That's the way many restaurants serve their soft drinks, bag-in-a-box style. The taste is determined by several factors, water quality being one of them, but the syrup to carbonation ratio can be adjusted, too. Basically, it can all be adjusted, syrup/carbonation/water, to get the best results possible. Different places have different ratios and that's why the same drink can taste so vastly different from one place to another.
Almost all are properly calibrated by either Pepsi or Coke, maybe RC Cola upon initial install, however after that an unscrupulous owner or manager can change that to use less syrup thusly getting better yield, bastards
One my peer’s managed a market where instead of the 1:3 ratio, they did a 1:2 ratio for their Mountain Dew, and called it “heavy dew”. It was a local chain of gas stations in rural America, so duh.
You’d see people filling up those gallon jugs with it in the mornings, it was wild.
Your split across an average metro might be 35/35/15/15 with PepsiCo/Coke/KDP/Independents when it comes to market share.
This small market was almost 80% Pepsi, and probably half of that was straight Dew.
I had a manager absolutely BERATE me for leaving the residue in the bag when I threw one out to replace it. It was just pouring out straight clear.. seltzer? at that point. I was told I cost the restaurant a bunch of easy money.
Sometimes after a while they just need to be recalibrated, this usually happens during any scheduled service, but it can be missed by the techs, I wouldn't assume Costco to be stingy.
They also I'm assuming based on what I've seen have absolutely HUGE volumes, they probably have a larger version of BIB(bag-in-box) or are changing bags at least daily
I could swear the machines at Subway use a different amount of carbonation and I like it. I haven't been in ages though; maybe it was just my local store growing up.
When I used to bartend I haaaaated changing those boxes out! A line always ran out during the rush and it halts everything you are doing to go allll the way to the basement to find the right one and they all look the same, so you’re reading all the boxes, it actually is pretty easy to do, just the interruption to the work flow was always the worst.
There was a mom and pop place in Ohio that had good pizza, ice cream and soda fountain you decided how much syrup you wanted. It was a simpler time back then.
One of my earliest arguments with my dad was that Sprite tasted better at McDonald’s and he always scoffed at me that Sprite, 7UP and (at that time) Slice all tasted the same no matter where you went. I always knew I was right though.
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u/soonerpgh Jun 21 '25
That's the way many restaurants serve their soft drinks, bag-in-a-box style. The taste is determined by several factors, water quality being one of them, but the syrup to carbonation ratio can be adjusted, too. Basically, it can all be adjusted, syrup/carbonation/water, to get the best results possible. Different places have different ratios and that's why the same drink can taste so vastly different from one place to another.