We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines
325 comments
·October 25, 2024ThinkBeat
Bjartr
Part of the issue as I understand it, is that the machine is fairly opaque as to why some failures occur can appear somewhat "flaky" as a result. When this occurs during a cleaning cycle, the whole cycle is void and a new 4 hour cycle must be run.
If the machine was clear about communicating the issue, it would be fine. It's not and can require a technician to come out with a tool to both read the machine status in detail and tweak the machine in the necessary ways to stop it being flaky.
This would all be fine except for the fact that 1. Only technicians from the manufacturer are allowed to be used. 2. Those technicians are unreasonable expensive. 3. The company could make the machines easier to diagnose and repair, but don't because repair calls are lucrative 4. Third parties can, and have, made tools that do make the machines easier to diagnose and repair without the need for a technician, but cant legally sell these solutions because it involves circumventing a digital lock (DMCA violation) 5. McD corporate has an agreement with the manufacturer to maintain this status quo in return for a kickback
oorza
I worked at a McD's franchise 20 years ago that had hired a "retired" ice cream machine guy to work for the franchise full time. With only a half dozen stores, he would still almost always be too busy to make it to our store the same day and sometimes we'd have to wait as long as 3-4 days. Flaky does not even begin to describe how awful those machines are.
I'm not sure if having that guy employed by the franchise was technically kosher or not with McDonald's, but you have to imagine the smart franchises all do this.
LtWorf
McDonald is big enough to change suppliers of machines and impose easy maintenance.
night862
In principle, but they probably contracted this out decades ago. Theres a lot of licensing requirements and regulations surrounding dairy.
This is actually the real source and meaning of the classic track by Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band, "Safe as milk." Dairy is a huge systemic risk, operates on extremely narrow windows everywhere in its production and if left unmanaged will cause outbreaks of horrifying diseases like Typhoid.
ErigmolCt
I thought McDonald’s is often locked into long-term contracts with companies
Bjartr
It's not a problem to be solved from McD corporate's perspective.
davidron
... If incentives were properly aligned to make this the correct strategy, then this is probably what McDonald's would do. Unfortunately not. https://www.today.com/food/trends/why-is-mcdonalds-ice-cream...
trollbridge
Except Dairy Queen, Wendy’s, and McDonald’s outside of the U.S. don’t have this problem.
Somehow I doubt DQ employees are paid better or are better trained or more diligent about regular maintenance. The difference is they don’t have a machine designed to require expensive maintenance visits with a DRM lockout to retard attempts to maintain it by normal restaurant/HVAC maintenance contractors.
wjnc
My stint as a EU McD worker did give me a feel of how well scripted low skill labour can feel like pleasant work. I didn’t appreciate it at the time but it was six sigma checklist everything. There is a magic to smooth operation. In all my other jobs (dishwasher, mechanic, cleaner and now 20 yrs in insurance) nobody came close to the McD smoothness of operations. I hope I bring some of this smoothness to the people working in my lines of operation. I’m going to ask them!
oorza
I had the same experience working at one in US from ages 15-19.
The thing that stands out about that job that makes it unique in my perspective is decision-making. Every other job, from dishwasher in a sit down restaurant to engineering team lead, works best when I make good decisions and my coworkers all do too. Everything runs most smoothly when everyone is on their game and consistently making the right choices.
At McDonald's, everything ran most smoothly when no one made any decisions at all.
Their system was literally that good. No one else's has ever come close. And you're right that there's a weird freedom and pleasantness to that: your job requires literally zero brain power most of the time and your sole responsibility is to keep up with the person behind you and not overwhelm the person in front of you, which isn't usually something you worry about. So all that energy every other job has got from me, I still had (and so did everyone else) which made it the most social, most fun workplace too.
wkrsz
> My stint as a EU McD worker did give me a feel of how well scripted low skill labour can feel like pleasant work.
Would you care to write some more about this?
I was under impression that scripted work is generally considered bad and makes people feel like cogs in a machine.
float4
> Except Dairy Queen, Wendy’s, and McDonald’s outside of the U.S. don’t have this problem.
Heck, even Ikea has successfully been selling ice cream (from self serve machines!) here in the Netherlands for like 20 years now. €0.50 back in the day, €1 now. Can't remember the last time all machines (yes, they do have at least 2 usually) required maintenance.
consteval
As a former DQ employee, I think they are better trained. We were required to know how to take down the machines and rebuild them, and we did it daily for cleaning. But DQ is in a unique position, because ice cream is the majority of their draw. We also taste tested the ice cream 5 times a day and measured air content 5 times a day.
fHr
people who get angry at the underpaid employees are the worst, treat them like human beings please
xoxxala
The world would be a better place if more people had to work an underpaid service job at the start of their employment.
abustamam
I agree with the sentiment, but ideally people should not have to do X to empathize with/respect people who do X. It's sad that they have to, but I wish people just learned empathy/respect better.
ErigmolCt
It can be a crash course in patience, empathy and humility
ErigmolCt
Taking out frustration on employees who have zero control over these broken machines is just wrong
timcobb
Some people have internalized that underpaid employees get what they deserve (i.e. they're not actually underpaid at all) and I believe that's one of the factors that leads to the abuse.
jt2190
> any lacking maintenance and proper cleaning, especially if there has been a power outage will turn the the machine into a rapid incubator for bacteria that will make you ill.
Yes, the correct frame of reference here is “how can we scale ice cream delivery to millions a day while keeping everyone healthy?” At this scale a single failure can make a lot of people very sick in a very short amount of time. Under these conditions maintenance needs to be extremely rigorous and performed by qualified people.
“Right to repair” says that equipment owners can’t be stopped from performing repairs if they want to. They’ll still be on the hook for demonstrating that they were qualified to make the repairs, so I predict this will do little to improved McDonalds ice cream availability: They’ll still need to wait for the qualified technician.
ErigmolCt
Good point! People often overlook the fact that these machines need regular maintenance and thorough cleaning to be safe
h1fra
Yeah no, McDonalds in Europe don't have this problem at all. Maybe we take better care of our machines, but I can assure you the turn over is huge too.
subarctic
> Meanwhile, Canada is in the final stages of considering legislation that would fix the Canadian version of the DMCA, a bill called C-244 that is in its third reading in the Senate and expected to move before the end of the month. If Canada legalized circumventing technological protection measures for the purposes of repair, we might just have to head north to find the tools we need to do repairs.
That's good news, I didn't know about that bill. It looks like it was voted for unanimously in parliament. It's nice when you hear about our government doing something good for once.
Zak
What the hacker community should be lobbying for, everywhere is the complete repeal of these anticircumvention laws. DRM does not meaningfully protect against piracy, and most of the things it does protect against are otherwise-legal
matheusmoreira
Anticircumvention laws are the backbone of big tech's business models. They're all about creating little digital fiefdoms with us as their serfs. They own the platforms, they have all the keys to the machines and they aren't interested in hackers taking away their control.
Same tech companies that used to reverse engineer and adversarially interoperate whether their competitors liked it or not. They're the ones lobbying now. They don't want others doing the same thing to them.
jMyles
> It's nice when you hear about our government doing something good for once.
Critically, what the government is doing here is reducing its own authority with regard to information, the internet, and ultimately at some level, thought. Sharing methods for basic home and business improvements, including repairs of machinery, is one of the most fundamental functions of society.
It's rare (but of course not unheard of by any stretch) that the governments of the largest nation states do anything _proactive_ that is helpful to society, but in many cases when they choose to reduce their own capabilities (even for the wrong reasons), it seems more forward-looking.
fsckboy
just as an aside, in political science/international relations, a "state" is what you are calling a nation state. A "nation" is like canadian first nations or the cherokee nation or the german nation before there was a german state (not very long ago), i.e. it's an ethnicity/language.
A nation state is when a nation and a state are combined, like Italy (a country, a polity, where the italian people live) and Japan. The USA is not a nation-state, it is just a state, nor is Canada.
jMyles
You know it's funny; I actually went back and forth several times on that part. I really just wanted to distinguish between city-states (and for that matter, cities), which, it seems obvious, have an easier time staying in their lane with regard to this conflict with IP.
But you're absolutely right; the point was better made with simply the phrase "large states".
(FWIW - and I think it's not worth much - I have a degree in political science).
Dilettante_
>The USA is not a nation-state, it is just a state, nor is Canada.
That throws up the question in my mind: What makes a people into a nation? How uniform do they have to be?
8note
The government of Canada is really missing out by not selling this bill as a reason to keep them in power
anonylizard
The odds are like 95%-5% against them, nothing will save them at this point.
jeromegv
Less than 1% of the population would understand this bill. What concerns people on the day to day is quite different and that’s what the government is talking about (housing, immigration, policing, health care, dental care, pharmacies etc).
diogocp
It's not a government bill.
SECProto
> It's not a government bill.
It's a private member's bill (from a member of the governing party, supported unanimously by votes from every party)
postepowanieadm
I saw some tweets claiming people would vote He Who Cannot Be Named if McDonalds ice cream machines get fixed.
kevincox
For some reason it another the broken ice cream problem doesn't seem to be nearly as prevalent in Canada. I don't have ice cream at McDonald's often, but at least a handful of times a year and don't think I have ever encountered a broken machine. This is mostly around Toronto.
dang
Related. Others?
McDonald's ice cream machines are always broken and now the feds are involved - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40832988 - June 2024 (2 comments)
FTC and DOJ want to free McDonald's ice cream machines from DMCA repair rules - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39717558 - March 2024 (177 comments)
McDonald's ice cream machine hackers say they found 'smoking gun' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38657192 - Dec 2023 (230 comments)
The Real Reason McDonald's Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38232983 - Nov 2023 (2 comments)
iFixit tears down a McDonald’s ice cream machine, demands DMCA exemption for it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37325200 - Aug 2023 (6 comments)
Why McDonald's Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken and How to Fix Them - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37319841 - Aug 2023 (3 comments)
iFixit Petitions Government for Right to Hack McDonald's Ice Cream Machine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37311239 - Aug 2023 (301 comments)
Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30527939 - March 2022 (154 comments)
New emails released in the McDonald’s ice cream machine lawsuit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29325507 - Nov 2021 (138 comments)
Ask HN: Are McFlurries suddenly back now that lawsuit is pending? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28581906 - Sept 2021 (14 comments)
McDonald’s unreliable ice cream machines reportedly under FTC investigation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28407525 - Sept 2021 (41 comments)
Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often broken [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26936774 - April 2021 (234 comments)
The Reason McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932344 - April 2021 (3 comments)
They Hacked McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines–and Started a Cold War - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26874436 - April 2021 (4 comments)
I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24861623 - Oct 2020 (420 comments)
yuanchenxi95
An irrelevant question. How did you index the related hackernews threads?
dang
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40564558 and the links back from there and let me know if you still have a question :)
jb1991
Something tells me this comes up a lot.
jeanlucas
He is dang, his patience knows no boundaries
PedroBatista
Does anyone else thinks this is actually a great incidental marketing campaign for McDonald's? Not only the free reach but also tons of people discussing the "problems" with a big co and how to "fix" them as they are an essential part of society, and this case ice-creams.
Sure we focus on the big brain things like copyright, business malpractice and MBA lore but with it comes McDonald's embedded.
I know this might sound a bit snobby, but just don't play the game, ignore them. If there is criminal activity let who gets paid deal with it, otherwise just move on and stop "fixing" problems that are not of your concern, let alone "fixing" them for free.
bonestamp2
> stop "fixing" problems that are not of your concern, let alone "fixing" them for free.
In this case iFixit's business is selling tools and materials to fix things. So, there is an incentive for them to invest in solving the problem.
graemep
> MBA lore
What exactly do you mean by this?
> Not only the free reach but also tons of people discussing the "problems" with a big co and how to "fix" them as they are an essential part of society, and this case ice-creams.
It is an example of a general problem. I very much doubt the number of people discussing this are a significant proportion of McDonald's market.
The actual ruling was an exemption for "commercial food preparation equipment", so it applies to all machines in all restaurants in the US.
> If there is criminal activity let who gets paid deal with it, otherwise just move on and stop "fixing" problems that are not of your concern,
This is not about criminal activity, it is about not making criminals out of people who fix their own property.
Fixing the public interest is everyone's concern. This ruling would not have happened if people hd not campaigned for it.
majormajor
Either the McDonalds by me is fairly lucky or this is far less common than the meme makes it out to be.
It doesn't seem like good marketing - I hadn't had it in years but wanted to try a promo mcflurry a couple years ago, and wasn't expecting it to work, which make me wonder if I shouldn't even bother going. That's the opposite of what they'd want.
But then I went, and have gone probably a couple dozen times since then in two or three years, and it's never been out of order. Obviously I'm not going every day, but across that many visits I'd be likely to catch one if the rate of failure was THAT high.
Maxious
https://mcbroken.com/ scrapes online ordering and confirms not just a meme, 1/10 locations broken atm, 1/3 in some markets.
celestialcheese
even funnier, it looks like it's owned by wendys now, so when you zoom in it highlights wendys locations nearby
bombcar
The machines go into maintenance if not cleaned in time. Smart franchises clean the machine in the morning or after closing each day so it “never runs out”.
Just like smart airlines always reboot the plane regularly instead of learning the 787 has to be rebooted every 56 day.
Bjartr
> Smart franchises clean the machine in the morning or after closing each day so it “never runs out”.
And when they arrive in the morning to a failed cleaning run and an opaque error code they get to pick between first calling an expensive technician to spend just a few minutes with a tool only they have to read a more detailed error and change settings. Or they can cross their fingers and hope it's not a persistent issue. Either way it's another four hour checking cycle before it's ready.
next_xibalba
Is this real or a joke that’s over my head? Why does a 787 need to be rebooted every 56 days?
xp84
> lucky
Perhaps the “good” McDonaldses (in terms of whether they have broken machines all the time or not) are that way because they faithfully and promptly throw the requested amount of money at the Taylor licensed service providers to fix it every single time it throws its error code of doom. So we wouldn’t know how common the avoidable issues are without seeing, not just the downtime stats, but the authorized service records.
omeid2
McDonalds provides the largest network of public toilets in the world. It is no small thing.
bombcar
This is the biggest international travel trip I can give - download offline maps (Here, or google maps or Apple Maps all have offline maps now) and when in doubt locate a McDonald’s. WiFi and bathrooms, and sometimes even beer. ;)
TheRealPomax
Not if they don't now fix their machines, no. Then it's just "despite now being legal, McDonalds still refuses to fix their machine". Because remember: McDonalds is make of so much money that they could have trivially forced this though literal decades ago if they'd actually cared. Which they didn't. They could have even flat out bought the company that makes their machines. They didn't.
rjbwork
I thought it was intentional because the people that control McDonalds corporate also have shares in the ice cream machine vendor and use it as an additional vector to squeeze franchisees for their own enrichment?
gruez
>because the people that control McDonalds corporate also have shares in the ice cream machine vendor and use it as an additional vector to squeeze franchisees for their own enrichment?
Source?
SoftTalker
McDonald's Corporate dictates every piece of equipment in the kitchen, from the spatulas to the fryers to the grills to the soft-serve machines. The franchisees have very little choice in any of it. It all must be from the approved list of vendors and models.
dangus
I totally agree.
Who cares if the McDonald's ice cream machine is broken? It's shit ice cream. Most of you probably live near a better local ice cream/soft serve/custard joint. Heck, most of you probably live near a better corporate chain ice cream joint that probably also serves better food than McDonald's: Dairy Queen, In-N-Out, Shake Shack, Culver's, etc.
If McDonald's didn't have breakfast or coffee the whole chain might be out of business or at tiny fraction of its current size by now.
The McDonald's ice cream machine monopoly only negatively affects millionaire McDonald's franchise owners who deserve to be abused by the franchise for being so un-innovative that they resort to purchasing/renting access to a successful business model. Talk about the most opposite-of-meritocracy business venture imaginable!
Imagine if you had a half a million dollars in freely available non-borrowed assets and you couldn't think of your own business model to try. What does that say about you as an entrepreneur/trust fund kid?
Of course, ice cream is damn easy to make at home, can be made in large batches and kept frozen forever, and it'll come out far better than any fast food ice cream I know of.
jhbadger
It's pretty good soft serve ice cream, which is a style many people like. It isn't really any worse than other chain soft serve ice cream like Dairy Queen's. It's not the same sort of thing as scooped hard ice cream, and it isn't something you can really make at home, whatever the merits of home made ice cream are.
downut
We've made homemade ice cream dozens of times over 50 years... and the way I think about the delicious result is that it's like... soft serve ice cream. I think I prefer the texture of "scooped hard ice scream" but homemade with just cream, eggs, sugar, and whatever for the flavorings is just an outstanding tasty thing to eat.
I've never tasted industrial soft serve, maybe something else is going on?
Thinking back we always made it with a hand cranked machine[1], cooled by lots of salt on bagged ice cubes, maybe the current generation of electric home machines makes a different texture.
[1] A strong argument for keeping kids around.
dangus
The Ninja CREAMi makes soft serve at home.
gosub100
> if you had a half a million dollars in freely available non-borrowed assets and you couldn't think of your own business model to try
the problem isn't a lack of thinking-up something new. It's a matter of risk management. Any new business idea has a significant risk of ruin. Compared to owning a chain restaurant, especially mcd's.
dangus
And I fully realize that...but someone with a half a million dollars has the capital to start at least 5 small businesses.
chuckSu
[dead]
EMIRELADERO
The DMCA, though a mostly terrible law, actually doesn't prohibit any of what the ice cream machine people want to do, at least according to the CAFC.
Chamberlain v. Skylink, final court of appeals for the federal circuit opinion, page 39:
"Underlying Chamberlain’s argument on appeal that it has not granted such authorization lies the necessary assumption that Chamberlain is entitled to prohibit legitimate purchasers of its embedded software from “accessing” the software by using it.
Such an entitlement, however, would go far beyond the idea that the DMCA allows copyright owner to prohibit “fair uses . . . as well as foul.” Reimerdes, 111 F. Supp. 2d at 304.
Chamberlain’s proposed construction would allow copyright owners to prohibit exclusively fair uses even in the absence of any feared foul use.
It would therefore allow any copyright owner, through a combination of contractual terms and technological measures, to repeal the fair use doctrine with respect to an individual copyrighted work—or even selected copies of that copyrighted work. Again, this implication contradicts § 1201(c)(1) directly. Copyright law itself authorizes the public to make certain uses of copyrighted materials. Consumers who purchase a product containing a copy of embedded software have the inherent legal right to use that copy of the software. What the law authorizes, Chamberlain cannot revoke." (Emphasis mine)
starkparker
Buried deep down:
> Video Game Accessibility:
> Unfortunately, the exemption allowing circumvention of digital locks on video games for accessibility purposes (introduced in 2021) was not renewed. No petition for renewal was submitted, and as a result, individuals with disabilities who need alternative input methods to play video games are left out.
floam
With games it seems like accessibility allowances would be dual-use, making it easier to cheat or make a bot.
rockskon
The alternative of making such acts a crime seems like a grossly disproportionate response though.
barbecue_sauce
That's only really an issue for specific games.
null
tedunangst
What's the over/under on how many franchises will now resume selling ice cream?
BoorishBears
I think they're going to stop selling ice cream period as a company. If it was important to their bottom line McDonalds would have done something as a collective rather than having individuals enter this fight for back-channel repair options.
At some point they'll probably have their main contracts expire and stop dealing with the mess altogether.
raverbashing
You're assuming McD cares about anything but how much money they can get from their franchisees next quarter
"You're fixing our crappy machine yourself (translation: figure out code XYZ means it was overfilled or that AYZ means it froze and needs to be flushed) instead of hiring a service technician where we make some more money on top? We can't allow that!"
McDs are one of the worse franchises to own. Very tightly controlled with minuscule profit margins
I'm sure a lot of older franchisees want nothing but sell their businesses, especially in areas with lowering traffic
davidczech
Isn't the same machine used for milkshakes? That's kind of staple of burger joints.
wokwokwok
Yeah, but the point is that MacDonalds obviously doesn’t want to sell icecream.
Maybe it’s low margin.
Maybe cleaning is expensive.
Maybe it helps having the promise of cheap ice cream but “sorry not right now” leading customers to buy other (more expensive) items.
It’s not an incompetent organisation.
If they wanted the machines to work, they would work.
They don’t.
So… if anything changes out of this, it will be to keep the status quo; people coming in and not buying cheap ice creams.
talldayo
God damn. Antitrust comes up and HN insists that businesses are just going to pull out of the EU any day now. McDonalds is forced to start fixing their ice cream machines and now you want to tell us that they'll refuse to serve ice cream out of petty anger.
Do we just assume every business is run by the zombie of Steve Jobs? I genuinely have no idea where this libertarian extremist sentiment is coming from.
BoorishBears
You're reading way too deep into this, good luck with all that.
ingen0s
2024 was the year that an ice cream fix post became the most voted article on HN
jeanlucas
And all the other things as well, but we will use the title as a filter
Der_Einzige
N gate died far too soon.
mcdow
Here's a great YT video on why McDonald's ice cream machines are always broken: https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4
TL;DW: there are some perverse incentives to keep them broken. Basically the owner operators are forced to use a particular brand by corporate. Corporate McDonalds has a deal with a particular ice cream machine company. That particular company is the only company owner operators are allowed to buy from, and the only company allowed to service the machines. And it's no skin off of McDonald's back for these machines to always be broken, the cost falls on the owner-operators.
jessriedel
I don't understand the last sentence. If the machines are frequently broken, that damages the Macdonald's brand in the consumer's eyes. And if the franchisee's are paying unnecessary costs, making a Macdonald's franchise less lucrative for the owner-operator, that will lead to fewer franchises renewals and new franchises in the future.
mcdow
Been a while since I first watched the video. I would imagine the ice cream machines are a relatively small part of the McDonald's business. As evidenced by the fact that McDonalds ice cream has been an issue for quite a while. I would imagine franchises of a similar caliber to McD's also exploit their owner-operators on a similar scale because they can, we just don't necessarily hear about it because McDonalds is the largest.
McDonald's isn't known for its quality anyway. I've had my fair share of sketchy McDonalds experiences. McDs is as large as it is because it is cheap, convenient, and ubiquitous. McDonalds has no qualms with cutting corners on quality, as evidenced by its entire menu.
listenallyall
I'd suggest the quality of McDonald's ingredients is superior than the vast majority of restaurants that rely on Sysco or US Foods. Just my opinion, I know it's not going to convince anyone whose mind is already made up about McDonald's.
jessriedel
That's not an explanation. You could say that about a thousand things in McDonald's business. They are all a relatively small part, but in fact McDonald's has an army of people optimizing them all, and they are overall very successful.
Why do you think they would be able to abuse any of the operators? There are dozens and dozens of fast food franchises in the US, all in cut-throat competition. You may have heard of McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Subway, KFC, Chick-fil-A, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Dunkin’, Sonic Drive-In, Popeyes, Little Caesars, Arby’s, Chipotle, Dairy Queen, Jack in the Box, Hardee’s, Panda Express, Jimmy John’s, Five Guys, Wingstop, Culver’s, Zaxby’s, Raising Cane’s, Whataburger, Bojangles, Shake Shack, El Pollo Loco, Firehouse Subs, Jersey Mike’s, Del Taco, Checkers, Rally’s, Church’s Chicken, Moe’s Southwest Grill, Qdoba, Captain D’s, Freddy’s, Tim Hortons, Smoothie King, Blaze Pizza, Baskin-Robbins, White Castle, Portillo’s, Noodles & Company, Schlotzsky’s, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Auntie Anne’s, Marco’s Pizza, Boston Market, Smashburger, Fuddruckers, WingStreet, Krystal, Papa Murphy’s, Hungry Howie’s, The Habit Burger Grill, Jamba, Nathan’s Famous, Steak ’n Shake, Waffle House, Big Boy, Pizza Ranch, Cook Out.
14
The days of cheap McDonald’s is long gone. I can get a meal served at a sit down cafe for about the same price now days.
tedunangst
I like how the answers include both "they've done the math and it's worth it" and "they're idiots who don't know what they're doing". I don't think anybody cares what's really going on, as long as they can say McDonald's is bad.
dangus
I think the machines are broken way less often than people give McDonald's negativity over. In my estimation that's probably why corporate hasn't cared to fix the problem until recently.
Sure, a lot of people notice when they're broken, but a lot of people notice when AWS is down for an hour ~one time a year, too.
On top of that, depending where you are if your local McDonald's has a broken ice cream machine you probably aren't all that far away from another one. Perhaps corporate gets their sale either way?
aeturnum
There's an uncertain future cost (basically an externality that impacts McDonald corporate) but in return they get a nice premium now and immediate uncertainty for franchisees. It's possible it's overall a net negative for MD corporate, but it's also possible it's an overall economically profitable trade (even though it's clearly immoral).
valbaca
> If the machines are frequently broken, that damages the Macdonald's brand in the consumer's eyes.
They are and it doesn't matter. You don't go to McD for the ice cream. It's been a running joke for decades how they're always broken.
tbrownaw
> You don't go to McD for the ice cream.
Yeah. 'cause they don't have any 'cause the machine's broken.
lbourdages
I'm sure corporate has done the math and concluded that whatever money the machine provider pays them is higher than any expected losses in franchise revenue due to franchise owners quitting due to poor ice cream sales.
imtringued
I'm pretty sure that ice cream is a high margin product like drinks and McDonald's has found an indirect way to extract most of the margins. The problem is that the technician service fees are a fixed cost designed to be revenue maximizing for the average restaurant. Franchises selling enough ice cream to pay the fixed costs stay in the game, the ones who don't simply keep them out of order. This is effectively a price discrimination strategy. By making the machine mandatory, they can offer the menu item in every restaurant, but they only have to collect money in proportion of ice cream revenue.
wvenable
Modern capitalism isn't particularly rational. Money in the pocket is more tangible than minor brand damage.
If you want to be really cynical, you can assume that somebody at McDonald's and Taylor have crunched the numbers they know exactly how much they can squeeze their franchisees and the customer to effectively make money out of nothing. So many businesses operate this way now.
mschuster91
> I don't understand the last sentence. If the machines are frequently broken, that damages the Macdonald's brand in the consumer's eyes.
Try to quantify that to the MBA bean counters, good luck.
No one cares about ice cream from Mc f..ing Donald's, given that most employees in fast food stores are high school kids and I got the runs more than once from that shit, I don't trust them anyway to follow up with the stringent hygiene requirements that serving ice cream demands. Burger patties at least are grilled/fried.
vidarh
> No one cares about ice cream from Mc f..ing Donald's
People care enough that there's a website mapping working McDonalds icecream machines across several countries, that has been up for years, and was referenced in the linked article:
Quite a few places where softserve ice cream is not that widespread, McDonalds is one of the most reliable places to be able to find it.
tgsovlerkhgsel
Most importantly, McDonalds has a strong incentive to avoid headlines like "37 people hospitalized after shit-bacteria in improperly maintained ice cream machine", which is why the machines self-monitor and shut down at the slightest excursion from some specified norm.
And McD wants the machines maintained by the official technician, because they'd rather screw their franchisees a bit than risk someone ripping out the offending sensor.
IMO, the perverse incentives come on top of this (Taylor has no motivation to make the machines more transparent since they profit from the call-outs, McD either doesn't care or may even prefer this since it could reduce the risk of "creative" solutions like an employee holding an ice cube next to a sensor), but the "McD would rather have 50% of the ice cream machines 'broken' than have a single one serve E.Coli to its customers" is what kicked this whole thing off.
trollbridge
Yet Wendy’s and Dairy Queen don’t have the exact same incentives?
risho
then why is it that its only the ice cream machines that have problems not not things like the soda fountain any other food production tool?
cyberax
In general, acidic or basic foods are very safe from bacterial contamination standpoint. Soda is very acidic (due to all that dissolved carbon dioxide).
It's not that it doesn't get bacteria (they live everywhere), but it's unlikely to get pathogenic bacteria. This makes sense, a highly acidic environment is very different from a human body.
That's why foods such as milk, ice cream, potato or egg salad, are the most dangerous from the bacterial contamination standpoint.
edm0nd
Perhaps because the environment the ice cream machines create are the most friendly to bacteria and other things that cause the most issues?
valbaca
soda is syrup and carbonated water, neither becomes a breeding pool at room temperature
throw0101d
> Here's a great YT video on why McDonald's ice cream machines are always broken: https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4?si=IK1S-Yx9Zq4nEVrr
As habit or policy, can we all agree to get rid of the tracking information in Youtube links?
sofixa
Similarly Instagram started adding tracking querystrings (igshid or something like that), and for a good few weeks any Instagram link with it was completely broken for me (few loops, errors, and throwing me to the home page), I had to manually remove that part of the url.
mcdow
My bad! Fixed. Didn't even realize the YT links had tracking info on them!
colejohnson66
FYI, it's the "si" query parameter; It identifies the account that clicked the share button
null
Aloisius
US franchises have been able to buy machines from Carpigiani instead of Taylor for ~7 years.
hansvm
Implicit here is the assumption that (a) when evaluating many franchises McD is still attractive for new owner operators despite the obvious flaw, or (b) switching costs are high for existing McD owner operator victims, and the issue wasn't known or believed to be this bad when they started.
dang
Stories and comments about that video:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
List of related threads:
486sx33
Well that or they have the option to buy the real Italian machine not the Taylor piece of crap. It’s just super expensive and comes from Italy
cmrdporcupine
Very weird, here in Canada I don't think I've ever been to a McDonald's without working ice cream machines.
Rugu16
First great write up and second kudos to iFixit for fighting this fight.
rootusrootus
Does McD's still use these machines today? It seems like this has been going on for decades, more than long enough that pretty much everyone seems to know about it. I would have guessed that by now McD's would want to move on to a new setup that did not cause them such consistent negative PR and leave a trail of unhappy customers.
traverseda
McDonalds owns the company that makes and fixes these machines, and franchise owners foot the bill. It's a way of taking more money from franchise owners.
Reason077
That’s not correct. Taylor Company, who supply the notorious C602 ice cream machine to more than 13,000 McDonalds franchises, is owned by Middleby Corporation of Elgin, Illinois since 2018. Previously it was part of United Technologies’ climate & controls (Carrier) unit. [1]
Not all McDonalds use the Taylor machines. Some use machines from other manufacturers such as Carpigiani [2]
mattmaroon
They do not, this is disinformation. The machines are manufactured by Taylor for McDonald’s and maintained by Taylor’s service network.
Taylor’s the largest manufacturer of commercial ice cream making equipment in the US. Franchisees also have the option of using Carpigiani machines, but they’re Italian so parts and service are not as easy to come by. And all ice cream machines are known for being easy to break, especially if used by poorly trained teenagers.
This also makes no sense, if McDonald’s wanted to make more off the franchisees from ice cream, surely they’d rather do it by having the machines work (so they can sell product). They sell the mix that goes in the machine to the franchisees. It would be idiotic to try to gouge them by making the machine crappy rather than just charging them more for the mix and using a good machine. Then they wouldn’t need to employ these imaginary service techs and the franchisees would be happier with the situation.
CamperBob2
Then why is the situation what it is? As numerous people have pointed out, other fast-food chains don't have this problem. They are able to provide ice-cream products that are consistently free of either toxins or excuses.
Occam's Razor suggests that the most likely explanation is that the McDonald's Corporation is deliberately setting their franchisees up to fail by continuing to sign contracts with Taylor. Which I agree makes no sense.
The biggest reason I have read for why machines do not work, or are not being used is due to lack of maintenance, and employees who are trained to do so. (and people quit all the time).
Having worked at a fast food join (not McDonalds) much earlier in my life, any lacking maintenance and proper cleaning, especially if there has been a power outage will turn the the machine into a rapid incubator for bacteria that will make you ill.
Since shifts change and not everyone keeps on the machine, a power outrage can quickly be lost to the workers.
Getting angry if an employee tells you the machine is broken and demanding ice-cream is an exceedingly bad idea. Take that as a blessing. The employee may have saved you from running to the bathroom a lot.
I personally stay away from softicecream entirely. But if you must, try to find a place where a lot of people are buying so the machine is in frequent use. That doesn't mean its safe but it makes it a lot more likely.
Of course not being used frequently is not an automatic reason for the machine to be in incubator mode, it may will be well cared for, well cleaned, great maintenance.