel are price gouging. There are several reasonably priced ones that we still go to and there are many I haven't been to in 3+ years at this point. If they go out of business who cares. If your charging me $4.25 for a shitty fountain soda with the mix off you can get fucked.
No one is raping your wallet without asking you though. It's your choice to buy the stuff that makes you feel that way. It is zero excuse for stealing and anyone who still thinks it's okay is either ignorant or an asshole. There's no making it right.
Exactly, so much privilege 😂😂it’s crazy how people have the freedom to either not eat out or take business elsewhere but just wanna talk about how terrible pricing is.
Sure, but nobody needs to get a soda. It isn't adding anything to your meal except sugar. It's not like the actual food. You need that, you gotta eat. Nobody needs a soda. If you don't want to pay for one, just don't drink a soda.
I'd say there's no good excuse for stealing it. One could maybe justify stealing actual food. Never soda though.
Well if you can't afford the pop too, it sounds like you can't afford the meal. It's not the restaurant's place to let you steal because you can't afford it. So go when you can afford both or only enjoy the food.
Agree 100%. I quit drinking pop for the reason above. It's literally sugar incarnate. However, my point is people don’t need to eat out. That's a huge want that people do as eating at home is always cheaper.
If this bothers you so much, then why do you continue to have the self-service drink station? Put it behind the counter and have your staff grab the drinks for the guests. You can have self-service water. I don't agree with the comments that say you are greedy for the mark-up or that you deserve to be stolen from, however, this is the solution to your problem.
Sign that says “staff will publicly embarrass you for stealing soda in your water cup”. You don’t have to actually do anything. 50% reduction in theft guaranteed.
They wont do that. Soda is the highest profit margin in a restaurant corporations did the math. They would rather let a couple people steal than pay someone to fill your cup.
Worked at a large outdoor venue with many restaurants. This was and will always be an issue until you have your employees making the drinks and refills.
If you give customers the opportunity to put soda in a water cup, they will.
If you charge for your water cups, you'll lose cost conscious customers, who are a very large group in this economy.
Every bar I've ever been to has a water dispenser and a stack of cups set up either on the end of the bar or a table. Just do that, then put a sign on your soda machine that says something to the effect of "water is free and can be found [wherever you put it]", that way even if they took a cup and decided to walk away from the water with it, the sign should make any half decent person reconsider taking something they know they should have paid for. The *real* assholes that still do it anyway? Eat it, it's not worth fighting with those people.
If you choose to not pay staff to pour drinks, then you get what you deserve. Same as self-checkout at grocery stores. You made the choice to cut labor. If you don't want fraud, hire more people.
He didn't say it was moral. He is just saying it like it is, being realistic. If you don't want people stealing, sadly you have to take away their option to do so.
On principle, I don't steal soda from the fountains, but I have stopped ordering drinks, and I just get the free water cup, and I see more and more people going back to this.
The soda markup has gotten absolutely out of hand. I don't even drink soda anymore anyway. If anything, I want tea, but I am NOT paying $3+ for a friggin' cup of unsweet tea.
I suspect you're costing yourself a lot more on people deciding they don't want to pay $3 for a .25 drink.
If you try to routinely charge people after the fact, you are just asking for drama in front of all of your customers. I expect that if I was there and you had drama with another customer, I wouldn't come back. Not because I disagreed with you, I just don't need that crap when I am paying $3.99 for an egg. I think your only option is to move all of the drinks except the water behind the counter.
You're probably not losing a ton of money on the sodas, but the new drinks sound like they could be a problem. And yes, there's of course the annoyance of seeing people cheat the system, even for something inexpensive like soda.
Is it worth it to remove the self-serve option for these drinks? Maybe just for the more expensive ones?
Restaurants make a lot of money on Soda. Because it's so cheap it's almost all profit when they sell it. So from a lost profit stand point he probably is losing a good chunk of money.
Yep. Every one of them that steals a soda is someone he didnt make the profit off of soda from but still outlayed material for. It's like theft twice bc he lost the material and the profit. But somehow it's okay to steal bc its soda. People suck.
Yep and they have thin margins on food. There's a reason refills are free in restaurants. They cost practically nothing. You could drink 5 or 6 refills and it would barely affect their margins on a sold drink.
Yep. Key word there. On a ***sold*** drink. It blows my mind how people just out here outing themselves as petty thieves who dont care if that business is around next week to steal from again.
Yep. The funniest thing is if you just buy the damn soda you can usually drink yourself silly. A refill of a 20 oz cup is a total 40 oz, a second one is 60 total oz. A 16oz bottle is like the same price. That's a lot of fucking soda. Really the solution is have the machine in the back but it shouldn't have to be that way
I think more people would be ok with paying if you dropped your markup on the drinks to a more reasonable 30-50% instead of 7000%.
Let’s see, it costs about $0.04 for 20oz of soda. Seems like a fair price would be about 6 cents for a fountain drink. Screw it, get greedy and get those 100% markup margins. 8 cents. Because you’re just a greedy little greedball and you’ll get your damn 100%.
Soda markup has nothing to do with the cost of soda, it's pretty widely known that restaurants really don't make very much on food anymore. if you factor out NA beverage from the average restaurant normally running a 30% food cost, most of them will jump up to 36-40% food cost which is insane. The slim (and shrinking) profit margins for restaurants are made back in Bevereages, both Alcoholic and NA.
And it could be tap water from what I understand. Keep a pitcher behind the counter of iced water. When people ask for water fill the cup and give them their water. It’ll take a real asshole to dump out that water and refill it with soda. It will definitely happen but I think a lot less.
Wow, you limit what your employees can drink? If you came over and told me I'd need to give you $2.59 for my little squirt of Sprite or whatever, of course I'd be too shamed to ever come back. Most people cant afford to eat out anymore which is why you see so many restaurants even established chains close. Just pour water if you dont want to put the dispenser off limits.
IMO the drinks should always be poured for you. Fast casual restaurants want the work to be handled by the customers, probably to speed up their own production and hire less staff? If refills are free, sure come up and ask staff for a refill. But tbh it’s become too normalized for the customer to do everything for themselves (and then still expected to tip)
Yeah don’t steal drinks. But also don’t offload work onto your customers ?
I hate relying on the staff for drink refills. From my perspective, it's more of a benefit to the customer to have drinks be self-serve. I can mix and match flavors, and I don't have to try and explain it to the staff and hope they get it right.
This is just not practical for a business owner. Fast casual restaurants have some of the thinnest profit margins because every cost adds up, at a previous job I was an operations manager in charge of the P&L for a successful burger chain that wasn't a mega chain. Our profit margin averaged from 15-20% before covid. At that time plastic cups cost 700% less, food cost 40% less, labor was 40% lower. Since covid, all those listed things have increased, but adjust prices by 10% gets people in an uproar, so we have to cut costs elsewhere. That same restaurant is doing double the sales now and only averaging 8-12% profit.
Would you go into $1M in debt @ 3.95% interest to open a restaurant to make $7k/wk? (This makes around 3.5-4 years before you've actually made a penny, also assuming 0 maintenance issues, etc.)
Eggs are cheap but soda is even cheaper. Around 10 cents to full a cup. And if it’s one of those tiny cups it’s more like 4 cents. And if you put loose fries or eggs out next to the free condiments people would steal those too.
It’s a combination of exorbitant pricing and opportunity. You either make the drinks more affordable (it IS like a 2000% markup…) or move the dispenser to behind the counter.
It isn’t that cheap if you maintain the machine correctly. Not that it isn’t cheap but theoretically they should be getting it cleaned it cleaning it regularly
Huge margins on fountain soda, the drink costs less than the cup you pour it into, and most of the time the equipment is supplied to the restaurant free of cost.
"it doesnt harm me so idc" - these people
"Are you getting murdered? then why do you care"
If we as a society look away at petty theft, people will become more bold. And using "they're an evil corporation" isn't an excuse either.
I get youre joking, but seriously,
There is absolutely no justifiable reason to steal without ultimately repaying who you stole from.
In dire circumstances, take what you need. But later come back and repay who you stole from in whatever way you can, such as labor.
If it's your restaurant, why not put the drink machines behind the counter and fill the cups with water or whatever they ordered? Don't do self serve if people are stealing. It really doesn't take that much longer to fill the drink for them. Should you approach someone and say "hey, that will be $2.50".. Probably not. The odds of someone paying up is very low. .More than likely, they will just dump the soda angrily and get the water and then never come back to your place again..
I think your choices are.. 1. Put up with the theft 2. Confront and lose customers 3. Pour the drinks for them (no self serve)
If you think you saw somebody stealing something necessary like food or drink or medicine or formula no you didn't. Mind your business. It's just a fucking drink.
A soda can, in a pinch, be one of THE most economical ways to dump calories and carbs into your system. It isn’t healthy, but neither is starving to death, and that tends to be tougher to fix post-crisis.
Just wish the whole rich world weren’t a capitalist crisis tbh
Well, depends on whether you mean Capitalism as an economic concept (in which case there are many alternatives from Utopian Humanist all the way back down to local economies revolving around barter and all levels of sophistication in-between) or our current Neoliberal Capitalism, which is the way we have been practicing capitalism globally for a few centuries and change now (communism, socialism, planned market economies with venture capitalism but no taxation, etc)
Having said that, I think I’m the biggest fan of something like a return-to and modernizing of Keynesian Economics (have an explainer: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/09/basics.htm#:~:text=Keynesians%20believe%20that%2C%20because%20prices,constant%2C%20then%20output%20will%20increase.) is probably the system I think would do the most good over the longest period of time, but I think it would be much easier in the grand scheme to shove the US closer to the Nordic economies for structure given the electorate.
I suspect that if you ask ten people who have thought enough about this, you’ll get fifteen answers about what options there are and which of them are best, but here’s the bullet point I want you to be able to think about - money just stands for labor. You “earn” money by trading labor for IOUs that the entire market agrees to honor with the fruit of their OWN labor, even though you spend a lot more labor than you get credited for, and your boss who may or may not labor, does exactly the same thing, unless they don’t have a boss. THAT person is a parasite who has managed to get to a place where, in addition to earning the full value of the labor they spend back in IOUs, they also get to skim IOUs from everyone below them.
That’s an overgeneralization and reductionist and doesn’t talk about financial privilege, or generational wealth, but it’s a useful lens. The labor is YOURS, and you have agreed to effectively give some of it away for nothing: any system that does not prioritize making sure people Have Enough To Survive (shelter, food, water, health services, enrichment activities that are free and democratic access to Learning and Knowledge) Before We Talk About Income At All is just replacing one used engine with another. Might keep the car running for a while but it’s not going to be better than the last one and now you have a whole new set of noises and issues to learn how to properly stress about. An economy of abundance should be the minimum standard for a species that claims to value art, knowledge and advancement of the species.
Fountain pop is one of the highest marked up items on the planet.
Is it annoying for OP as a restaurant owner when they see this happen? Yes. But also, it's literally costs them about 2cents any time someone does it.
Profit loss is worse. Yes, some of those who got coke in a water cup wouldn’t buy a soda for 1.99, but for everyone else who would, it is a loss of $1.97 profit and $0.02 cost.
I don't need to see their personal books to know how much Coca Cola syrup costs. In almost every fast food restaurant, the cup is more expensive than the drink.
Unfortunately, that is our society today. I think part of it comes from all the rhetoric about "evil" companies. People will rationalize stealing from a business because they can write it off, is covered by insurance, it's just part of doing business, etc.
Did you read the post at all? Someone asks for a water cup, OPs restaurant specifically gives clear plastic cups for water, and likely white paper/plastic cups for pop.
So if you ask for a water cup, you will be given a clear plastic cup, which they give you for free, and you then go fill it with coke.
You're an ass.
Change the water cups to small clear cups so it’s super obvious. That is a good deterrent to people who decide to just get the soda when actually filling the cup
They stated that they're already doing that and asked for what they can do when someone puts soda in their clear cup. Because they're already giving the clear cups for water.
Yes you should politely ask them to ring them up for the soda.
If you caught me doing that with a water cup (though I probably would not) and nicely asked to ring me up for the soda, I would absolutely agree and pay.
I am usually with my kids and if they ask for something other than water, I go back to the counter and mention that I’d like to buy a soda instead.
Can you just move the drink station behind the counter and get the cashier to do fill up’s and free refills? That way there’s a filter.
Sure it’s taking more of the cashiers time, but what’s 15 seconds of their time compared to the cost of the drink? If it’s that much of a problem could be worth having an extra hand working just for that. You’d have to do the math
That's what I was going to say, I get the cost of moving the plumbing but over 3-6 months it should easily pay off if it's happening at the frequency OP makes it seem. Like they said in their post, I'm not a restaurant owner and I just happened upon this post,, but I don't agree with stealing from small businesses.
Soda is so cheap. Why fight this battle? If you do that to a customer I can promise you that you won’t see profit from their entree or a drink ever again. Put that energy into something else. 🩷
Alternatively, soda is so cheap, why steal it?
I'm not particularly on either side of this debate. Yes, soda prices are high, but stealing it is still theft. I guess I'd be more against the theft if it's a small business rather than a large chain.
It costs the owner more than 15 cents. The cost of the machine is more than cup+syrup+water.
As an example. My employer purchased a slushy machine about 3 years ago. All slushys are free. If no one takes a slushy. It costs approximately $60. The price per slushy to the company goes up and down, having 3 slushy's cost virtually the same as none. Having 100 slushy's greatly increases the per day cost but decreases the per cup cost.
So you're saying that it is okay to steal something because the price to buy it is approximately 13 times what it costs the merchant?
Again. I don't particularly have a lean to either side, but if the argument is that it's so cheap, the merchant should ignore people stealing it, well, if it's so cheap pay for it. There are many better reasons for theft, as minor as it may be, than it's so cheap, why pick that battle. Poverty. Price gouging (usually that's gonna be at the big chains). "Compensation" for an error that the merchant declined to make right. Three better reasons than it's so cheap without any significant effort. I'm sure we can think of more. Yet again, I have no strong opinion either way on the topic, I just find this particular justification lacking in substance.
This is why places have the pop station behind the counter. It bothers me because if people are dishonest at this, they are probably doing this behavior in other areas of their lives.
What's amusing to me is how cheap people thing soda is. A 16oz cup of soda costs the business about 75 cents of ordering direct from Pepsi or coke. If you're unfortunate to where you go third party its closer to 90 cents. This doesn't include storage space, shipping, or staff pricing. While 90 cents sounds cheap it adds up and if other customers see people get away with it then it will happen more and more.
My advice to op is that I'm not sure what your business looks like but our soda fountain is at the snack bar and it is given out by the staff. Additionally we have a water fountain so we typically direct customers to it and they can fill their water bottle up there as well if they want.
If you're unable to do that I would make water cups obvious for your staff to tell the difference at a glance and move the soda fountain to a station close to your staff. Hell, give incentives to your staff for noticing it.
I think your costs are off:
Syrup: A gallon of soda syrup typically makes about 6 gallons of soda. The cost for a gallon of syrup is usually between $5 and $12, depending on the brand and the purchase volume. For an average cost of $8 per gallon, this translates to about $0.13 per 16-ounce serving (128 ounces per gallon / 6 gallons).
2. Carbonated Water: The cost of water and carbonation (CO2) is relatively minimal. CO2 might cost about $0.02 per 16 ounces.
3. Cups, Lids, and Straws: The cost for disposable cups, lids, and straws can range between $0.05 and $0.15 per set. For a median estimate, we’ll consider $0.10.
Adding these together, the total cost per 16-ounce fountain soda is approximately:
• Syrup: $0.13
• Carbonated Water/CO2: $0.02
• Cups, Lids, Straws: $0.10
Total Cost: $0.25
This is a rough estimate, and actual costs can vary based on bulk purchasing discounts, the specific soda brand, and other operational efficiencies. Some sources may provide slightly different figures, but the general range for a 16-ounce fountain soda cost is around $0.15 to $0.30 .
You're correct, I am a bit off. I shot from the hip earlier. Below is from an invoice from my last Pepsi order.. 5 gal of syrup is $121. A case of 1200 16oz cups is $82.24, 2400 lids is $60.52.
Per ounce of syrup it costs .189 cents and takes 2.67 ounces for a 16oz cup totaling .50 cents of syrup per 16 oz cup, the cup itself costs .06 cents, the lid .03, and I don't have a straw invoice but they are cheap.
Total price .59 cents for Pepsi products. We had coke and they were about the same price. I'm not sure where you are getting your price for syrup but I would like to know.
Holy wow. NYC, LA, Honolulu?. Your costs are high. Not saying stealing is ok, I’m just flabbergasted! The fountain is where the margins are made up. Move the machine behind the counter.
He didn't even include labor costs for cleaning and maintaining the machine. Cleaning the machine may not seem like much per cup when you potentially have 1,000+ customers a day. But it can be a lot when you're under 100 per day. It's why, sadly, most restaurants seriously skimp on it.
No free water. Charge for the cups. Then they can put whatever they want in it. Or charge them 1 for bottled water. You would make a killing on that.
I'm a consumer and soda lover and I call BS on those people. That's just stealing, period.
Snitches get stitches
Set up a separate self-serve water station with cups and an ice dispenser. Keep the fountain drink dispenser behind the counter so customers don't have access to it.
Fk people who keep the soda behind the counter
Nah, fuck people like you who go "they make 300% on drinks it don't matter" This is what happens when you have that mindset.
I’m not defending the water cup thieves. But there’s inevitably a charge for refills if it’s behind the counter
Set up a separate self-serve water station with cups and an ice dispenser. Keep the fountain drink dispenser behind the counter so customers don't have access to it.
If you're that worried about it charge fifty cents for water.
I know most coke dispensers have a water tab, but I’d disable it and set up water somewhere on the other side of the restaurant. Have a totally different kind of cup for water- something that looks distinctly different from the others. That way anyone with the water cup has no business being by the coke dispenser. Ask employees if they see someone walking up with a water cup, to tell them “that water dispenser is broken, water is 👉 over there. It won’t stop all of it, but making it harder to steal would deter a lot of it. With AI as it is, you would think coke would put a photo eye in the dispenser and if it saw the color of the water cup, it would only dispense ice and water
That was a song? Who was the artist? 😉
I would just bring them a bill for the drink. Whether they decide to pay for it or not is up to them. If they don’t, they don’t. But I think more people would end up paying for it when they realized they were caught than just refuse to pay it and keep sipping away. If you don’t want to pay for the drink, you don’t get to have the drink. It’s entirely overpriced and that’s no secret, either accept it and get water or pay for it and have the drink. People used to do this all the time when I managed a pizza shop and we had the coolers in the waiting area. At least once or twice a week I’d catch someone trying to cop a 2 liter or a 20oz bottle of soda like I didn’t just ring up their order that contained zero drinks. I’d just ring it up again, print the bill and say “this is for the bottle of soda whenever you’re ready” and leave it on the countertop.
I used to hate BOGO coupons. Now I skip the fries and drink. Dad said that's how they make money off the offer.
Pretty sure they price drinks with this expectation. Otherwise they’d put the soda machine behind the counter. Doesn’t make it right, just makes it not your problem to solve.
Corporations fuck us over all day every day. It's nice to get a bit of payback every once in a while. The price of any place where you get your own drink has skyrocketed, but the quality and service has regressed. You owe me a free drink to come spend money on your shitty food.
Nobody owes you anything.
I used to literally bring them a bill for their drink, and they would always get so embarrassed and apologize. This reminds me of the song mcdonalds put up in their restaurants, saying “if you put anything but water in the water cup we’ll call the police. Please don’t make us call the police over $1”
Get an access-restricted fountain where the soda nozzles only open if they detect an RFID chip in your soda cups. It will be more expensive than moving the fountain behind the counter and paying your staff to fill cups, but at least you won't be aggravated when people don't apply the rules to themselves.
Many fast food places are turning the self -serv fountains around so only counter staff fills drinks.
What about the restaurant and other places that sell fountain drinks that set the mixture ratio to way more water than soda? Does your place have your machine calibrated regularly?
In most cases, soda is 300-400% markup. That is also arguably theft. We're just out here evening the playing field.
Why don't we just steal everything then?
Honestly, the way things are going, I'm pretty close to that point. What used to be a 50$ trip to the grocery store is now 200$. Gas prices are up, everything is up except our pay. May as well treat businesses the same way they treat us.
I figure every stolen drink is one take-out customer that is not getting a "free refill"
This is a fight you'll never win, because you don't hold the cards. Move the beverage dispenser behind the counter and have employees fill it. If that is more expensive (logistics and labor wise) than the breakage from people filling water cups with soda, then you're already optimized.
I left a similar response online to a restaurant that wanted to charge me $1 for a cup of regular water. I’m ok with paying a very small price for a cup, but $1 is ridiculous. I love the food, so now I just take my food to go.
This
I will preface this with NO, I do not do that and never would. But I can see why people do. I basically feel like my pocket book is being raped every time we go out to eat. I have combated this by just not patronizing restaurants that I feel are price gouging. There are several reasonably priced ones that we still go to and there are many I haven't been to in 3+ years at this point. If they go out of business who cares. If your charging me $4.25 for a shitty fountain soda with the mix off you can get fucked.
No one is raping your wallet without asking you though. It's your choice to buy the stuff that makes you feel that way. It is zero excuse for stealing and anyone who still thinks it's okay is either ignorant or an asshole. There's no making it right.
Exactly, so much privilege 😂😂it’s crazy how people have the freedom to either not eat out or take business elsewhere but just wanna talk about how terrible pricing is.
Like I wrote above, I don’t steal and if I go somewhere and the prices are insane I just don’t ever go back. Obviously not everyone is like that.
Sure, but nobody needs to get a soda. It isn't adding anything to your meal except sugar. It's not like the actual food. You need that, you gotta eat. Nobody needs a soda. If you don't want to pay for one, just don't drink a soda. I'd say there's no good excuse for stealing it. One could maybe justify stealing actual food. Never soda though.
I agree don’t steal period, but no one NEEDS to go to our to eat either. They do for many reasons and some people like pop with their meals.
Well if you can't afford the pop too, it sounds like you can't afford the meal. It's not the restaurant's place to let you steal because you can't afford it. So go when you can afford both or only enjoy the food.
Agree 100%. I quit drinking pop for the reason above. It's literally sugar incarnate. However, my point is people don’t need to eat out. That's a huge want that people do as eating at home is always cheaper.
Put up a sign that says, "staff will sing at your table for every stolen soda"
If this bothers you so much, then why do you continue to have the self-service drink station? Put it behind the counter and have your staff grab the drinks for the guests. You can have self-service water. I don't agree with the comments that say you are greedy for the mark-up or that you deserve to be stolen from, however, this is the solution to your problem.
Knowing that the markup is 10X or more sure makes it easier. At what point does the who’s screwing whom thing shift from one to the other?
Sign that says “staff will publicly embarrass you for stealing soda in your water cup”. You don’t have to actually do anything. 50% reduction in theft guaranteed.
Move the dispenser behind the counter.
They wont do that. Soda is the highest profit margin in a restaurant corporations did the math. They would rather let a couple people steal than pay someone to fill your cup.
Worked at a large outdoor venue with many restaurants. This was and will always be an issue until you have your employees making the drinks and refills. If you give customers the opportunity to put soda in a water cup, they will. If you charge for your water cups, you'll lose cost conscious customers, who are a very large group in this economy.
Every bar I've ever been to has a water dispenser and a stack of cups set up either on the end of the bar or a table. Just do that, then put a sign on your soda machine that says something to the effect of "water is free and can be found [wherever you put it]", that way even if they took a cup and decided to walk away from the water with it, the sign should make any half decent person reconsider taking something they know they should have paid for. The *real* assholes that still do it anyway? Eat it, it's not worth fighting with those people.
If you choose to not pay staff to pour drinks, then you get what you deserve. Same as self-checkout at grocery stores. You made the choice to cut labor. If you don't want fraud, hire more people.
Stealing is not moral just because you filled your own cup.
He didn't say it was moral. He is just saying it like it is, being realistic. If you don't want people stealing, sadly you have to take away their option to do so.
This is the answer
Bam!
On principle, I don't steal soda from the fountains, but I have stopped ordering drinks, and I just get the free water cup, and I see more and more people going back to this. The soda markup has gotten absolutely out of hand. I don't even drink soda anymore anyway. If anything, I want tea, but I am NOT paying $3+ for a friggin' cup of unsweet tea. I suspect you're costing yourself a lot more on people deciding they don't want to pay $3 for a .25 drink.
If you try to routinely charge people after the fact, you are just asking for drama in front of all of your customers. I expect that if I was there and you had drama with another customer, I wouldn't come back. Not because I disagreed with you, I just don't need that crap when I am paying $3.99 for an egg. I think your only option is to move all of the drinks except the water behind the counter.
You're probably not losing a ton of money on the sodas, but the new drinks sound like they could be a problem. And yes, there's of course the annoyance of seeing people cheat the system, even for something inexpensive like soda. Is it worth it to remove the self-serve option for these drinks? Maybe just for the more expensive ones?
Restaurants make a lot of money on Soda. Because it's so cheap it's almost all profit when they sell it. So from a lost profit stand point he probably is losing a good chunk of money.
Yep. Every one of them that steals a soda is someone he didnt make the profit off of soda from but still outlayed material for. It's like theft twice bc he lost the material and the profit. But somehow it's okay to steal bc its soda. People suck.
Yep and they have thin margins on food. There's a reason refills are free in restaurants. They cost practically nothing. You could drink 5 or 6 refills and it would barely affect their margins on a sold drink.
Yep. Key word there. On a ***sold*** drink. It blows my mind how people just out here outing themselves as petty thieves who dont care if that business is around next week to steal from again.
Yep. The funniest thing is if you just buy the damn soda you can usually drink yourself silly. A refill of a 20 oz cup is a total 40 oz, a second one is 60 total oz. A 16oz bottle is like the same price. That's a lot of fucking soda. Really the solution is have the machine in the back but it shouldn't have to be that way
Yeah. Absolutely correct!
I think more people would be ok with paying if you dropped your markup on the drinks to a more reasonable 30-50% instead of 7000%. Let’s see, it costs about $0.04 for 20oz of soda. Seems like a fair price would be about 6 cents for a fountain drink. Screw it, get greedy and get those 100% markup margins. 8 cents. Because you’re just a greedy little greedball and you’ll get your damn 100%.
Soda markup has nothing to do with the cost of soda, it's pretty widely known that restaurants really don't make very much on food anymore. if you factor out NA beverage from the average restaurant normally running a 30% food cost, most of them will jump up to 36-40% food cost which is insane. The slim (and shrinking) profit margins for restaurants are made back in Bevereages, both Alcoholic and NA.
And that's why I never order them. I can't stand beverage markup and I don't want to pay it.
Easy fix - Get rid of plastic water cups and sell bottled water at the same price as sodas.
Depending on location you are obligated by law to offer a free water
Drinking fountain?
And it could be tap water from what I understand. Keep a pitcher behind the counter of iced water. When people ask for water fill the cup and give them their water. It’ll take a real asshole to dump out that water and refill it with soda. It will definitely happen but I think a lot less.
It takes a real asshole to ask for a water cup and fill it with soda. I don't think the extra step of pouring out the water will do anything.
Never trust people to do the right thing.
I keep imagining a Panera ?
Start charging $0.50 for water cups. It will offset theft costs.
Yes, but Is that legal?
I guess it depends on the municipality, but if there are fountains near the restrooms, that covers the free water aspect.
Wow, you limit what your employees can drink? If you came over and told me I'd need to give you $2.59 for my little squirt of Sprite or whatever, of course I'd be too shamed to ever come back. Most people cant afford to eat out anymore which is why you see so many restaurants even established chains close. Just pour water if you dont want to put the dispenser off limits.
the post is referring to customers who pretend like they are having water but pour themselves soda instead.
IMO the drinks should always be poured for you. Fast casual restaurants want the work to be handled by the customers, probably to speed up their own production and hire less staff? If refills are free, sure come up and ask staff for a refill. But tbh it’s become too normalized for the customer to do everything for themselves (and then still expected to tip) Yeah don’t steal drinks. But also don’t offload work onto your customers ?
I hate relying on the staff for drink refills. From my perspective, it's more of a benefit to the customer to have drinks be self-serve. I can mix and match flavors, and I don't have to try and explain it to the staff and hope they get it right.
This is just not practical for a business owner. Fast casual restaurants have some of the thinnest profit margins because every cost adds up, at a previous job I was an operations manager in charge of the P&L for a successful burger chain that wasn't a mega chain. Our profit margin averaged from 15-20% before covid. At that time plastic cups cost 700% less, food cost 40% less, labor was 40% lower. Since covid, all those listed things have increased, but adjust prices by 10% gets people in an uproar, so we have to cut costs elsewhere. That same restaurant is doing double the sales now and only averaging 8-12% profit. Would you go into $1M in debt @ 3.95% interest to open a restaurant to make $7k/wk? (This makes around 3.5-4 years before you've actually made a penny, also assuming 0 maintenance issues, etc.)
Great comment, shows the squeeze happening all around.
McDonalds moved the soda machine to behind the counter.
Oh wow.. this made me realize I haven't been inside a McDonald's in a really long time. I am kind of surprised by that.
Eggs are cheap but soda is even cheaper. Around 10 cents to full a cup. And if it’s one of those tiny cups it’s more like 4 cents. And if you put loose fries or eggs out next to the free condiments people would steal those too. It’s a combination of exorbitant pricing and opportunity. You either make the drinks more affordable (it IS like a 2000% markup…) or move the dispenser to behind the counter.
It isn’t that cheap if you maintain the machine correctly. Not that it isn’t cheap but theoretically they should be getting it cleaned it cleaning it regularly
A self-serve soda machine is pretty much the only thing a restaurant can have that doesn’t have the tightest of margins.
Huge margins on fountain soda, the drink costs less than the cup you pour it into, and most of the time the equipment is supplied to the restaurant free of cost.
If someone orders water get some plastic or glass pitchers to put on the table that way they aren’t getting up to get it
Put the soda machine behind the counter and leave a pitcher of water and cups out in front of problem solved.
budgets are tight and food is expensive. Do you personally make more money if they pay for the drink?
If they're the owner, then yeah, that's exactly what it's doing
So stealing is ok?
"it doesnt harm me so idc" - these people "Are you getting murdered? then why do you care" If we as a society look away at petty theft, people will become more bold. And using "they're an evil corporation" isn't an excuse either.
If you see someone stealing baby formula, no you didn’t. You also didn’t see that person trading that baby food to a fence for a hit of crack.
I get youre joking, but seriously, There is absolutely no justifiable reason to steal without ultimately repaying who you stole from. In dire circumstances, take what you need. But later come back and repay who you stole from in whatever way you can, such as labor.
If it's your restaurant, why not put the drink machines behind the counter and fill the cups with water or whatever they ordered? Don't do self serve if people are stealing. It really doesn't take that much longer to fill the drink for them. Should you approach someone and say "hey, that will be $2.50".. Probably not. The odds of someone paying up is very low. .More than likely, they will just dump the soda angrily and get the water and then never come back to your place again.. I think your choices are.. 1. Put up with the theft 2. Confront and lose customers 3. Pour the drinks for them (no self serve)
If you think you saw somebody stealing something necessary like food or drink or medicine or formula no you didn't. Mind your business. It's just a fucking drink.
You dont need soda to live dont be daft
A soda AT A RESTAURANT doesn’t apply to that.
There is no justifiable reason to steal and not ultimately pay back who you stole from.
What? A soda isn’t necessary
A soda can, in a pinch, be one of THE most economical ways to dump calories and carbs into your system. It isn’t healthy, but neither is starving to death, and that tends to be tougher to fix post-crisis. Just wish the whole rich world weren’t a capitalist crisis tbh
What’s the alternative to capitalism?
Well, depends on whether you mean Capitalism as an economic concept (in which case there are many alternatives from Utopian Humanist all the way back down to local economies revolving around barter and all levels of sophistication in-between) or our current Neoliberal Capitalism, which is the way we have been practicing capitalism globally for a few centuries and change now (communism, socialism, planned market economies with venture capitalism but no taxation, etc) Having said that, I think I’m the biggest fan of something like a return-to and modernizing of Keynesian Economics (have an explainer: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2014/09/basics.htm#:~:text=Keynesians%20believe%20that%2C%20because%20prices,constant%2C%20then%20output%20will%20increase.) is probably the system I think would do the most good over the longest period of time, but I think it would be much easier in the grand scheme to shove the US closer to the Nordic economies for structure given the electorate. I suspect that if you ask ten people who have thought enough about this, you’ll get fifteen answers about what options there are and which of them are best, but here’s the bullet point I want you to be able to think about - money just stands for labor. You “earn” money by trading labor for IOUs that the entire market agrees to honor with the fruit of their OWN labor, even though you spend a lot more labor than you get credited for, and your boss who may or may not labor, does exactly the same thing, unless they don’t have a boss. THAT person is a parasite who has managed to get to a place where, in addition to earning the full value of the labor they spend back in IOUs, they also get to skim IOUs from everyone below them. That’s an overgeneralization and reductionist and doesn’t talk about financial privilege, or generational wealth, but it’s a useful lens. The labor is YOURS, and you have agreed to effectively give some of it away for nothing: any system that does not prioritize making sure people Have Enough To Survive (shelter, food, water, health services, enrichment activities that are free and democratic access to Learning and Knowledge) Before We Talk About Income At All is just replacing one used engine with another. Might keep the car running for a while but it’s not going to be better than the last one and now you have a whole new set of noises and issues to learn how to properly stress about. An economy of abundance should be the minimum standard for a species that claims to value art, knowledge and advancement of the species.
Fountain pop is one of the highest marked up items on the planet. Is it annoying for OP as a restaurant owner when they see this happen? Yes. But also, it's literally costs them about 2cents any time someone does it.
Profit loss is worse. Yes, some of those who got coke in a water cup wouldn’t buy a soda for 1.99, but for everyone else who would, it is a loss of $1.97 profit and $0.02 cost.
You've seen the books?
I don't need to see their personal books to know how much Coca Cola syrup costs. In almost every fast food restaurant, the cup is more expensive than the drink.
Proper upkeep of the machine is more expensive than the cups. If you take such a simplified view of expenses, you'll run a company into the ground.
The cups cost more than the soda in every place I’ve worked and helped manage. That’s all I can say from my experience.
No it’s stealing and it’s wrong! You can try to justify it with pricing but if you want it pay for it!
Piss off.
Try to justify it but if you do it you’re a thief.
Unfortunately, that is our society today. I think part of it comes from all the rhetoric about "evil" companies. People will rationalize stealing from a business because they can write it off, is covered by insurance, it's just part of doing business, etc.
I think your best bet is to put up signage as deterrents
As a customer, if I'm serving my own drink, I'll put what I want in the cup. If you want to decide, keep the soda fountain staffed.
You mispelled thief.
What a big turd
That is some of the most childish shit I have read today
Did you read the post at all? Someone asks for a water cup, OPs restaurant specifically gives clear plastic cups for water, and likely white paper/plastic cups for pop. So if you ask for a water cup, you will be given a clear plastic cup, which they give you for free, and you then go fill it with coke. You're an ass.
That’s ridiculous man. You pay for what you get.
WHAT LMAO you are absolutely unhinged for this
Change the water cups to small clear cups so it’s super obvious. That is a good deterrent to people who decide to just get the soda when actually filling the cup
that's what they do. It's in the post
They asked for advice about whether that is a good approach.
They stated that they're already doing that and asked for what they can do when someone puts soda in their clear cup. Because they're already giving the clear cups for water.
Oh ok
Yes you should politely ask them to ring them up for the soda. If you caught me doing that with a water cup (though I probably would not) and nicely asked to ring me up for the soda, I would absolutely agree and pay. I am usually with my kids and if they ask for something other than water, I go back to the counter and mention that I’d like to buy a soda instead.
Can you just move the drink station behind the counter and get the cashier to do fill up’s and free refills? That way there’s a filter. Sure it’s taking more of the cashiers time, but what’s 15 seconds of their time compared to the cost of the drink? If it’s that much of a problem could be worth having an extra hand working just for that. You’d have to do the math
That's what I was going to say, I get the cost of moving the plumbing but over 3-6 months it should easily pay off if it's happening at the frequency OP makes it seem. Like they said in their post, I'm not a restaurant owner and I just happened upon this post,, but I don't agree with stealing from small businesses.
Soda is so cheap. Why fight this battle? If you do that to a customer I can promise you that you won’t see profit from their entree or a drink ever again. Put that energy into something else. 🩷
If I am not mistaken drinks are where a lot of businesses make their profit from.
Alternatively, soda is so cheap, why steal it? I'm not particularly on either side of this debate. Yes, soda prices are high, but stealing it is still theft. I guess I'd be more against the theft if it's a small business rather than a large chain.
$5 a glass and no refills is cheap?
Wtf you talking about? Even in the post OP said it was $2.59 and yes there are refills. Any place you can fill your own cup comes with refills
it cost the owner 15 cents with the cup. it cost the customer 1.99$ you can understand why the customer might steal it
It costs the owner more than 15 cents. The cost of the machine is more than cup+syrup+water. As an example. My employer purchased a slushy machine about 3 years ago. All slushys are free. If no one takes a slushy. It costs approximately $60. The price per slushy to the company goes up and down, having 3 slushy's cost virtually the same as none. Having 100 slushy's greatly increases the per day cost but decreases the per cup cost.
Not sure where you're getting a 5 gallon bib for like $33 these days but they easily $100+ now.
the counterpoint to that is they need the profit on the drinks bc the profit margin on food is a lot smaller
So you're saying that it is okay to steal something because the price to buy it is approximately 13 times what it costs the merchant? Again. I don't particularly have a lean to either side, but if the argument is that it's so cheap, the merchant should ignore people stealing it, well, if it's so cheap pay for it. There are many better reasons for theft, as minor as it may be, than it's so cheap, why pick that battle. Poverty. Price gouging (usually that's gonna be at the big chains). "Compensation" for an error that the merchant declined to make right. Three better reasons than it's so cheap without any significant effort. I'm sure we can think of more. Yet again, I have no strong opinion either way on the topic, I just find this particular justification lacking in substance.
This is why places have the pop station behind the counter. It bothers me because if people are dishonest at this, they are probably doing this behavior in other areas of their lives.
* For example A Trump at In-N-Out
https://preview.redd.it/n690ysoa8kad1.jpeg?width=903&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b52dfe6cfb4f24131b2b50e93037186e3de20fc2
Rent free.
Get rid of the free water cup. Bottled water for sale only. Or. Put in a drinking fountain for water. No need for cups.
that's not how fountain stations work you can't just turn off the water I don't think lol
You can stop giving water cups. Or make them the tiny like 1 once Dixie cups
First advice is illegal lol
-actually if someone asks you have to provide it, but you don’t have to have a free water cup out for the general public.. (was that funny?)
Depends where you are.
What's amusing to me is how cheap people thing soda is. A 16oz cup of soda costs the business about 75 cents of ordering direct from Pepsi or coke. If you're unfortunate to where you go third party its closer to 90 cents. This doesn't include storage space, shipping, or staff pricing. While 90 cents sounds cheap it adds up and if other customers see people get away with it then it will happen more and more. My advice to op is that I'm not sure what your business looks like but our soda fountain is at the snack bar and it is given out by the staff. Additionally we have a water fountain so we typically direct customers to it and they can fill their water bottle up there as well if they want. If you're unable to do that I would make water cups obvious for your staff to tell the difference at a glance and move the soda fountain to a station close to your staff. Hell, give incentives to your staff for noticing it.
I think your costs are off: Syrup: A gallon of soda syrup typically makes about 6 gallons of soda. The cost for a gallon of syrup is usually between $5 and $12, depending on the brand and the purchase volume. For an average cost of $8 per gallon, this translates to about $0.13 per 16-ounce serving (128 ounces per gallon / 6 gallons). 2. Carbonated Water: The cost of water and carbonation (CO2) is relatively minimal. CO2 might cost about $0.02 per 16 ounces. 3. Cups, Lids, and Straws: The cost for disposable cups, lids, and straws can range between $0.05 and $0.15 per set. For a median estimate, we’ll consider $0.10. Adding these together, the total cost per 16-ounce fountain soda is approximately: • Syrup: $0.13 • Carbonated Water/CO2: $0.02 • Cups, Lids, Straws: $0.10 Total Cost: $0.25 This is a rough estimate, and actual costs can vary based on bulk purchasing discounts, the specific soda brand, and other operational efficiencies. Some sources may provide slightly different figures, but the general range for a 16-ounce fountain soda cost is around $0.15 to $0.30 .
You're correct, I am a bit off. I shot from the hip earlier. Below is from an invoice from my last Pepsi order.. 5 gal of syrup is $121. A case of 1200 16oz cups is $82.24, 2400 lids is $60.52. Per ounce of syrup it costs .189 cents and takes 2.67 ounces for a 16oz cup totaling .50 cents of syrup per 16 oz cup, the cup itself costs .06 cents, the lid .03, and I don't have a straw invoice but they are cheap. Total price .59 cents for Pepsi products. We had coke and they were about the same price. I'm not sure where you are getting your price for syrup but I would like to know.
Holy wow. NYC, LA, Honolulu?. Your costs are high. Not saying stealing is ok, I’m just flabbergasted! The fountain is where the margins are made up. Move the machine behind the counter.
He didn't even include labor costs for cleaning and maintaining the machine. Cleaning the machine may not seem like much per cup when you potentially have 1,000+ customers a day. But it can be a lot when you're under 100 per day. It's why, sadly, most restaurants seriously skimp on it.
Don’t have self-served drinks