I agree that the drink prices are getting totally out of hand. To the point I've considered stopping ordering them as well. That said, they are preying on laziness, and thusfar they've still got me caught up in it. Seems like there's a real marketing opportunity for these chains to go reasonable on the drinks/sides. Probably why my customer satisfaction is infinitely higher at CookOut/Steak&Shake compared to most of the fast food places that end up costing me $10 rather than $6.
Yea, I really don't get why that works. I pretty much never get non-alcoholic drinks at restaurants anymore b/c I don't get why they are trying to cram ridiculous profit margins into one category. I guess it makes sure that people don't sit around taking up a table sipping on drinks? But a lot of restaurants do the ridiculous $3 drink and then have free refills, so that doesn't even make sense.
But I'm obviously in the minority because most restaurants seem to do it, so most people must suck it up and pay. I can remember doing pizza hut buffet in college and the buffet would be like $5 one day a week, can't remember which, but the drinks worked out to like $3.27 after tax. Never understood why my friends that were cost conscious enough to care about a $5 buffet would then drop that much money on a drink.
At that time, you could still get a Stromboli's pizza for $5 even and pretty much a large pizza anywhere for less than $8 if you looked for the right coupon, and mostly they weren't eating a large pizza worth at the buffet.