Chick-Fil-A's Paper Cups Have Employees Divided
Chick-fil-A has had a long history with their iconic styrofoam cups. Back in 2017, the brand started discovering ecological solutions for these containers and began recycling them to create other products, including benches and name tags, per Chron. But despite the good-natured intention of this recycling program, many diners didn't feel like the fast food chain did enough to curb the environmental impact of their cups. In fact, a Change.org petition designed to encourage the restaurant to transition to paper cups, explaining that polystyrene found in styrofoam cups contains harmful chemicals, received almost 300,000 signatures.
It appears that the restaurant chain has acknowledged the outcry and one Redditor discovered that their local Chick-fil-A now uses paper cups. They created a post in honor of the discovery, titled, "Did anyone else's store get the new paper cups? It's a trial run, corporate plans to get rid of styrofoam." This change created quite a stir across Reddit as users of the platform jumped on the thread to share their takes on the situation.
A new look for Chick-fil-A cups
The new cups caused a massive stir over on r/ChickFilAWorkers. Some users loved the new material for ecological reasons and responded with gems like, "More environmentally friendly, love it," and "Styrofoam takes wayyy longer to break down, this is them finally listening to customer complaints about not being 'environmentally conscious,' even if the chemicals are just as bad for the environment." Other Redditors appreciated the pragmatism of styrofoam cups and left comments ranging between, "I really hope this doesn't become the regular I like my styrofoam cups," all the way to, "We still have styrofoam cups but one time we ordered paper by accident. The box is still sitting on the shelf rotting away."
Other comments went after paper cups in general, and included takes like, "They suck and the drinks leak through them." At the end of the day, Chick-fil-A will need to put in extra effort to win over workers and restaurant goers who have gotten used to the current styrofoam cups. As long as the brand can win over the Redditor who responded with, "They better keep my ice cold all day and not get all watered down. I like my Styrofoam lol," the brand could claim the material switch-up as a victory.