For anyone interested in a good video about this, there is YT video that details how the Ice Cream Machine's being broken is essentially a scheme that McDonald's corporate runs on their franchisees.
McDonalds was my first job and as someone who was pretty technologically inclined I started taking apart and fixing a lot of the old broken machines. I wouldn’t say the ice cream machine was completely impossible to fix, but it was absolutely a pain. We also had an older model so it may also have been simpler to fix.
One thing I would add is that it also highlights the importance of having a good maintenance person even in McDonalds. The reason why I knew a lot of the tricks with the ice cream machine is we had a guy there, who had been working overnight maintenance for >10 years there. The video mentions that you can’t expect minimum wage employees who have only been there for 2 weeks to know how to do these things. But there’s so much involved with running a restaurant that you can’t expect a 15 year old with no experience to do. But so often these positions are treated like any other low wage/low skill job. He probably saved the franchisee millions of dollars in maintenance costs over the years yet only was paid ~$20 an hour (if that).
To your last point: That's the mentality of treating labor as an expense rather than an investment.
I'm a huge fan of YouTube, it's the only tv/video/etc type content I watch in life, yet they're intent on destroying everything that made it amazing in the first place.
The incentives here are all aligned against quick repair: Taylor makes more money when machines are broken. McDonald’s corporate has a lucrative service contract with Taylor. As a result, poor franchisees, who have no choice about what equipment to buy or how to service it, are forced to deal with broken machines and annoyed customers.
Surely, franchisees and potential franchisees talk to each other, and if any appreciable amount of money was going out the door to fix the ice cream machine repeatedly, it would be a known cost of doing business.
If the full extent of the repairs necessitated by the behavior were clear, obvious, and known ahead of time, then yeah, this would strictly be worse. But a slightly lower, but secret, fee might be preferable to a higher but obvious fee.
That's just me speculating though. Could also just be incompetence or maliciousness, or maybe just once upon a time a particular person in McDonalds corporate took a bribe to make it happen. Who knows.
1. McD HQ mandates franchises buy a special model Taylor-Made machine (not the same that like Chick-fil-a and others use). This is why McD machines stop working but other companies don't.
2. Every night there is a very specific maintenance routine that needs to be ran to clean and prep the machine for the next day. If it's not followed perfectly, the process will likely fail and the next morning workers will be greeted to a cryptic error code. Sometimes re-running the process will clear it, sometimes it wont. But this can take hours.
3. If re-running it doesn't fix it, then the franchise owner is stuck with the dilemma of bleeding money not having a working ice cream machine for customers, or calling an expensive hourly certified Taylor-Made repair person.
4. So they usually end up calling the repair person.
The idea is that McD HQ is working with Taylor-Made to make this problem happen so that franchise owners have to pay for expensive repair people.
Apparently the error codes have been reverse-engineered with a USB device that a third party created. But Taylor-Made is said to deny warranty and service etc if you try to use one.
TaylorMade is a manufacturer of golf equipment. They are not related to Taylor Company, the maker of these ice cream machines.
Is it possible that what goes into those machines at McDonald's is thicker than Chick-fil-A's mix, rather than the machine being to blame? Just like some kinds of motor oil are harder on an engine than others.
I mean I guess there could be other reasons of features or quality or something, but it seems a bit strange. I mean, in the end, it's just McD machines that constantly break down, so if anything you would think HQ would want to improve this situation somehow, when it seems they are completely uninterested.
If you already anticipate that your ingredients are going to break machines quite often, and that you'll require a lot of repairs, it would benefit you to standardize on a single large-scale support contract rather than leaving it up to every independent operator for themselves. Kind of the same way taxi fleets usually mandate one single specific model of automobile despite thousands of independent medallion holders.
You mandate that franchises have to buy my machines, and only me can service them.
We both benefit economically from this agreement.
Also, machines enter in service mode without needing it just to give me more business.
Franchise owners use 'hacks' to disable the lengthy cleaning process on their machines to make more money at the expense of our health.
Apparently one of the biggest failure modes is "overfull supply hopper doesn't heat fast enough". Just reporting that tells you what you need to do to fix the problem. Dump a couple cups out and rerun the cycle. Or "feed too viscous"--dump the entire thing and run water on a cycle. Then reload with a fresh batch.
This seems to be emblematic of that machine.
And, the problem isn't that these machines don't have good error reporting. The problem is the fact that these machines are terribly unreliable. A 15% failure rate is bad. However, there is no money to be gained from fixing the issues. So, neither Taylor nor McDonalds's will spend any money to fix it.
It's also emblematic that, given the health sensitive nature of the machines, no other company attempts to do heating in place. I presume that somebody in those franchises looked at the reliability numbers and laughed Taylor out of the room.
also that was last year
also there's nothing in your link about it being due to someone hacking their machine
A prohibition on "hacking" only protects the scam.
OLYMPIA – Listeria bacteria found in all milkshake flavors sold at Frugals restaurant at 10727 Pacific Ave. S., Tacoma, WA are associated with a foodborne listeriosis outbreak linked to six hospitalizations and three deaths. Investigators found Listeria in the ice cream machines, which were not cleaned correctly. No other Frugals restaurants are believed to be affected. The restaurant stopped using its ice cream machines Aug. 8, but Listeria can sicken people up to 70 days later. [0]
0. https://doh.wa.gov/newsroom/listeria-bacteria-found-milkshak...