which is part of why I'm so confused by the scheme. Sure, as other commenters have pointed out, it's the franchisees that are bearing this cost and not the "corporation" (which is allegedly getting a kickback), but I have to imagine that, at the margin and in the long term, the reputation that McDonalds has of never having working ice cream machines causes some harm (if caused zero harm, then the flip side is that there is zero value to them having the machines/product), so in the long term there are fewer franchises and therefore less money to the corporation.

Rather than this complicated kick back scheme....why not just charge the franchisees more money? It's Mcdonald's gets the same amount of money, the franchisees pay the same amount of money, but you have ice cream machines with a greater uptime and therefore a better brand image which leads to greater long term growth. It just seems stupid and short sighted.

I realize that humans do stupid and short sighted things all the time, but this one just seems really obvious. This almost feels like it has to be a cause of corruption where the the corporation isn't actually getting something but rather some executive got a direct kickback in order to slip this in, even though it's in the best interests of neither the franchisees nor the corporation.