Ice cream machines are not printers with cartridges. If you allow unqualified labor do "refills", there will be food contamination and people will die!
But we let worse things slide, so who cares. Enjoy your ice cream! :)
But we let worse things slide, so who cares. Enjoy your ice cream! :)
Some of them actually did graduate from "ice cream academy". Local Ice Cream parlor has reputation to maintain. Sometimes it is even directly operated by ice cream company.
McDonalds just runs automated machine somewhere in corner. They have no reputation to maintain, it is just borrowed franchise.
A local ice cream parlor isn't making ice cream on the fly.
They are scooping it from premade buckets stored in special freezer cases during business hours and stored in walking freezers at close.
As other's have pointed out, McDonalds, or their franchises, wanted to eliminate the couple hours of labor usually required to clean those machines daily, and so developed their own mix, and Taylor made special machines that would "self clean" to support it. For safety reasons (probably), those machines lock themselves down if anything goes off the sanitized happy path, and only super expensive Taylor techs have the requisite knowledge to get them back on track.
McDonald's is alone in this struggle because they wanted to save $20 a day in wages. It's $350 per 15 minutes to fix the machines, so assuming it's just one button to fix them (it's not) it only has to break down less than once every 18ish days to pay off, but it doesn't scale well if the machines are less reliable than that.
If they're still the same machines from decades past when I worked at McDonald's then refilling the machine is just dumping a bag of mix in the container on the top. It doesn't take much qualifications. Slightly easier than refilling a printer.
The machines from decades past had a manual cleaning cycle that included draining the system, partial disassembly and disinfection of parts. Most assistant store managers (and some shift managers) are/were trained for this job. Of course most other restaurants are using these older designs without issue. Also, McDs themselves used these older machines without issue at the time.
The board members for McDs are also board members for the equipment oem, and the licensed repair orgs. It's about extracting money from franchisees more than it is about food safety. It could mean a reduction in maintenance and labor, but there's no reason that higher level store managers/assistants can't also be trained in basic maintenance on these newer machines.
So the only people smart enough to repair them safely are the manufacturers?
So only take your car to the dealership for a service?
Meat is cooked just before the use, it does not get poisonous very easily. Ice cream is very different. How would you ensure that managers throw away "good enough" batches of ice cream every evening?
Not the right to break health and safety laws.
And enforcement is pretty lacking in itself. Most people won't report it to the authorities that they got the runs from some ice cream, the authorities will only hear about it when dozens of people arrive at the hospital with the same symptoms, and even then most public health departments have already been understaffed prior to COVID to follow up on the hospital reports and conduct inspections.
What McD/Taylor are doing here is, as fucked up as it is, the only meaningful way they can make sure they're not labeled a public health risk.
There is a chain of custody, paper trail, spare parts certification, logging... For example if there is a heat ex-changer that sometimes does not work, it may cause a lawsuit. McDonald (and insurance companies) wants to be able to sue ice cream machine manufacturer.
I also want to be able to replace any "suitable" parts in my car, but sadly government does not allow that! Remember, when everyone lost their shit with Volkswagen "cheating" in their software?
Kytch board: "reservoir is overfull, remove product and start again"
Ah yes, good thing we ensured those fucking rubes did not touch the ice cream! Better schedule a $2000 service call to solve this impossible error. Excuse me while I park my ferrari next to my grand piano.
The device should be legal if you or I buy this machine. However installing it at McDonalds by a non “certified tech” might be in violation of the franchise contract