McDonald’s, where they just made an unexpected announcement that sounds like the start of the end of an iconic American era.
No, they’re not getting rid of the Big Mac or the Quarter Pounder, or even the McRib. And you’ll still find Grimace being gruesomely parodied on social media.
But besides hamburgers, french fries and maybe McNuggets, one of the quintessential parts of the McDonald’s experience as long as you or I can probably remember has always been the self-serve fountain soda.
Now that’s going away — slowly, but surely. As McDonald’s said in a statement reported by multiple media:
“McDonald’s will be transitioning away from self-serve beverage stations in dining rooms across the U.S. by 2032.
This change is intended to create a consistent experience for both customers and crew across all ordering points, whether that’s McDelivery, the app, kiosk, drive-thru or in-restaurant.”
Granted, a 9-year phase-out policy is pretty cautious, but I still couldn’t help but place the news in the context of McDonald’s history, and even the entire cultural culinary history of the United States.
Let’s start with the fact that Ray Kroc, the entrepreneur who discovered McDonald’s, came from the fountain soft drinks business, not the hamburger or restaurant business.
Kroc sold milkshake machines, and he first noticed McDonald’s (then owned by two brothers whose last name was actually McDonald) because the single McDonald’s restaurant in California had become his biggest customer.
He also explained in his memoir, Grinding it out, that one of his earliest big business successes was all about soda fountains: convincing Walgreens drug stores to use paper cups and lids because they’d never considered that people might be willing to order soft drinks “to go.”
Kroc didn’t come at this from a vacuum either. Soda fountains and soft drinks are an iconically American invention, first patented all the way back in 1833. They were a centerpiece at drug stores long before they were in restaurants.
Heck, take a minute to watch a clip from an old black and white movie if you’d like to see how culturally significant they were. It’s a Wonderful Life comes to mind , as does a 1928 movie called speedy.
My grandfather even had one in his drug store in Rhode Island back in the first half of the 20th century, and they only became more popular during Prohibition, since people couldn’t legally go to bars that served alcohol for a few years.
Then, World War II came and went, and the McDonald brothers opened their restaurant, and Kroc discovered it and bouht it, and a new era began.
Now, things are changing. Maybe there are fewer people eating inside restaurants anyway; maybe it’s that we’ve all wildly overestimated the incredible profit margins that soda fountains offer.
Or else maybe it’s just time to move on.
Progress is the currency of business. You don’t get better by standing still. But it’s also true that recognizing the connection between two things — your success, and the success of the businesses that came before you — can serve as a poignant source of pride and inspiration.
At McDonald’s, if you enjoyed self-serve refills, or if you were the type to mix various different flavors of sodas into your own concoction, the days of being able to do so are numbered.
So raise your paper cup to the end of another historical period. Eras always end, but they’re also sometimes worth remembering, at least before getting back to work.
