Food Theory: Never Order A Burger King Medium Soda!

last month this tick tock from user moiker went viral racking up over 12 million views and counting the video suggests that mcdonald's cups despite appearing to be different sizes actually hold the same amount of liquid now this obviously is a fake video the internet was quick to point out that we never see the bottom of the cups so obviously there's something already inside those cups taking up volume myth busted almost you see moyker's tick-tock isn't as fake as you might think we ran the test ourselves and got some pretty interesting results sure the cups may be built to hold different volumes of soda but they don't when you actually factor in one important and inescapable variable the ice that the workers are putting in so really the concept was right with moyker's tick tock the restaurant is the only thing he got wrong sorry bk hello internet welcome to food theory the show that offers free refills to anyone who thirsts for knowledge can you sense it theorists that energy in the air the hairs standing up on the back your neck diet coke the nectar of the gods is near see in a previous episode team theorist carried out an experiment to determine which fast food french fry order is objectively the best definitely check that one out if you haven't already today though we're given fountain drinks the same treatment which means that i finally have myself an opportunity to write off massive quantities of diet coke as a business expense i'm sorry i'm just so happy suck it up man and then you can suck up all that sweet sweet diet coke i'm just so happy that this is a big moment for me now it may come as a surprise to you to learn that of all the items on a fast food restaurants menu fountain drinks are generally the most profitable that's right your favorite fast food place might very well be making more money off the drink than they are off the burger even though the burger is more expensive for you to buy this is because fountain drinks are just extremely cheap to produce and require next to zero labor to prepare in restaurant folks it's not uncommon for restaurants to sell fountain drinks to customers at a thousand percent price markup or more so what i want to know is are there any fast food restaurants out there that aren't completely gouging us at the drive through no but hey that's just the theory of food theory bon appetit thanks for subscribing ring the bell while you're here that would be a great way to finish off the terrible year of 2020. thank you so much i'll see you next week for a new episode but seriously in a world where you're constantly being gouged by everyone around you who is gouging you the least that my friends is why today food theory is uncovering the cold refreshing truth we're gonna show you who's serving up a deal and who's making a steal for the purposes of this experiment we decided to focus on five multinational drive-through fast food chains that serve soft drinks mcdonald's kfc burger king taco bell and wendy's starbucks didn't make the cut because they don't serve fountain drinks and other huge fast food chains like subway weren't considered because their drive-through game is well sub par one day when covid's over and dining rooms across the us are back up maybe we'll be able to conduct a broader experiment that looks at non-drive-thru options but until then food theory playing it safe as should you now in order to pick the objective winner of fast food soft drinks i wanted to consider two different things first obviously i wanted to know whose soft drinks are priced the lowest so i decided to measure the true volume of soda in each and every cup and then divide that by the cost in order to determine the amount of soda that you're getting per dollar that you're spending the second order of business was to then figure out which restaurants if any were screwing the customers over by adding tons of ice or not filling the cup up all the way i decided that we could determine the fill percentage of each soft drink order by dividing the actual volume of soda in the cup by the maximum capacity of the cup that is how much liquid the cup can hold before overflowing in both cases it was important to figure out exactly how much soda was in the cups sure i get that mcdonald's small is about 16 fluid ounces 473 milliliters burger king's medium is roughly 20 fluid ounces 592 milliliters and so on but that doesn't tell us how much soda is actually reaching the customer's lips some of that cuff space is being taken up by ice some of that cup space is being taken up by air and so with strainers in tow team theorists went out and collected data from numerous drive-throughs throughout los angeles california at each restaurant we ordered their entire drink size lineup if you will meaning that we ordered a small medium and large diet coke except for kfc as they only offered two sizes regular and large in order to get more than one data point for each drink we made sure to hit multiple of each restaurant we ordered each drink exactly as it appears on the menu we didn't customize the drink order in any way after receiving the drinks at the drive-through window we immediately separated the ice from the soda in every cup and i'm talking right there in the parking lot in our car so as to minimize any ice melt we then measured the liquid volumes of each soda order and compiled this handy-dandy table after crunching all the numbers here's what the data told us first up amount of soda per dollar spent this tells us how much delicious soda not ice a dollar can buy at each restaurant the number one winning drink in this category was the mcdonald's large which averaged 22.2 ounces per dollar or 657 milliliters per dollar spent followed by second place the mcdonald's medium 16.6 ounces per dollar or 491 milliliters and third place was rounded out by mcdonald's again the mcdonald's small at 11.6 ounces per dollar or 343 milliliters so for those of you keeping score at home there's no typo here mcdonald's swept the podium conversely coming in last place with a mere 4.2 ounces or 124 milliliters per dollar was the burger king medium you heard that right not the burger king small the medium fountain drink is the least cost effective option at burger king me thinks that bk might be overloading its medium drinks with ice but we'll have to wait and see what the fill percentage numbers tell us now when the entire drink lineups of each restaurant were averaged together mcdonald's naturally emerged as the best overall restaurant for soda per dollar kfc came in second and wendy's was right on their heels but okay how could mcdonald's have earned itself the clean sweep well an interesting thing about mcdonald's pricing is that they charge the exact same price one dollar for every fountain drink that means a large diet coke is a dollar a medium is a dollar a small is a dollar the four other restaurants in our experiment all priced their drinks the way that you'd expect the larger the size the larger the price but mcdonald's is taking a different tactic with their pricing either they grew a conscience and decided to only mark up their soft drinks by about 400 or so yeah right or they decided it was better business to use ultra low drink prices to lure in customers and expect them to add a burger or some fries on the side when they're just popping in for a soda given that mcdonald's quarterly sales shot up by an impressive 3.9 percent immediately after implementing the new drink pricing system in the us it sure seems like it was a winning strategy i guess when you're a so-called restaurant that makes most of your money in real estate see also our other video on mcdonald's you can really undercut your competitors on drink prices huh by the way for all you mad lads who like to maximize your soda order by ordering without ice ran the numbers for that one too the results were pretty much identical to the with ice results with mcdonald's drinks sweeping the podium yet again the most cost effective no ice soft drink order by far is the mcdonald's large which gets you a whopping 30.2 ounces that is 893 milliliters for a dollar likewise all your thrifty soda shoppers out there should probably avoid burger king they had the least cost effective no ice drink lineup of all the restaurants and their small drink was the priciest per ounce at a mere 6.6 ounces per dollar 195 milliliters per dollar now let's talk phil percentage because here we wound up with some really interesting results strangely the drinks that averaged the highest fill percentage and the drinks that averaged the lowest fill percentages both came from burger king the burger king large had an extremely high fill percentage of 89.7 no other drink from any other restaurant came within 10 percentage points of that conversely the burger king medium had a strikingly low fill percentage of 56 in fact so much of the burger king medium's cup was taken up by ice that it basically held the same amount of soda as the small when you factor in the ice the burger king small and medium were only different by 0.1 fluid ounce 3 milliliters and remember we arrived at these numbers by averaging multiple locations together one of the burger king orders that we got actually had a medium drink with two fewer ounces of soda than the small seriously this is why you should never order a burger king medium when the full lineup of drinks were considered burger king's low scoring medium largely cancelled out its high scoring large and burger king finished second overall in phil percentage closely behind windy's number one placement with an average of 73.8 percent kfc's lineup of drinks was the clear loser in this race averaging just 63.1 percent of the cup actually filled with soda so now the time has come to name the objectively best soft drink order in all the land to take home the crown a drink needs to have performed well in both categories amount of soda per dollar and fill percentage after all what good is an inexpensive soft drink if it's just gonna be watered down by too much ice by the time you're halfway done with it i mean come on if i wanted to drink a watered-down diet coke i would have ordered a diet pepsi mk for the final tally i took the rankings of each soft drink in both categories and added the two numbers together in the end it was a two-way tie for first place between the mcdonald's large and the mcdonald's medium close behind and tied for third place were the burger king large and the windy's medium coming in dead last was the ice filled and dare i say it overpriced burger king medium now for the full drink lineup awards which restaurants were the big winners and losers in our soft drink experiment haven't talked a lot about taco bell up to this point but their full lineup of soft drinks quietly earned the restaurant last place tied for first place overall was mcdonald's and wendy's both of whom found a way to keep their prices low while also going easy on the ice now before i leave you today let me run one last calculation past year that i did for fun you'll recall that fast food restaurants mark up the price of soda by a thousand percent or more well i was curious to know what it would take for a customer to flip the script after all a lot of places offer unlimited refills so let's say there's a fast food customer who really really really really likes his diet coke you won't know him he's completely fictional definitely not me despite the fact that i do live my life by the motto if you're not getting at least three free refills before you leave the restaurant then what are you doing with yourself so how many free refills would it take for this 100 definitely fictitious customer to get his diet coke at cost well although the restaurants don't exactly publicize these figures themselves it's estimated that an ounce of soda costs 1.32 cents to manufacture and the cup lid and straw cost roughly 9.5 cents that means that if a customer bought the most cost-effective fast food diet coke possible a mcdonald's large with no ice he'd really only need one refill 1.1 refills to be exact in order to get the soda at cost which honestly is way fewer refills than i thought it would take but that's really a testament to how low mcdonald's soda prices are set but if that same customer were to instead try the refill challenge with our least cost effective soft drink the burger king medium with ice he'd have to get 17.6 refills in order to get his money's worth so there you have it theorists now keep in mind that soft drink prices in your local area could be different so definitely feel free to run these calculations on your own and if you do have any hot tips for restaurant chains that we should look into once dining rooms are open go ahead let us know down in the comments below oh and uh by the way if you're one of those people who call it pop go ahead and leave a comment below too so the soda people can swarm you with reasons why you're wrong as a person who grew up with pop in ohio you have my support but hey that's just a theory a food theory bon appetit you've done it you've made it to yet another food theory end card and yet for some strange reason you're still not subscribed as a smart well-meaning intelligent person the only option you have is to hit the red subscribe button and now that you know what the most efficient drink order is you should probably compliment that by figuring out what the most efficient french fry order is that video is on screen right now it's a lot like this episode but it's gonna make you a whole heck of a lot saltier

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 4,979,385

Rating: 4.9202332 out of 5

Keywords: burger king, mcdonalds, taco bell, kfc, soda, soda size, drink size, burger king soda, soda tiktok, drink size tiktok, mcdonalds soda, mcdonalds soda tiktok, mcdonalds mukbang, burger king mukbang, burger king commercial, drink size comparison, taco bell mukbang, taco bell commercial, kcf soda, kfc mukbang, kfc commercial, kfc chicken recipe, mcdonalds fries, soda size comparison, food theory, food theorists, matpat, game theory, film theory, food, wendy's, wendy's mukbang

Id: EHUgkEvyVYY

Length: 12min 14sec (734 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ComfyCatgirl]

Matpat 2011: Is Chrono Trigger’s time travel scientifically accurate

Matpat 2016: Is Sans actually Ness?

Matpat 2020: GATHER ROUND CHILDREN I’M GONNA TEACH YOU HOW TO OUT-CON BIG FAST FOOD CHAINS SO THE CAPITALISTS DON’T RIP YOU OFF

[u/Amoeba_Highlander]

Where i live, we only have bk and subway, It's a really remote place, sooooo i don't have much choice in fast food

[u/PowerPad]

Wait, they’re all the same?

Always has been.

[u/MoonFoxx007]

*laughs in doesn't eat burger king*

[u/Muumitfan]

Since the topic is about soda drinks like coke and pepsi, I guess it's a good time to ask if the drinks include something that makes you more prone to, uh well pee? Is it it because of the sugar or with the carbon.

[u/made_it_for_lwiay]

I work at bk so this should be interesting

[u/blackbeansandyogurt]

Medium or large?

Small please

[u/No_Abbreviations4833]

I swear. If they suckered me out on soda!!

[u/the_emo_in_corner]

hes me but with diet coke intead of rootbeer