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Comment by _fat_santa | Hacker News Reader

A absolutely despise what companies like Taylor do. Rather than innovating their product, they realized its cheaper if they have their lawyers engineer a way to lock in their customers to their product over their competitors'.

And you seem to see this more and more. It seems that these days the product quality itself doesn't matter, it's all about the contracts that your legal team setup in the background. I have to ask the engineers that work at these companies: does it bother you that the only reason people use your product is that they would get sued if they tried using another product? How does it make you feel that your product is so bad the only thing keeping your customers in the door is the contracts your legal team drew up.

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What happens if the replacement parts aren't actually as good, safe or reliable as the originals? McDonald's gets bad PR, or a lawsuit depending on the severity.

Look, I'm all for better repair options and Right to Repair, but McDonald's is selling consistency and their reputation is on the line (not the franchisee) when something goes wrong or people get sick.

For those reasons alone, it's not unreasonable to force franchisees to use a specific brand of machines, contract a specific company for repairs, and use specific OEM parts. CYA big time in so many ways.

What people are forgetting here is McDonald's has an interest in these machines working as well as possible (revenue + reputation), and the franchisee also has an interest in these machines working as well as possible (revenue). The franchisee however, does not necessarily care about the McDonald's brand and reputation, and given the option might choose degraded parts/safety to save money - causing a problem for McDonalds.

So... McDonald's says you have to use these approved machines and get service/parts from this approved vendor. Case closed...

The only people who seem to really care about this issue are customers. That won't be enough to force a private company to open the door to any yahoo repair company with Wish.com replacement parts.

> What happens if the replacement parts aren't actually as good, safe or reliable as the originals?

I don't see how that line of thinking is any different to the argument manufacturers are making regarding right to repair. The response is simple, all parts must be G.A. and manufacturers can't force the company they are sourcing their parts from to not sell to third parties.

McDonalds can very well sue the franchise for not following the guidelines and ordering bad parts.

Even if Taylor allowed anyone to repair their machines - McDonald's is unlikely to allow franchisees that privilege anyway, for all of the reasons listed above.

McDonald's is also large enough of a customer that we can assume the specifics of this machine were tailored or custom-made in part just for McDonald's. The automated cleaning and self-diagnosis system is exactly what someone like corporate McDonald's wants - take those liabilities out of the hands of individual franchisees and fallible employees. Make is as dead simple as it can be... machine says no-go, then it's a no-go.

McDonald's will not allow a system where a franchisee or random-employee decides the machine is "clean enough" and proceeds to use it anyway, potentially getting people sick.

So what will be accomplished here in this specific situation? Probably nothing...

All of this sounds great until you realize that McDonald's ice cream machine reliability is by far the worst in the nation. There is no other chain that comes close. The meme is a meme for a reason. Somehow, these other chains manage to solve these issues without causing massive reliability problems. I wish I could find the videos now, but there was a decently convincing (although with the usual "documentary grain of salt" caveats) argument that McDonalds took a payout to allow Taylor to predatorily extract value while providing shit service to their Franchisees. McDonalds, the brand, is already suffering reputational damage from their craptastic ice cream but they apparently don't care.

This makes the arguments about repuatational risk from shoddy repair parts fall flat.

Perhaps, flipping it on it's head, the issue is so visible because McDonald's ice cream is by far the most popular fast food ice cream?

From Cones to McFlurries to Milkshakes, I'm pretty sure they all use the same machine. McDonald's sells a tremendous amount of ice cream products.

> I wish I could find the videos now, but there was a decently convincing (although with the usual "documentary grain of salt" caveats) argument that McDonalds took a payout to allow Taylor to predatorily extract value while providing shit service to their Franchisees.

I find that very hard to believe. You're right, it's a meme for a reason after all, but sabotaging themselves makes no sense even if Taylor paid McDonald's for that racket. McDonald's has nothing to gain in that situation, only loss of reputation and revenue.

> This makes the arguments about repuatational risk from shoddy repair parts fall flat.

It doesn't though, and cannot just be hand-waved away. Imagine what the memes would be like if the machines were further degraded by bad parts or worse, got people sick at random locations.

McDonald's has a right to force consistency. It's their brand, and ultimately their wallet that bears the consequences.

They literally don't use the same machine. The McDonalds franchise contract requires them to use a specific, made-for-mcdonalds, model (mostly similar to the models sold to other chains, but not identical). And I'm pretty sure that people have done (informal) reliability studies by things like calling random franchises, and Mcdonalds isn't just more popular, it's actually less reliable.

You misunderstood. The ice cream products from McDonald's all come from the same machine. I was not asserting they are the same machines at other fast food brands.

The fact that these machines are likely custom made, or partially customized just for McDonald's is even more reason why it's reasonable for McDonald's to force franchisees to use specific vendors for repair/parts.

Even with right to repair, McDonald's can force franchisees to use specific equipment and parts and vendors. That is their right as the brand owner.

Which means... there is no reality where joe-random repair company is going to be allowed to repair joe-random franchisee's machines using parts sourced from who knows where. It's just not going to ever happen, there's too much liability.

McDonald's wants a machine that's so brain-dead simple to use safely and keep sanitarily that even a new-hire with 5 minutes of training can operate it effectively. They get that by forcing standardization on one unit and one vendor, and software safety mechanisms that provide a firm no-go when something isn't right.

> And I'm pretty sure that people have done (informal) reliability studies by things like calling random franchises, and Mcdonalds isn't just more popular, it's actually less reliable.

You'll need some sort of source for this. Most fast food chains only sell one ice cream product, usually shakes or cones, maybe both. McDonald's sells McFlurries which are very popular, in addition to seasonal products and then the regular products. Given McDonald's is also the largest fast food chain in the world, it stands to reason they sell more ice cream products than anyone else.

Which would, yes, mean the surface area is larger and more exposed. People go there specifically for a McFlurry and come away dissapointed. How many people go to Taco Bell specifically for a milkshake and nothing else?

Of course McDonalds the brand can do that. They literally _are_ doing that. Someone made a 3rd party troublehsooting tool that solved the majority of problems without needing to call a Taylor tech, and McDonalds corporate disallowed it.

The point is not "can they do this" the point is "is it necessary for them to do it for brand reputational reasons".

The steelman argument I've seen for this state of affairs is that (apparently) the McDonald's machine is much more complicated to allow it to self sanitize/clean every night and only need full disassembly every 2 weeks. The machines used at other chains apparently don't' have this automatic process and must be disassembled and manually cleaned more frequently. That would all be well and good...if it worked. The frequent state of disrepair of McDonalds machines pretty clearly indicates it does not.

They are mandating the use of a low-reliability machine, presumably in the name of lower labor costs (which you'd think you wouldn't have to _mandate_ since the franchiesees probably care more about labor costs than anyone), also mandating an expensive service contract for those machines. I'm just really really skeptical that 3rd party parts would make this situation worse. People already have the impression that McDonals ice creams machines are usually broken. I don't think this opinion is based on a quantitative assesment of uptime, where, if it got 10% worse, their opinion would decrease by 10%.

To try and summarise: I thin your argument that 3rd party parts would create enough of a reliability problem to meaningfully change their reputation, which is _already_ one of lack of reliability (deserved or not), is completely implausable to me.

We're talking past each other it seems.

> They literally _are_ doing that. Someone made a 3rd party troublehsooting tool that solved the majority of problems without needing to call a Taylor tech, and McDonalds corporate disallowed it.

And so what? It's non-standard and non-approved. McDonald's has no idea what that firmware/tool actually does. You (and the makers) claim it was better, but how do you actually know? Maybe it just bypasses safety and sanitary standards McDonald's has set for these machines... giving the appearance in the short-term of being more reliable.

In the end, it's McDonald's who will be sued if someone gets sick from a milkshake. Therefore, they can and will enforce standards, including machines and vendors. Heck, they probably have approved vendors and parts for everything inside a McDonald's, not just the ice cream machines. The toilet paper dispenser even most likely... but surely the stoves, fryers, etc.

Right to Repair has nothing to do with this specific situation. It's about corporate standards set for franchisees.

Additionally, the franchisees aren't even complaining about this. It's customers, like you and me, who are mad we can't get a McFlurry or something.

That's not going to compel any change other than make McDonald's realize they might need more machines per location.

> McDonald's wants a machine that's so brain-dead simple to use safely and keep sanitarily that even a new-hire with 5 minutes of training can operate it effectively. They get that by forcing standardization on one unit and one vendor, and software safety mechanisms that provide a firm no-go when something isn't right.

That doesn't really jibe with the article:

"The machine overheats if it’s used too much within a certain time period. This results in mushy goop coming out or the machine shutting down and refusing to work until it resets and cools down," Shahram Mokhtari, iFixit’s lead teardown tech, said in iFixit’s teardown.

Gonna go out on limb and rankly speculate that for health critical systems it's not advisable to assume that OUTPUT_GOOP || FAILSAFE is functionally equivalent to FAILSAFE.

McDonalds exerts controls to protect its reputation, and does this through its franchise agreements with franchisees. This makes a lot of sense for both parties and customers. I remember when Jack In The box had outbreaks of E.coli in their burgers. McDonalds had new testing methodologies and equipment at franchises (and company owned stores) in a heartbeat.

The last thing McDonalds wants are customers getting sick from listeria and having blood on their hands[1].

1. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/20/us/tacoma-milkshake-listeria-...

Ah shit, people here just died in the area from a uncleaned milkshake mixer. Due to listeria.

Anyone who's worked in a restaurant with a soft-serve machine (used to make milkshakes and more) knows how much of a PITA they are to clean...

Which means they don't get deep cleaned often enough, even at reputable places.

Do people get sick and die every day from these machines? No, of course not. But we cannot trivialize the liability and risk here.

If every restaurant had a self-cleaning smart self-diagnosing machine like McDonald's has, all the better.

You should think carefully before ordering a soft-serve anything from most places...

At a small town in my Canadian province there is a seasonal ice cream stand/dairy bar. My Mom and Aunt go there since it's the town in which they grew up.

My Mom asked the person at the counter why does their soft ice cream taste so good. The person said "Because we clean the machine every day."

Right now their reputation is that their machines don't work. Worrying about the health of their customers is pointless if they don't have any customers.

McDonald's is hardly hurting for customers...

It's literally a meme that their ice cream machines are broken. The expectation has become part of our shared culture.

> What people are forgetting here is McDonald's has an interest in these machines working as well as possible (revenue + reputation)

But clearly they are dropping the ball all the way to the third basement. If a piece of equipment is so bad that it's lack of reliability becomes a meme then you have issues.

What I really don't understand is that it seems that the franchisees are paying for the equipment manufacturer per service call. It would make much more sense to pay a fixed fee per ice cream machine per unit of time subject to some SLA. If you properly set up the incentive structure that makes the equipment manufacturer incentivised to seek ways to provide reliable, easy to maintain machines.

It is not like this is impossible. The same manufacturer sells reliable machines to all the other chains! So they can do it.

> The only people who seem to really care about this issue are customers.

And the franchisees? Who are losing money every time they are turning away costumers. (Not talking about the lost business because they are not seen as a reliable purveyor of ice cream, and people who crave ice cream go to some other place.) And losing money every time they call service for a piece of trash equipment.

> But clearly they are dropping the ball all the way to the third basement. If a piece of equipment is so bad that it's lack of reliability becomes a meme then you have issues.

I couldn't find numbers - however I have a feeling the issue isn't less reliability than expected, but rather McDonald's serves more ice cream products (by volume) than most or all other fast food chains.

Anecdotally, people travel to McDonald's only for some of their ice cream products, such as McFlurries, and then leave disappointed when the machine is not working. Very few people go to, say, Burger King just for a shake. This pattern makes the issue more visible.

> The same manufacturer sells reliable machines to all the other chains!

We have no real evidence of this though, do we?

It makes zero sense to have these conspiracy theories that McDonald's is being paid to push unreliable machines on franchisees or something. Few if any franchisees are even complaining about this issue, it's customers like you and me who are mad about not getting a milkshake, and then companies trying to shoehorn their way into the lucrative commercial repair business.

If McDonald's thinks everything is ok, and franchisees on average are not complaining, then what's the real issue?

No matter how we spin it, this particular situation has nothing to do with Right to Repair. It's about corporate standards for franchisees.

The franchisee’s do not like the situation. You immediately write everyone off as being conspiracy theorists, but you are failing to consider the incentives. Other companies negotiated a fixed service fee for the life of the unit paid at the time of purchase. McDonalds signed a contract that requires payment per service call. The company now has an incentive to make sure McDonalds has the least reliable machines and the franchisees have an incentive to not call in for a repair. No conspiracy needed.

Yes, lets embrace the bureaucratics, because thats how we get stuff done! /s

Both you and parent are correct. Clearly its a case of incentives, while McD has the right to manage brand exposure.

Here's my contribution. Someone downthread said other chains use Taylor with a fixed-fee service contract, which directly incentivizes Taylor to deploy quality machines.

Here's the rub: is that the complete picture?

In other words, is it possible the Taylor repair service labor fees for McD customers (and recurrence) are justified because the machines themselves are a heavy loss leader for Taylor ? And what is the cost for non-McD vendors to acquire a similar-purpose machine, with fixed fee servicing ?

That will help resolve if this issue at the core is justified, vs legal (or business) stupidity by McD corporate / malfeasance by Taylor.

> What happens if the replacement parts aren't actually as good, safe or reliable as the originals? McDonald's gets bad PR, or a lawsuit depending on the severity.

Mcdonalds will chose a provider with good enough parts or have a broken down machine... like it has now.

Volkswagen doesn't make oil, doesn't make it's own brake discs and doesn't make it's own wipers.... so what? You can buy TRW or ATE or Brembo or whatever brakes, castrol, shell, elf or whatever oil and valeo or bosch or whatever wipers. And a car is a lot more dangerous than an ice cream machine.

> Mcdonalds will chose a provider with good enough parts or have a broken down machine... like it has now.

So, what's the issue?

This entire thing is not about Right to Repair. It's about corporate McDonald's contractually enforcing standards on their franchisees. Which is reasonable.

> For those reasons alone, it's not unreasonable to force franchisees to use a specific brand of machines, contract a specific company for repairs, and use specific OEM parts. CYA big time in so many ways.

Oh, come on. It's an ice cream machine, not an aircraft. And it's not the end of the world if someone becomes sick because of a shoddy repair. It will inevitably happen in any kitchen. Restaurants, including fast food joints, cause tens of thousands of food poisoning incidents every single day.

Have we already forgotten the McDonald’s hot coffee lawsuit? If someone’s kid died from listeria after eating McDonald’s ice cream the lawsuit would make national news. It would destroy their reputation and cost a ton of money in damages!

  Restaurants, including fast food joints, cause tens of thousands of food
  poisoning incidents every single day.

Citation needed.

The first google result says that 48 million Americans get food poisoning a year [0]. On average that's around 131k people per day, I'd say it's pretty safe to assume that at least a few thousand of those are caused by restaurants.

I'm not sure why you think this fact requires a citation.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/food-poisoning.html

I'd say it's safe to assume if you don't want to come up with a citation for two reasons:

48 million people annually is at the high end, and a multiagency report puts that number at 9 million known cases.

> Each year in the United States, an estimated 9 million people get sick, 56,000 are hospitalized, and 1,300 die of foodborne disease caused by known pathogens.

https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/ifsac/pdf/P19-2020-report-Tri...

The other, is, of course, that restaurants make up a minority of meals in the US. While over half eat at restaurants regularly, that 56% is around 2–3 times a week.

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/survey-shows-how-ofte...

> What people are forgetting here is McDonald's has an interest in these machines working as well as possible (revenue + reputation), and the franchisee also has an interest in these machines working as well as possible (revenue).

The franchisee, however, has a countervailing desire to reduce their own costs which McDonald's is fairly insensitive to. McDonald's needs the ice cream to be available, sure, but are they above accepting kickbacks from Taylor the ice cream machine company to keep Taylor's cash flow going?

We are living in an obscenely corrupt and top heavy business environment where much money is to made by insider dealing in large companies with entrenched market positions. There really should be no better evidence of that than the fact than the evidence presented here: America's largest, most famous fast food chain, incapable of reliably serving ice cream to its customers because it's subject to vendor lock-in.

I’ve long suspected part of the issue is the franchises not following properly cleaning and maintenance guidelines with them, leading to higher failure rates. I know McDonalds sells more ice cream than basically any other fast food place, including actual ice cream joints, so the same issue for them will likely cause more downstream failures than it might for others just because they’re working the machines harder.

Anecdotally I know in the McDonalds near my old apartment the people would say the ice cream machine was broken in part because they just didn’t want to have to clean it. So they really would prefer if people not order ice cream.

Careful with your stones in glass houses, on HN, of all places. We're the community in which virtually every Web site we deploy sells out privacy of its users to third parties. And that's before we get into the commonplace UX behavior against users' interests, numerous startups which are essentially investment scams, some of our most celebrated startup successes only existing because an app is a smokescreen that lets them violate regulations long enough, and general background underhandedness and entitlement so pervasive that we now consider it normal.

Speak for yourself. I would never leak or sell user data. I just develop B2B software that provides no value

All B2B software has value.

It's just that often the value is "I bought this and even though it provides no value, it's pretty enough that it impressed my boss and I got a raise and promotion"

> We're the community in which virtually every Web site we deploy sells out privacy of its users to third parties.

Simply don't do that, then. It's not hard. (And… why even increase your liability and reduce your hiring pool by being relentlessly unethical? The trade-off isn't worth it, even if you're a stereotypical heartless executive.)

> The trade-off isn't worth it

I entirely agree with your sentiment but financially, Adtech has done quite well for itself.

For itself.

What does that have to do with Taylor litigating instead of innovating?

Parent: That company does unethical things.

Reply: A lot of people reading this comment do unethical things, so we probably shouldn't be on our high horse in this thread.

I don't necessarily endorse that line of thinking as I believe it falls under the purview of "classic whataboutism".

My reply was intended more like: You're addressing a bank robber convention, to morally condemn a convenience store robber.

(That parent should have the guts to broaden their scope of condemnation. Unless throwing the first stone in a glass house was a clever Socratic prompt intended to lead to this discussion.)

that is indeed classic whataboutism, and also the analogy sounds contrived and self-serving

My intent was not to dispute their argument, but I didn't have the stomach to see techbros piling onto that, as tends to happen. If the OP didn't point out that tech overall has become a cesspool industry doing comparable things, then someone had to.

> My intent was not to dispute their argument

indeed, with whataboutism, the intent never is to solve the problem, only to deflect, with the aim usually of ensuring the problem remains unresolved, and perhaps even undiscussed

> If the OP didn't point out that tech overall has become a cesspool industry doing comparable things, then someone had to.

I suppose this is true if you start with the assumption that someone is going to engage in the intellectually dishonest fallacy of whataboutism

as for your portrayal of HN, it is as self-serving as your prior analogy.

Reading a comment in no way implies support for the views expressed.

We don't all work in hell.

Tu quoque fallacy. Calling someone a hypocrite doesn't address their argument. Also, obviously, you have no idea if the original poster a) is a web developer or b) is guilty of the behavior you mentioned.

I genuinely think Tu Quoque is misplaced by being called a fallacy, and I firmly believe that calling out someone's hypocrisy to their argument already shows - at the very least - a fragility to their stance, and can help to illustrate what about their argument is going amiss by using the individual's own experience and behavior to prove it.

Someone not doing X indeed doesn't say whether you should be doing X, but it stands ground that X has a flaw for adoption - and talking to someone that doesn't do it is a great way to examine why, and possibility use it to your argument.

> I genuinely think Tu Quoque is misplaced by being called a fallacy, and I firmly believe that calling out someone's hypocrisy to their argument already shows - at the very least - a fragility to their stance, and can help to illustrate what about their argument is going amiss

"they" have no "stance" or "argument", they're just the ones who happened to point out the problem. They themselves are irrelevant. They could strangle puppies for fun, and they could still point out the problem as well as if they donated both kidneys to child orphan strangers. They're just the person there at the time, pointing out the problem. It could have been anybody pointing out the problem, the problem is still a problem.

that's why tu quoque is a fallacy: attacking the person who pointed out the problem, doesn't resolve the problem, and doesn't seek to, either. It seeks to silence the person who pointed out the problem. Shooting the messenger is a related problem-solving anti-pattern, for similar reasons.

While valid, the problem being pointed out still requires a representative to do so, and I was just making the point that if the representative has experiences or behaviors that are inconsistent with the essence of the problem they're trying to address, it ought to be brought up. For an individual wearing a lanyard with the problem statement being, "there are too many lanyards in the world", you are well above your means to inquire on his participation within the problem firsthand, and how they're contributing to it (or lack thereof).

You are right that Tu Quoque is often used to silence the problem statement representative, but it shouldn't become a go-to card for individuals to claim when they're hypocrisy is pointed out (which I've seen, not saying it did here).

> While valid, the problem being pointed out still requires a representative to do so, and I was just making the point that if the representative has experiences or behaviors that are inconsistent with the essence of the problem they're trying to address, it ought to be brought up

this entire statement is the exact opposite of true: anyone can raise awareness of the problem regardless of who they are, it doesn't make them a "representative" of anything (just imagine them reading an anonymous comment card they pulled out of a box) and any inconsistency you see between them and the problem is irrelevant, and is a distraction if brought up

that is why tu quoque, what you are describing, is a fallacy

> For an individual wearing a lanyard with the problem statement being, "there are too many lanyards in the world", you are well above your means to inquire on his participation within the problem firsthand, and how they're contributing to it (or lack thereof).

you would be engaging in the logical fallacy of whataboutism, because your questioning of him doesn't address the problem, and is in fact counterproductive in solving the problem, because you are attacking an ally in solving the problem

this illustrates why tu quoque is a fallacy when trying to solve the problem

put another way, because their identity is irrelevant, a 100% equally valid question would be for him to ask you what are you are doing to solve the problem

the analogy is bad anyways, because in this real life topic, the whataboutism user is wrongly conflating two different actions, as well as ascribing actions to people who didn't do them. All the people who responded here pointing out that they don't, in fact, sell private data, were conveniently ignored by the original tu quoque perpetrator

Speak for yourself. If I only cared about the paycheck, I'd be in SF helping Google build its IoT botnet of Nests and Chromecasts.

Any new technology can be looked at through the lens of evil. I used to write code for stick-on wireless biosensors that massively improved living conditions for neonates and the chronically ill. Some health insurance company could use the exact same tech to institute a system like what the car insurance companies have with those "safe driver" tracker dongles.

Not every one of us work in ad-tech. And screw those business models also, btw.

I've been actively avoiding ad-tech and have chosen to work for companies that are doing things to lessen their influence and reach! And yet, somehow, I'm still having a successful career in software engineering!

I'm reminded of Cory Doctorow's referencing DMCA and the like as "felony contempt of business model".

I'm sure it's been this way a lot longer than I imagine, but it feels to me like in the 80s or so companies became a lot more interested in making their shareholders happy than they were in making their customers happy.

I think there's some truth to the idea that the "MBA-ization" of business management has been quite destructive.

Probably more in the 90s since the 80s were all about total quality management.

But "companies became a lot more interested in making their shareholders happy than they were in making their customers happy" is the BIGGEST problem with modern capitalism. That is why US is approaching 70% obese population and other dramatic social problems.

His story Unauthorized Bread is a good one that explores just how bad it can get. Where the DRM in a toaster refuses to toast bread that isn't of the correct brand.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...

Taylor knows how to build proper ice cream machines. They only sell the constantly breaking down model to McDonalds.

Has it been established if McDonalds profits from the servicing of the machines? If so, the faulty nature could be known and encouraged by McDonalds.

There's no reality where there's enough soft-serve machines in McDonald's locations for the profits from this scheme to outweigh the damage to McDonald's reputation and actual revenue from customers.

Seriously it would be a drop in a very big bucket.

You didn't see the documentary on the McFlurry machine then...

Here's a summary: https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-...

The first part is true. The second part varies if the machines' maintenance will be covered by McDonald's corporate or by franchisees. McFlurry machines are a gambit to extract more maintenance fees from franchisees because McDonald's corporate doesn't care. McDonald's corporate isn't eating this "tax'.

Are the other models just as complex as the Mcdonalds one? I can attest that the Wendys machine is much simpler in design than Mcdonalds. It only deals with one flavor, produces a product with only one consistency and has simpler instrumentation: it just has a simple indicator LED and on/off/clean toggle switch.

The Mcdonalds machine is a "2 in 1" unit where it produces soft serve but also has a separate mechanism for mixing up milkshakes in 3-4 flavors.

Also the Wendys machine requires complete disassembly and sanitation each night where as from what I can tell the Mcdonals machine does not.

Apparently the McDonald's machine also pasteurizes the mixture so it can go a few weeks without cleaning. That's an added complexity that most other machines don't have, and it's a huge risk safety-wise for pasteurization to go wrong.

There is a hot mic admission by Taylor representatives that the McFlurry machine was designed specifically to increase maintenance costs to extract more money from franchisees.

Working McFlurry machine map: https://mcbroken.com

Very curious! Source?

When deals are bad enough, a always suspect bribery.

Unless it is public procurements, then I blame too strict lowest bidder rules.

No, in public procurement it's still bribery. You just carefully tailor the tender to the company that the fix is already in for.

When I worked in state government, every vendor of products was simply a middleman who marked a bunch of stuff up that you could easily buy from standard wholesale sources. Their catalogs would be three-hole binders of photocopies from other people's catalogs and printouts from ecommerce webpages with the prices whited out, and a pricelist typed up in word at the back. Every vendor of services was connected to an insider who tipped them off that purchases were about to be made.

The lowest bidder was selected from the people who could jump through the hoops required to submit bids, and who also fit the carefully written RFP.

In the case of Quiznos, it was kickbacks from the service company. Even when your soda machine was still under warranty, the franchise agreement required the store owner to use only one "authorized" company to repair the machines and pay them $75 per visit.

https://www.westword.com/news/youre-toast-5092405?showFullTe...

Westword is Denver's alternative weekly newspaper. Quiznos started in Denver.

> I have to ask the engineers that work at these companies [...]

Yeah, global warming is also entirely my fault because I just don't recycle hard enough.

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