> 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.