Someone told me (and this is completely second hand information that I haven't bothered to verify) that the fountains they use cost in excess of $10K, and that they need to meet some standard set by the Coca Cola company for syrup to soda water rations. I'm inclined to say that's probably exaggeration, but their fountain drinks are always good and virtually the same taste at every restaurant. So maybe it's not bullshit.

hum... interesting... but I'd believe it.

As many fast food restuarants and full service restuarants I have worked in...being the huge coke drinker I am.....I have always taken the time to adjust the syrup mixture to make the coke, at least, taste like a fountain coke should. How do you adjust it? It's a screw that's inside the back of the fountain. It usually takes me about 3 or 4 times but I finally get it right. At least this is the way it used to work. I haven't worked in a restuarant, aside from a brief time (like 2 months) a few months ago, in a few years.

Something else that will make or break the way fountain drinks taste and that's the nozzles. You would not believe how many fountains I've encountered that the nozzles were not cleaned at least once a day, leaving a horrible build up of slime that can make any fountain drink taste like shit! :panic: Any place I've ever opened or closed (and I usually did one or the other), I always took them apart and cleaned them and instilled that in every place I've worked.

Don't think just because you drink tea you're safe from the slime because tea machines and the silver containers they put the tea can be even worse! :panic: Sure they'll clean the nozzles on the tea machines but most places don't regularly clean the metal spouts the nozzles are attached to. Those should be cleaned at least every other day. There's not one place I started to work in and would take the whole nozzle/spout pieces off and get enough nasty black gunk out of there that warranted throwing the cleaning cloth/rag/whatever away. I almost refuse to drink tea in any place. That shit you occassionally see floating in tea that you think are bits of tea is usually that gunk. When it dries it turns into a hard crust that the tea will actually wash the weakest pieces out. Nasty!

I'll drink coke well before I'll drink tea. I've been known to order a coke, drink a little, then get water if the coke doesn't taste right. It's not that it's always a pickiness over the how the cokes tastes as far as the syrup mix, but flat coke is usually caused by the nozzles not being cleaned well too.

I've never worked at a convienence store so I don't know how well they clean their fountain machines.

One other thing: always drink your soft drinks, tea, and water with a straw. Those flats they put the glasses in doesn't guarantee the lips of those glasses are completely clean and alot of times they don't use very hot water.

I'll take a coke in a bottle any day. Metal cans gives them a metallic taste to me.

If I drink tea it's not because of slime... it's to protect myself from all the sugar and other crap in sodas.
:lol:

Ah, another Coke afficionado :)

Wish that I could have had a Coke in one of the places you worked, because I have NEVER had a good fountain Coke. I even notice a difference between the bottled Coke here, in Canada, and the bottled Coke that I get in the southern US. The stuff down there tastes more like I remember it tasting when I was a kid, back in the mid-Jurassic. Must be the type of sugar that's used.

Now that you mentioned sugar, for some reason the containers with sweet tea had more gunk than the unsweatened ones. However, fountain Diet Coke always has the worst looking nozzles. Weird.

I'm telling ya, man... if you're down this way, look for the tall glass bottle Mexican Cokes. :dthumb:
Costco here in Austin has them by the case.

Another person I worked with years ago told me about the screw in the back of the fountains and showed me how to work them. ;) The newer machines I'm not too sure of. I haven't really worked in a restuarant since '04 (2nd job) and that machine was an older one. These newer, smaller ones, I'm not even sure they have it back there since they fountain the syrup mix a little differently...I'm just assuming the connections are different.

The BEST coke I've ever drank were the glass bottled cokes from Mexico. I don't know if it's because they are in a glass bottle and not a plastic one, or if the mixture or sugar is different but those are the best!

And for the record, I've never liked any sodas, fountain or otherwise, from up north. From what I remember it's hard as hell to find a real coke...they usually have Pepsi...flat coke...yuck! :lol:

I haven't seen a glass bottle Coke around here in years, except for those little novelty bottles.

The easiest way to make a buck in the fast food industry is to thin out the syrup in the fountain drinks. I've had some that might as well have been coloured soda water.

I think that the stuff we have up here uses cane sugar and most of the stuff down there is beet sugar. It's easy enough here to find Coke. In fact the whole school is a "Coke shop" so even if I liked Pepsi, which I don't, I'd have to go outside to get it.

shush you and go drink some sweet tea with your grits.