Dear places that sell food

Potential-Monke

Diet Coke and Coke Zero are NOT THE SAME. THEYRE NOT INTERCHANGABLE!!!

Most places I go to now when I ask for diet coke, I'm met with a version of "Is coke zero OK?", and each and every one of them have absolutely no clue what to say when I say no. Why do these places think zero and diet are the same? They taste completely different!

So if any food place owners are reading this, just like I did today 3 times, I won't order in your place. And it'll also waste time as the drink is the last thing to be mentioned so I end up cancelling the order.

Is there anything else they do this with? I know some places tried to introduce diet milk as the only option for coffee/tea but that didn't last long.

Hippodrome Song Owl

100% There is no comparison! I have found this issue widespread previously in Italy and Portugal, only recently creeping in here.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058361540/dear-places-that-sell-food

Usual output of a highly strung diet coke consumer. I could feel your hands shaking through your post.

Chill out and have a Coke Zero, they're much nicer 😁

Speak Now

Hmmmm thought this was going to be about how expensive places that sells food 🫣

drury..

Get the coke original taste

The real deal

rathfarnhamlad

Dear places that sell food,

If I'm ordering a sandwich or a roll and don't explicitly ask for that inedible crap consisting of deep-fried reconstituted chicken, then that means I don't want it.

Next time I ask for, cheese, tomato, onion and peppers for example, then you give me about a teaspoon of each then ask "plain or spicy?" I will simply pretend to have no idea what you're talking about.

Soc_Alt

Diet Coke is muck but I do understand the frustration as Diet and Zero are 2 completely different tasting drinks.

Bobson Dugnutt

Diet Coke is absolutely rank. Like genuinely nasty.

suvigirl

Maybe they don't know what they taste like! I don't. But if they're anything like coke (I'm guessing they are) then, yuck.

o1s1n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122429272#Comment_122429272

Interesting fact, Diet Coke was based on the 'New Coke' formula that was introduced in the 80s. Hence it being called 'Diet Coke' and not 'Diet Coca Cola'.

People went batshit, demanded the classic Coca Cola formula was brought back and it was, 'New Coke' was gone. Coca Cola as we all know it today was back.

'New Coke' didn't completely vanish though and partially lived on via 'Diet Coke'.

I never tasted 'New Coke' back in the 80s, always wondered did it taste like Diet Coke does now given the same formula being used.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122429304#Comment_122429304

Diet Coke was basically Tab - most people only remember it from the joke in Back To The Future - with a different sweetener, New Coke may have tasted like Tab with sugar - they never made such a thing though.

It predated New Coke by many years.

The whole formula change thing was a mess globally, I've read that ours tastes more like New Coke still, but I never had either official New Coke or the old type to begin with. In the US they changed to corn syrup instead of sugar at the same time which would have had an impact too.

Soc_Alt

I've been on the other side where I ask for a Coke Zero and been offered a Diet Coke.

I refuse everytime.

Soc_Alt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122429345#Comment_122429345

I heard Mexican Coca Cola tastes amazing. Their Fanta also.

Princess Calla

If I ask you have you club lemon and you say yes , I then order club lemon.

For the love of Jesus do not give me Fanta Lemon!

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058361540/dear-places-that-sell-food

That would be the aspartame withdrawl symptoms your feeling there.

Potential-Monke

I was just annoyed people, it's not withdrawals or anything. Been drinking it solely for years now and I'm the healthiest I've been. Used to drink the full fat Coke but even just giving that up I lost a stone. Die change to Coke zero initially, but then into diet. The full fat Coke, aside from having 10 spoons of sugar in them, are too sickly sweet now, and leave a horrible coating in my mouth. Zero now tastes like a watered down version of that. And the diet is savage now. Mad how tastes can change. I think I like that it's not overpowering. And water gives me indigestion so...

Ya'll believe stuff on t'internet far too much, aspartame poisoning would require 80 cans a day, every day, for 4 years to get poisoned. I'll blow your minds now by saying I also like MSG in food! Still the healthiest I've ever been.

And twas more a rant at food places just deciding they're the same. And especially nowadays with some places charging upwards of €4 for a drink. People wouldn't be too happy if they ordered a Heineken and got a Bud, or ordered a Gunniess and got a Beamish, etc...

Allinall

What's wrong with being offered an alternative if they don't have what you ask for?

That's just good business.

Donald Trump

If you ask them for diet coke and they ask you if coke zero is ok, that doesn't mean they think they are the same. It means they don't have diet coke and ask, albeit maybe presumptuously, whether you'd like that as an alternative.

If you went to your friend's house and he said "do you want a drink" and you said "give me a heinekin" and he said "will a corona do?", you would probably realise that he only has the latter rather than assuming he thinks they are the same thing.

Either way, not really worth getting one's knickers in a twist over.

amacca

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058361540/dear-places-that-sell-food

Afaic diet and zero taste like shite so no real difference, I can understand why they think they are the same...I could also understand why a server might think that suggesting either as a substitute for the other wouldn't be entirely unreasonable...In my head it would be something like...ah so you like the taste of artificial chemical crap...sorry I don't have the exact type of chemical tasting shite you like but I do have alternative chemical shite...would you like some of that instead?

Both pumped with aspartame or stevia/steviol glycosides or saccharin or some other equally gack tasting crap...

They are just about tolerable until you get that awful lingering aftertaste off the chemical crap

Wish to **** as an individual I could have the choice of normal soft drink with sugar in it but the only thing left is the soft drink I used to find the least tasty, classic coke.

Sneaky bastards pretending 7up hasnt changed 7 either...initially labelled and now it's just 7up with a % less sugar...replaced with you guessed it awful aftertaste tasting sweetener

igCorcaigh

It's awful example of the law of unintended consequences.

You could argue that sugar is less harmful than the artificial sweeteners. But that's for another thread I guess!

Oscar_Madison

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122429345#Comment_122429345

Awe Tab, I remember it well

Oscar_Madison

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122429838#Comment_122429838

indeed- I’ve noticed in last year of so, restaurants etc only have Coke Zero - I’ve been ordering diet cokes in restaurants for decades so hard to break a habit but looks like zero is the replacement for Diet Coke now

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122429928#Comment_122429928

Is it nor something to do with the sugar tax that was brought in?

Bandana boy

I assumed this would be about Eddie Rocketts

Oscar_Madison

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122429942#Comment_122429942

wasn’t Diet Coke though not sugar free?

I think coke are keeping both diet and zero in their offering but seems to me many establishments are just stocking zero and no longer stock Diet Coke

Donald Trump

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122429948#Comment_122429948

I don't know.

Anyway, I feel the OP's pain. It has brought back buried memories of the time I once asked for a club orange and was asked whether fanta was ok.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122429946#Comment_122429946

Donnybrook Fair / Fallon & Byrne were my initial thoughts

Hippodrome Song Owl

My experience is that they don't ask if you want Zero as an alternative. You order Diet, and they bring out Zero and act shocked that you're not happy with that. If Diet Coke isn't available, then I would prefer something completely different or possibly go elsewhere altogether, depending on the situation. Coke Zero will never be the acceptable alternative.

Gary_dunne

Didn't think that people would be so annoyed because a restaurant doesn't have the exact drink they wanted that they'd "end up cancelling the order."

If I went to a restaurant ordered a Carlsberg with my meal and they said they didn't have it you just pick a different lager or drink altogether, hardly going to walk out because they don't have "diet coke" 😂

nachouser

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058361540/dear-places-that-sell-food

Ask the question before ordering food? Buy a diet coke before entering?

Yeah Right

Dear places that sell food……..

Stop being scabby with the napkins please. I know they cost money, but they work out at less than 1c per sheet. Just up the price by 10c and gimme ten, please.

Sick of getting food and receiving a scaldy amount of napkins with it. Even worse when it's a kebab or something that gets messy.

Oscar_Madison

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122429961#Comment_122429961

Fanta is never ok- Devils piss

Potential-Monke

Ah boards, the exact place to go if you want people to completely make up their own version of events when they don't have all the info.

If you think drinking a few cans of diet coke is enough to kill you from aspartame poisoning, well, fool on you. It's like the msg scare, aspartame is harmless in small doses for the majority of people.

And being offered an alternative is fine, its assuming people would be OK with zero instead of diet that is the problem. I do ask beforehand now, save me the bother of going through the order only to cancel.

And there's a fair amount of people who would be OK with paying a premium price for something they didn't want to behin with, just because it's the only option. With the prices we pay these days for food, I find it mad people are willing to take things that they wouldn't normally.

Diet coke used to be an option, now it isn't. That's the point. Not the offer of something else, but only having the zero choice now is the issue. I can't find the figures on mobile, Google is gone sh!t for actually searching, but diet coke is still the biggest selling zero sugar softdrink. Zero only exists because men couldn't get over the manliness and drink the "wimmens" drink. So they're offering the less popular alternative, instead of offering the more popular or both.... its the decision to not stock the diet is my reason for not going there now.

People are getting far too upset at someone else's decisions based on a forced situation. The whole point of this thread was to let food places know that zero is not a suitable alternative, and to start selling the more popular one again...

drury..

I just drink the coke original taste as a occasional treat.

Tastes like great stuff to me anyhow

I couldn't be drinking any of that diet/zero stuff. I know people who guzzle down multi packs of it.

Potential-Monke

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122430001#Comment_122430001

Some places won't let you. I've one place that will, thankfully as their food is banging. But the more upmarket a place thinks it is, the less likely you'll be allowed to bring your own. And when I'm paying €3+ for a can, it better be what I like rather than what makes the owners life somehow easier by not ordering the diet version for some unknown reason.

Between the price increases and this, its like places don't want you eating out anymore.

drury..

What coke does McDonald's sell

Always tastes ok

Patrick2010

thought I clicked into the wrong thread😀

Re zero v diet I can’t tell the difference but then I used to think Lidl’s 3.99 wines tasted fine so my taste buds may not be the most sophisticated 😀

Can’t consider drinking a can with 10 (14 ?) spoons of sugar in it.

advisemerite

When you ask for a 7up and without even asking you they bring out sprite. **** right off.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122430179#Comment_122430179

All three choices are available there

mykrodot

why do people call Coke with sugar in it "full fat"? It has no fat in it at all.

Full fat is milk, cream, yogurt, cheese, butter etc……………..its not Coke.

amacca

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122430335#Comment_122430335

The phrase doesn't have to be literal...it has been adopted and is sometimes used as a generic term to mean the real/original or more powerful etc

ie: people use it to refer to range rover....the full fat range rover or ffrr being the original luxobarge of the roads..rather than the more yuppie poncey range rover sport for instance....I assume in that particujar example they are aware a range rover is unlikely to contain much in the way of fats/trans fats, etc

Although in this case I assume as the sugar is more likely to be converted into fats by one's body than the diet/zero versions you could make yhe argument its not that far off the mark I suppose.

Hande hoche!

Used to be people complaining about serving Pepsi, progress of sorts.

wandererz

Drink?

drury..

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122430335#Comment_122430335

It's called "original taste"

More like full sugar , great drink imo

Victor

I've seen this thread on the front page of the site several times and read some of the first page earlier today.

Each time I've seen it, I presumed they meant "Expensive places that sell food".

Esel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122429946#Comment_122429946

Or Fallon & Byrne…

Pauliedragon

The place I go I only buy the good coke. None of this diet nonsense. The fella in the car park always sells me the proper coke.

Jim_Hodge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122430944#Comment_122430944

Exactly. OP do us all a favour and edit the title.

drury..

I read it as a letter

Dear Places

It's word saladdy anyhow

gym_imposter

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058361540/dear-places-that-sell-food

Diet Coke is muck , I like coke zero

Potential-Monke

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122431020#Comment_122431020

Nah, I revel in confusion.

What's happened tk AH? While the last few posts have been more like it, the first few where people are taking this far too seriously (it was a rant) is not what AH used to be. CA was created for the serious stuff. AH used to be guaranteed to have mostly humorous replies, never taken too seriously. People would add to the rant, it would start to invoke other comparisons, and would evolve into pages of mostly humorous nonsense.

Point still stands though... :)