Question - I keep hearing about this frequently as a meme on the internet, but I have never ever been to a McDonalds that didn't have a working ice cream machine(here in UK). Is this unique to US for some reason?
The main difference between those two is that the former is open 24 hours a day, while the latter is closed 12a - 5pm, a window which just happens to be perfect for running the Taylor’s daily cleansing cycle. (It can’t be solely a function of increased customer throughput, which is the other variable I considered, as the Manx McDonalds has way more people visit it during the TT than the Charing Cross restaurant ever has. Yet the machine was up the entire TT for at least the last three years the race was held.)
Anyway, US McDonalds is worse than the ones in literally every other country I've ever been to.
My guess is that the national subsidiaries (McDonalds UK/McDonalds Germany) might have different approved vendors for their equipment than the US mothership. From glancing at Taylor's website they seem to only operate in the US.