No. They have a monopoly.
If they’re forced to buy them back, they’ll incorporate that cost into the next round that the franchises are required to purchase.
Yes, this is what having a captive market means.
The problem is the franchise agreement. Shoehorning this into a lemon-law framework doesn’t work.
Their ice cream machines are broken so often that it’s already become a meme. They might as well not have them at this point.
They require extensive cleaning cycles and some operations require manufacturer servicing. It's just they way they work, it's documented, and there are service contracts in place to do the servicing.
When the kid at the drive through says the ice cream machine is "broken", what is actually meant is that it is currently not producing ice cream, and they don't want to argue with the person who wants ice cream. But the reason isn't that it is malfunctioning.
Taylor isn't losing money "fixing" these machines, the maintenance they do on them is on contract, and is quite lucrative.