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Notes -
I had a friend I've since lost touch with who manages a McD's at the time of this lawsuit so we all had to ask him about it. His initial thought was that McD's should have just settled and paid out, but his take on the subject of the coffee temp was interesting. Apparently a lot of older folks come there for coffee in the morning; he estimated at least 50% of their traffic before 10am was seniors getting coffee and usually a small food item like a hashbrown or muffin of some sort. They sit down, get a free newspaper from the bin by the door and sip their coffee. This same customer demo complaining about their coffee being too cold was also the single biggest complaint category and reason for a refund demand by a long margin. They sip the coffee slowly over the course of half an hour, it gets cold pretty fast, and they'd bring 1/2 empty coffee cups back to the counter complaining about the temperature. Staff usually just gives them more "fresh" coffee from the urn. There was no realistic way they could ever actually lower the served temperature of the coffee. They briefly started lowering the temperature of drive in served coffee but that drove complaints immediately. I don't know what they ultimately did about it. His preferred solution was no coffee for the drive through period.
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