McDonald’s unreliable ice cream machines reportedly under FTC investigation | Hacker News Reader

McDonald’s unreliable ice cream machines reportedly under FTC investigation

ktvu.com

Linked article:

"An error on a Taylor ice cream machine could look something like this: "ERROR: XSndhUIF LHPR>45F 1HR LPROD too VISC," according to WSJ. Taylor rebutted and said any codes that appear on its machines can be easily found in the machine’s manual."

Hm, what does this remind me of?

“But the plans were on display…"

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

Where is that little story from? Sounds fun

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Omg you get to enjoy HHGTTG fresh for the first time! Lucky you.

Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, Douglass Adams

"...Ahhhh now I get all the 42 references"

Hah I figured it might be. I've only read bits of it. It's on the list...

Saving it for a rainy day :)

If you're into rainy days, you might also want to try Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Thanks for the recommendation!

The books are available pretty much anywhere. The original HHGTTG was actually written for BBC Radio. There's info at the BBC (but sadly none of the programmes are available atm; they will probably resurface at some point, though).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03v379k

I cannot recommend the radio series highly enough, and they should be available to buy (or find) somewhere. Mind you, the books are also terrific - there are minor alterations in plot details.

For me, though, the TV series and film were disappointing, but to each their own.

Edit to add:

The radio series are available at archive.org. There's an HHGTTG "omnibus page". The navigation is rather confusing, but in the listings panel, the first programme in the first series (Primary Phase) is number 10 [1], followed by listings 11 to 15 for the rest of the first series.

The second series (Secondary Phase) start after that, and so on for the subsequent series.

I've skipped through a few episodes to check and it all seems in order.

[1] https://archive.org/details/s01e00hhgttgdouglasadamsbbcboo/S...

Ah yes! I've listened to the radio series before! I do not remember that bit though. It was a while ago, all i remember is that it was great. Maybe I'll give it another listen.

Didn't know there was a film...

Ah, well the bit quoted was from the very first episode when Arthur explains to the workmen who have come to knock down his house how he found out about the plans to build a bypass, and hence demolish his house. It's at 2min 39-ish, in the link above, so might as well settle down with a nice cup of tea and listen to it from the start :-)

Sounds like "PC LOAD LETTER".

I'm already visualizing an ice cream machine getting a beatdown with a baseball bat in the middle of a field...

Related discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24861623 - October 2020 - "I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API" - (Orders ice cream at every McDonalds to see if the machines are broken)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26936774 - April 2021 - "Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often broken [video]"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28386567 - 1 day ago - "The Feds Want to Know What the McFuck Is Going on with the McFlurry Machines"

> The WSJ reported that McDonald’s ice cream products account for 60% of the franchise’s revenue.

Is anyone else really surprised by this number? 60%??

This article poorly references the original WSJ source article that it links to. From the source:

"The shiny metal machines crank out concoctions that account for about 60% of the chain’s dessert sales in the U.S., according to a consumer survey by research firm Technomic Inc."

https://archive.is/QQHsS

I didn’t even know they had other desserts.

They've always had apple pies as long as I can remember.

They're actually quite tasty, too!

Dupe:

236 points 153 comments 1 day ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28386567

KTVU's coverage is a rehash of an earlier WSJ article.

Numerous others, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28408579

The joke in college was that our dorm snackbar icecream machine was always "broken" on the night when my friends worked there. I just assumed McDonald's had the same issue where the manager on that shift just didn't want to deal with cleaning it later and marked it broken.

on reddit, numerous fast food workers have chimed in to say that it's not true, the machines are easy to clean, and it's a normal part of the job and management wouldn't let them get away with not cleaning them

I worked at an ice cream shop and cleaning our soft serve machine was always a miserable chore that no one wanted to do.

i think the fast food chain restaurants have streamlined it, compared to a mom and pop shoppe

Matt Stoller pretty convincingly lays out why this is a monopoly issue here: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/what-broken-mcdonalds-ice...

Johnny Harris has a pretty good video about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

It is a good watch. Leonard French did a good synopsis of the case (Kytch v. Taylor) for the startup referenced in the Johnny Harris video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXwD_HeC8Ms

The way he takes everything so seriously, but doesn't become a joke himself. I love that dude's style.

I hope he gets funding to do a major show on Discovery Channel or something some day. He could be the David Attenborough of interesting but trival things.

thanks for posting it, this is first class journalism.

Chiming in to say thanks, that's excellent, and I'm impressed by the reporting and investigation.

(TL;DR: Exclusive support contracts and recurring revenues.)

What I still don't understand about this whole situation is why McDonalds corporate would allow this to happen in the first place.

Is the profiteering on the contracts with the vendor actually higher than the lost sales from having these machines unavailable so often?

Is it worth marring your reputation with unreliable service? One of the appeals of fast food is consistency, that's what the franchise is supposed to provide.

Is it worth ceding this product to your competitors, who don't have as many issues providing it?

I must be missing something here.

> Is it worth marring your reputation with unreliable service?

McDonald's seems to be doing just fine. Even so, you know as well as I do that short term profits trump long term health of the company.

I wasn't trying to imply that this is hurting corporate as a whole, but questioning why take this particular hit in the first place.

I'm also questioning if the status quo really is more profitable than actually selling the product. Is it really profitable to do this at all? Because the competition doesn't seem to be doing it.

The franchise owners are the ones who primarily get hurt from not being able to move product, not corporate. As long as being a franchise owner is still perceived as a viable way to make a living and the kickbacms they get from the arrangement outweigh their percentage of lost sales volume, what does corporate care?

Yes, or the franchise equipment team books lots of k̶i̶c̶k̶b̶a̶c̶k̶s̶ partner revenue and the customer satisfaction team can't or doesn't want to show that unavailable ice cream hurts sales.

This investigation deals with an add on device some restaurants were using to monitor the machines which the manufacturer claims can harm it and seeks to stop its use. I used to work fast food many years ago and we never really had issues with ours. We did however clean and disinfect them nightly.

I think the "machine is always broken" meme is mostly confirmation bias. I can't even remember the last time I swung through McDonalds for a cone and the machine was down. It's probably been 5 years. Not that I do this very often, but still.

Obviously, if you pull up within an ~hour of closing, the supervisor may have made the call to go ahead and start the lengthy cleaning cycle, and ice cream isn't available. You'll find that many other menu items aren't available under these circumstances either. Worth the FTC investigating? I doubt it.

edit: I wasn't aware of the racket that is the ice cream machine business -- apparently franchises pay for expensive support contracts and the inner workings of the machine is a closely guarded trade secret.

Here's actual data: https://mcbroken.com/

As of my posting: 9.73% overall Currently Broken (all locations), 28.57% in New York, 18.75% in Seattle, 17.95% in Philadelphia, 17.74% in Houston, 16.36% in Dallas, 13.79% in Phoenix

I don't really have any way to contextualize these rates -- like how often is the Icee machine at 7-11 down? 30% is definitely crazy high, though. Would love to see it broken down by franchises, because I'd wager that the machine is out more often at specific locations.

Generally commercial/industrial grade equipment has an uptime measured in 9s, the only time it goes down is during scheduled maintenance. When was the last time you ordered french fries and they told you "our french frier is out" or "sorry we're not serving burgers today, the grill is down". The main failure mode for this device is in the automated nightly sterilization process.

Granted, this ice cream machine is pretty complex, it basically autoclaves itself at medium/high pressure nightly to sterilize any residual dairy mix, but it's well documented that the failures caused by the autoclaving process could be fixed with a couple of small changes. Even without these improvements, the machines could be user serviceable with better error codes. It's not completely air tight case against the manufacturer wanting more maintenance revenue, but the FTC certainly has enough evidence to go investigate further.

What is more crazy is the mcd's let it go on this long... They are the kind of whale customer you hate to get. They order tons of stuff from you but if they jump you are in a world of hurt. This should have been along the lines of the mcd's CEO calls the Taylor CEO and says 'fix it' and that is the end of the call.

> I can't even remember the last time I swung through McDonalds for a cone and the machine was down. It's probably been 5 years. Not that I do this very often, but still.

Really? I've literally stopped even bothering to ask, since the actual uptime seems to be about 20%, and only during peak times.

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