You Won’t Be Able to Do This at McDonald’s Anymore (2024)

There was a time when fast-food restaurants filled your beverage behind the counter for you. When you finished your soda, you had to buy another one to get more liquid refreshment. Then, sometime in the late 80s and early 90s, free refills became standard. You were handed an empty cup, poured your own soda, and refilled your cup as often as you pleased.

Coca-Cola then introduced the touch-screen Freestyle machine with one main nozzle that dispensed all the flavors. Beverage lovers could touch a button and easily create a beverage with four different flavors in it. It was the heyday of the DIY, free-refill soft drinks.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic, and things got convoluted. Many fast-food restaurants halted the DIY sodas. While some restaurants eventually reinstated refills in the same cup, it was the beginning of the end of the free-refill era, at least at McDonald’s.

The burger chain recently announced the definitive end of its customer-led soft drink machines, although they could take a while to disappear completely.

Phasing Out the Self-Serve Soft Drinks

Last week, McDonald’s announced it would slowly phase out self-serve beverage stations in the restaurants’ dining rooms. The change is expected to be completed by 2032, meaning that it will be nine years before all drink machines are back in the hands of the employees behind the counter.

According to QSR Web, the change is meant to create a “consistent experience for both customers and crew.” Delivery customers, app customers, kiosk customers, in-restaurant customers, and drive-thru customers will all get the same experience—someone else filling their soft drink cups for them. The transition has already started in Illinois.

So if you have a talent for mixing Cherry co*ke, Orange Fanta, and Minute Maid Lemonade at McDonald’s, you may want to find another avenue for putting that talent into practice. Sometime in the next nine years, you’ll have to ask the smiling server behind the counter to do it for you, and they may not have the Freestyle mixology skills that you have.