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Comment by jessriedel | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the last sentence. If the machines are frequently broken, that damages the Macdonald's brand in the consumer's eyes. And if the franchisee's are paying unnecessary costs, making a Macdonald's franchise less lucrative for the owner-operator, that will lead to fewer franchises renewals and new franchises in the future.

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Been a while since I first watched the video. I would imagine the ice cream machines are a relatively small part of the McDonald's business. As evidenced by the fact that McDonalds ice cream has been an issue for quite a while. I would imagine franchises of a similar caliber to McD's also exploit their owner-operators on a similar scale because they can, we just don't necessarily hear about it because McDonalds is the largest.

McDonald's isn't known for its quality anyway. I've had my fair share of sketchy McDonalds experiences. McDs is as large as it is because it is cheap, convenient, and ubiquitous. McDonalds has no qualms with cutting corners on quality, as evidenced by its entire menu.

I'd suggest the quality of McDonald's ingredients is superior than the vast majority of restaurants that rely on Sysco or US Foods. Just my opinion, I know it's not going to convince anyone whose mind is already made up about McDonald's.

aww man dont tell people about sysco. Once you learn to spot unmodified sysco foods it's impossible to stop and the illusion of sitdown restaurants is tarnished forever.

What are good places to start down this rabbit hole? (for those willing to have their illusions tarnished? )

One option might be to visit your local Jetro or Restaurant Depot, if you live in the US. If Sysco has showrooms/open warehouses I’m not aware of them, but Jetro and RD are of a very similar ilk.

Sure you can have french fries made from the best fat and potatoes but it doesn't change the fact that you're eating a burger with french fries instead of a steak with baked potatoes.

That's not an explanation. You could say that about a thousand things in McDonald's business. They are all a relatively small part, but in fact McDonald's has an army of people optimizing them all, and they are overall very successful.

Why do you think they would be able to abuse any of the operators? There are dozens and dozens of fast food franchises in the US, all in cut-throat competition. You may have heard of McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Subway, KFC, Chick-fil-A, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Dunkin’, Sonic Drive-In, Popeyes, Little Caesars, Arby’s, Chipotle, Dairy Queen, Jack in the Box, Hardee’s, Panda Express, Jimmy John’s, Five Guys, Wingstop, Culver’s, Zaxby’s, Raising Cane’s, Whataburger, Bojangles, Shake Shack, El Pollo Loco, Firehouse Subs, Jersey Mike’s, Del Taco, Checkers, Rally’s, Church’s Chicken, Moe’s Southwest Grill, Qdoba, Captain D’s, Freddy’s, Tim Hortons, Smoothie King, Blaze Pizza, Baskin-Robbins, White Castle, Portillo’s, Noodles & Company, Schlotzsky’s, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Auntie Anne’s, Marco’s Pizza, Boston Market, Smashburger, Fuddruckers, WingStreet, Krystal, Papa Murphy’s, Hungry Howie’s, The Habit Burger Grill, Jamba, Nathan’s Famous, Steak ’n Shake, Waffle House, Big Boy, Pizza Ranch, Cook Out.

The days of cheap McDonald’s is long gone. I can get a meal served at a sit down cafe for about the same price now days.

But it’s still just as poor quality, if not worse than before. Last time I ate there I bit down on something in my burger so hard I thought I broke a tooth. I’ll never eat it again.

McDonald’s pricing is complicated. You can still get cheap McDonald’s, but it requires giving them something in return (e.g. information about you).

Indeed, you can practically eat for free regularly at McD's if you use the app.

> Indeed, you can practically eat for free regularly at McD's if you use the app.

Bwahahah!

Not only you give data about you but now you are actively prefer to eat at McD instead of any other option and you are not even thinking about it.

Ehh I've used the app for a while, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But you get some"good' prices.

I like how the answers include both "they've done the math and it's worth it" and "they're idiots who don't know what they're doing". I don't think anybody cares what's really going on, as long as they can say McDonald's is bad.

I think the machines are broken way less often than people give McDonald's negativity over. In my estimation that's probably why corporate hasn't cared to fix the problem until recently.

Sure, a lot of people notice when they're broken, but a lot of people notice when AWS is down for an hour ~one time a year, too.

On top of that, depending where you are if your local McDonald's has a broken ice cream machine you probably aren't all that far away from another one. Perhaps corporate gets their sale either way?

There's an uncertain future cost (basically an externality that impacts McDonald corporate) but in return they get a nice premium now and immediate uncertainty for franchisees. It's possible it's overall a net negative for MD corporate, but it's also possible it's an overall economically profitable trade (even though it's clearly immoral).

> If the machines are frequently broken, that damages the Macdonald's brand in the consumer's eyes.

They are and it doesn't matter. You don't go to McD for the ice cream. It's been a running joke for decades how they're always broken.

> You don't go to McD for the ice cream.

Yeah. 'cause they don't have any 'cause the machine's broken.

I'm sure corporate has done the math and concluded that whatever money the machine provider pays them is higher than any expected losses in franchise revenue due to franchise owners quitting due to poor ice cream sales.

I'm pretty sure that ice cream is a high margin product like drinks and McDonald's has found an indirect way to extract most of the margins. The problem is that the technician service fees are a fixed cost designed to be revenue maximizing for the average restaurant. Franchises selling enough ice cream to pay the fixed costs stay in the game, the ones who don't simply keep them out of order. This is effectively a price discrimination strategy. By making the machine mandatory, they can offer the menu item in every restaurant, but they only have to collect money in proportion of ice cream revenue.

Modern capitalism isn't particularly rational. Money in the pocket is more tangible than minor brand damage.

If you want to be really cynical, you can assume that somebody at McDonald's and Taylor have crunched the numbers they know exactly how much they can squeeze their franchisees and the customer to effectively make money out of nothing. So many businesses operate this way now.

> I don't understand the last sentence. If the machines are frequently broken, that damages the Macdonald's brand in the consumer's eyes.

Try to quantify that to the MBA bean counters, good luck.

No one cares about ice cream from Mc f..ing Donald's, given that most employees in fast food stores are high school kids and I got the runs more than once from that shit, I don't trust them anyway to follow up with the stringent hygiene requirements that serving ice cream demands. Burger patties at least are grilled/fried.

> No one cares about ice cream from Mc f..ing Donald's

People care enough that there's a website mapping working McDonalds icecream machines across several countries, that has been up for years, and was referenced in the linked article:

https://mcbroken.com/

Quite a few places where softserve ice cream is not that widespread, McDonalds is one of the most reliable places to be able to find it.

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