McDonald's employee finally reveals the purpose of the button on top of its drink cups

Fast food chains often use unique packaging to stand out, but sometimes those quirky design elements serve a purpose beyond aesthetics. Take McDonald's drink cups, for example—those tiny bubble-like buttons on top aren’t just for show. While most people might overlook them as they enjoy their meal, one curious Reddit user, u/ShoKKa_, asked the online community if anyone knew what those buttons were actually for and sought answers from any McDonald's worker reading the post. "Apologies if this isn't a place to ask questions to employees, but I genuinely found nothing when searching for this on Google, at least for UK restaurants anyway," the person wrote in their post.

"My question is about the McDonald's drink lids which have the 'buttons' on them. I just ordered 2 drinks, one Diet Coke and one Coke Classic and one of them had the number '1' button pressed. The buttons are the numbers 1 and 2, no caff, diet/light. The only one pressed was the number 1. Which one is diet? Should they have just pushed the diet one in? The number 1 means nothing to me, but it's important I know which is which," the post concluded. Responding to this another user u/ky390, who possibly worked at a McDonald's store in the UK, wrote, "Well, in my store, we tend to do 2 for diet and all 4 for Coke Zero. Every other store gets annoyed when we help them 'cause we do it differently (I think most stores are 1 for diet and 2 for zero)."

The person behind the original post then replied, "Thanks for the help. Going forward, I'll drink the one which has the button '1' pushed in. Any reason you don't use the diet/light one? It seems to vary from restaurant to restaurant. If in doubt, I'll just ask in the future. Cheers."

u/ky390 responded once again by revealing that he finds it funny when they help other stores to figure it out because most of them can't tell which one it is. That's when others joined the conversation and u/ereek01 commented, "Not in the UK, but we don't have Diet Coke only zero and we just press a random button." u/ChrisTheBae added, "Yeah seems to be different for every store but we usually just push 1 random button for Diet Coke and then either 2 random or all 4 buttons for Coke Zero. It's just faster to push random buttons than spend the time to actually find the diet button on every lid, I guess."

In a similar vein, a former McDonald’s chef revealed why many fast-food outlets are discontinuing free drink refills. Mike Haracz, who goes by @chefmikeharacz on TikTok, mentioned that customers would purchase one drink and take multiple free refills, which is why they were discontinued. "People are finding out that restaurants are removing drink machines from their lobby," Haracz said in his video. 

Haracz shared that several restaurants are likely to charge for every refill in the future. "An internet operating owner mentioned that there is no stipulation in the contract stating that restaurants need to offer free refills," he explained. He added that this understanding gives owners the freedom to discontinue free refills. "The dispenser requires you to refill it into a dirty, used cup, which could be the cause of health issues," he added, making a revelation. "The owner mentioned that the cup costs more than the drink. It is not the beverage that costs money. They are making a lot of money through the beverages."