Just like the gimmick of restaurants in their bottomless drinks, fastfoods have their Go Large option where you add 20% to 30% of the cost of the regular and your drink will be large size. This is a good come on for customers particularly with the younger generations who can finish a gallon of drink maybe. But for ordinary mortals like me, it’s waste of money to “go large” since the regular size is sufficient for my small stomach. I did a check of the trash bin of one fastfood store and I saw the leftover drinks of the large cup. It’s really a waste of money and resources.
I always do that when I order drinks when I call for delivery. I get to finish my drinks though, and I certainly won't throw them away even if I was already full. I would still gulp it in one sitting if I was outside and I need to dispose the plastic cup already. If not, I will take my sweet time drinking it.
Since I do share drinks with my daughter buying the extended size would be convinient for me. I always buy the larger size and always end up finishing it up and sometimes even end up needing more. For this reason I like going to restaurants that offer free refills.
They do offer this "up-size" drinks and fries in most fastfood in our place and I usually go for the regular one instead of the upgrade simply because the regular one is enough for me But there are some cases that I go for the upgrade when I feel thirsty or if the upgrade's price is just close to the meal's regular price. There are also places that offers unlimited refill to which I prefer rather than upsizing my drink.
Even though McDonalds has all $1 drinks I still order just a small for that's all I can drink. I only like the sugarless iced tea anyway. I watch my sugar and am glad that when I went to Walmart's Wellness Day I scored a normal sugar count when they stabbed me with the blood counting mechanism. I love the 2 for $3 McPick at McDonalds and these days it seems this is how to get meat to eat, lol. I just checked my sale ad and fresh corn beef is going for 3.49 a pound on sale! I guess I got to go to the deli for a quarter pound of corn beef, but going back to the drinks, I take a small anyway so I don't waste.
Go large drinks cannot be good for you, as sodas, themselves, are not. Nonetheless, the vice of drinking sodas doesn't hurt everyone on an equal level. Anyway, getting a "Go Large" should be cheaper, at least in the US, cause corn syrup is massively cheap. In fact, recently, as the poster above mentioned, a lot of McDonald's restaurants in the US have been offering them for a dollar, not around 2 dollars as in most places.
I find it odd that you were able to check the fast food store's trash bin as these are located in their kitchen, and not in places where their customers dine. Going large is only a waste of money and resources if the diner doesn't consume the whole cup of drinks. If you ever bother to check the drinks, you'll find that most fast food restaurants fill half the cup with tube ice. The slow eaters would hardly notice it as the ice might have melted when it's time to take a sip. However, I'm a fast eater and I do notice the excessive ice tubes. On most occasions, I would just content myself with the regular drinks and just eat the ice , but when it's hot outside, I would go for a large drink to satisfy my thirst, and then eat ice to finish off.
I really do enjoy to have a good drink but I'm too selective when it comes to drinks. I hardly take soft drinks, I prefer alcoholic beverages in the name of beers and my brand is Heineken. I don't fast food restaurant normally sell beers, they basically focus on the food and soft drinks as it fetches them more money with peace and quiet compared to if they should sell alcoholic beverages.
I don't think the American McDonalds dollar deal is going away anytime soon. It seems permanent. However, though, the American Wendy's soft drinks are better. Why? It's because you can choose whatever flavor you want. In other words, they have lemon coke, cherry Mellow Yellow etc.. (eat-in only). Oh, by the way, if you eat-in, all American fast food restaurants have unlimited refills. That's been the case for some time.
I don't order drink on fastfood, I bring my own drinks because most fastfoods in my area cheats on customers. They will fill your plastic cup with ice before putting soda. Buying a liter of Soda is more money saving.
Surely it is waste of money if there are not enough person to finish. Even I would not prefer for large as myself will not able to complete large one. So normal size is good enough for me so why to spend more. Also wasting food is not good habit. So better we go for the meal in limied quantity if we don';t have enough crowd to complete the food.
This is a golden rule for anyone who wants to save money, haha. You just have to do a simple math in your head to see how much it's worth.
I personally think it is just better to have your own beverage good and ready in the car. Primarily water, chances are you are probably already munching down hundreds of calories when eating out and having a little be of bottle water could help wash it down without adding any extra calories. Your saving money and possibly your health that way.
I particularly haven't bought drinks like soda when go in a fast food restaurants. I prefer to drink water because it is more healthy and cheapen than soft drinks. After all, fast foods restaurants has practiced abusive prices for sodas.
Most of the fast food places have a drink fountain that you can refill your drink whenevery you want to do so, and since it costs less to get the regular size than the larger cup, it never made any sense to me to pay extra just to have a larger cup. As long as you have unlimited refills, it doesn’t make much difference what size the cup is. If I am picking up food to eat at home, then I never purchase drinks anyway, because buying soda pop at the grocery store is much cheaper than buying it from a convenience store or fast food restaurant. Sometimes the super-size includes both the drink and the fries,and since I seldom even eat all of the fries even in the smaller size, there is no sense in making that larger either. Most of the time, we cook our meals at home; so stopping at a fast food place is something that we rarely do, anyway.
Maybe you will laugh but when I am going out to eat junk food as from Mc Donalds or KFC I do not order drinks, I order only the food because it is cheaper and I can save some money if I go there with a bottle of water. We do not have such an offer of a large drink, here a cup of juice is more than 2 dollars.
