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Ok so I just went to get a burrito and they had this new type of soda fountain. It has a screen on it with different kinds of soda. You touch the flavor you want and press a button to dispense it. Cool. Once I came close to filling my cup up, though, I realized it's not so cool.Normally when I fill up a cup at a soda fountain, I fill until the foam starts getting close to the rim. Then I pause for a few seconds to let the foam dissipate and keep filling. I repeat this maybe one or two more times until the cup is basically full of soda and not much foam. I think this is a pretty common thing for people to do.
The problem with this new type of soda fountain is that in the time it takes for the foam to go down after the initial fill, the screen times out and goes back to the home screen. So to top off my soda, I need to navigate through the menu (I think three layers deep) two to three times. The touch controls on this machine are pretty poor, so it adds a pretty significant amount of time to the whole process.
So this go me thinking, I wonder if this is done on purpose. Perhaps that screen timeout duration is specifically set to trigger before all the foam goes down from the initial fill. This would discourage people from topping off their sodas, making more money for the restaurant in the long run. So then I started thinking, what if we paid for soda more literally by volume? Screw small, medium, and large. I want to see restaurants charging a certain rate per ounce of soda. That's how we pay for gasoline, afterall. Then there'd be no incentive for the consumer to top off a cup and no incentive for a restaurant to put these inconvenient countermeasures in place.
I guess maybe that sounds a little tinfoil hat-y. It's certainly possible the makers of these new fountains just didn't think about foam dissipation times when they were designing this thing.
In any case, a shining example of modern technology improving our lives...
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It's always hilarious when the "conveniences" of modern technology actually complicate life. Sometimes technology makes things waaay easier, other times... 
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Those bastards. You should call their hotline and complain. They ought to send you some coupons for free food. Jerks.
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I've seen one of these at the new five guys that just opened near me. Pretty sure you can like mix the flavored too ... I didn't like how safisticated it was
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this is actually made by the soda companies so they can monitor which sodas are the most popular and same with flavorings, which may lead to the invention of a new soda.
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I thought It was awesome, so many flavored! 4 different fantas!
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Yeah I think it's a pretty sweet idea. They have 'em at Moes and Five Guys. I'm all about that Peach flavored Sprite
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Yah when i saw it at the Wegmans here in Erie people were gathered around it like Amish people in a volvo. We all were telling eachother which ones to pick and try (rather sad from a group of adults). I did like that you can pick from a variety of Coke from the machine.
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Dude...we have one at our school now. I'm so damned happy about it :')
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Kinda sounds like those bastards that rig their toilet paper so you can only pull off 2 or 3 shittickets at a time.
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Did they have one of these too
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I'm kinda doubting they do it to try to screw you out of some of your beverage. It would save them less than a penny. You are already paying $2 for a nickel's worth of soda. My brother works at a restaurant and says that when people order their drink without ice it actually saves them money cause the ice is more expensive for them to make than soda.
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Welcome to Moe's!
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@TomSawyer said: I'm kinda doubting they do it to try to screw you out of some of your beverage. It would save them less than a penny. You are already paying $2 for a nickel's worth of soda. My brother works at a restaurant and says that when people order their drink without ice it actually saves them money cause the ice is more expensive for them to make than soda.That's interesting, and makes me wonder why many restaurants fill cups almost all the way up with ice before putting the beverage in. I always assumed that was because ice is cheaper than whatever beverage they're serving. Even if they did only save a penny or a fraction of a penny per cup, that would add up to non-negligible savings over time.
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/progress is his middle name
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Hey Chris200w, I think that particular machine just needs to be adjusted. I've used those "Coca-Cola Freestyle" machines at Five Guys and Pei Wei restaurants in my area, and I've not had that problem. So there is probably just a timer that needs to be tweaked. My biggest beef is that our Pei Wei doesn't keep good tabs on those machines and the flavors run out quickly. So despite actually having 2 of the machines, many of the flavors get emptied out. (Interesting story - someone told me those flavors are actually powders that get mixed into your drink as it's being dispensed from the machine.)
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There is one of these in the lounge at the back of the floor at msg IT will be off (or water only) for the show I bet though, as its usually 'free' as part of that ticket price for sporting events...
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The OP can avoid the foam problem by tilting his cup while filling it with soda, then straightening it as it gets progressively more full. That way you won't have to keep waiting so long for the foam to dissipate. This is one of two things I learned while working a movie theater concession booth in high school - the second being that they save the artificial butter that isn't used every day, just pouring it right back into the original bottle. Make of that what you will.I personally think these new soda machines are great.
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Just like Camel Crush cigarettes, the idea is amazing but they just haven't worked out all the kinks yet.
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Soda is ridiculously cheap, as @TomSawyer suggested. The cup costs far more than the soda does. I'm sure there's a certain cost of maintenance with these new machines, given all the flavor syrups and such, but it can't be that much. I do know what you mean though; I've had them time out on me like that, too. I'd bet it's just an internal timer, though. Think of the next person in line behind you; they're not going to want to wait for 10+ seconds to get their soda after you've walked away.
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@johnnyd said: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_m6zP9VySHCc/SL_ewFqD1RI/AAAAAAAAEus/wTZx8yJlPYU/s320/Goldiewilsonposter.jpgYou wait and see, Mr. Caruthers. I will be mayor; I'll be the most powerful man in Hill Valley and I'm gonna' clean up this town!
/progress is his middle name
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@n00b100 - That's exactly how I pour beers, with the tilt and flow rate depending on how much of a head the beer naturally wants to make. I don't know why I didn't think to try that with the soda fountain.I also wonder if it would be more efficient overall to fill the cup part of the way, pause just long enough to let some foam go down, but not long enough for the machine to time out, and then keep filling. I think it would require more fill/wait cycles, but it would avoid having to navigate through the menus more than once.
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@the_mole said:
Think of the next person in line behind you; they're not going to want to wait for 10+ seconds to get their soda after you've walked away.That's a good point that I hadn't considered. During busy times a long timeout period would be just as much of an inconvenience as the short timeout is.
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I was watching a doc on Netflix about coca cola and they talked about that machine and how they do use it to track the most popular sodas and flavorings. The most popular one, plain coke. But I do think you are on to something, there are people paid just to think of ways to trim a few pennies off the costs. So yea I wouldn't doubt it for a second that they figured out the average length of time it takes the foam to settle and then have the screen time out just before then.
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what kind of burrito?
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@SconyMack said:
Camel crushes make me want to puke haha
Just like Camel Crush cigarettes, the idea is amazing but they just haven't worked out all the kinks yet.
Camel crushes make me want to puke haha
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at five guys the machine has diet vanilla coke...who cares about the machine being stupid when you have diet vanilla coke!?
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