Restaurant GMs: When soda passes through the machine is it chilled?!
Answers: does the soda come out cold chilled or cooled, and how would it do that???
There is often, but not always, a cooling device on the soda water line that has a couple of hoses connected to it and sits at the bottom of a nearby ice bin to cool the soda water a bit as it flows through. It looks like a rectangular aluminum "board", about an inch or so thick with a couple hoses attached. Not extremely effective, but does chill the soda some so that it doesn't melt ice cubes extremely quickly...
I think there are mechanically refrigerated systems, but I've never seen one...
"Cooling the syrup from the boxes" would have little effect because the syrups only make up 20% of the drink. It's mainly the soda water that must be cooled.
EDIT: I didn't even see that the correct answer was already here... except for the "foaming" part... LOL I'm not buyin' it... It's mainly so the ice doesn't melt as soon as you put it in and you don't hand people gross, watered-down beverages that don't appear "fresh".
The syrup/water lines run through a "cold plate" which is located in the bottom of the ice bin of the soda station...soda needs to be chilled before dispensing; If soda is warm (room temperature) when poured, it tends to foam, which in turn would slow down speed of service...
**EDIT** ( This can be demonstrated by taking two bottles/cans of soda, one chilled and one at room temperature, and pouring each into a glass...you will notice that the room temperature soda tends to foam and needs to be topped off in order to fill the glass---topping off sodas is time consuming and slows speed of service, which is critical in the fast paced restaurant industry )
Probably passed through a cooling Chamber
where the hoses from the soda boxes come into the machine, there is a refirgerant area that cools the liquids, so they come out cold. just like a refrigerator, only this liquid passes through a special box where the dispenser mechanism is located, so it comes out at its coldest point.