It's not inconceivable - it wouldn't make sense to intentionally use a low quality product or intentionally cause service calls because of the decrease in revenue for McDonalds. But it would make sense to mandate a particular vendor you have a stake in.
It’s not a major problem for McDonald’s Inc. though! They don’t sell McFlurries! They lease buildings and land, and they do collect a 4% royalty on sales. But the franchisee loses the other 96% of the revenue and has to pay 100% of the “authorized Taylor repair” bill. So it’s a much bigger problem for them, and a moral hazard for McDonald’s to be able to force the store owners to use the overpriced and supposedly unnecessary (other than due to digital locks) Taylor service offerings.
It's probably safe to say that any public company very much does want to ;)
> why not jack up the rent or royalties?
I assume that they will always do that (as much as contracts allow, and as much as the market will bear) regardless, so any upside from this scam is just incremental revenue on top of that.
Although I admit it's been so long since I read the original stories about this that I forgot what's in it for McDonalds Inc. Clearly Taylor's parent company makes out like a bandit (I'm assuming they pay the techs poorly and thus have a high margin) but IDK how much visibility we have publicly to what the financial arrangements are now, vs. what it might be if McDonalds Inc ripped up the Taylor contract tomorrow and say, signed a new one with a company that wasn't evil. Because I agree that I don't know how those dots are connected.