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The real question is why McDonalds would go along with this. Presumably they have the leverage, why would they be incentivised to let even a cent of franchisee

The real question is why McDonalds would go along with this. Presumably they have the leverage, why would they be incentivised to let even a cent of franchisee money going to another company if they can help it? They want their franchisees to have as much money as possible, that's what benefits them.

mrob 6y ago
Because losing 14% of ice cream sales beats getting sued for poisoning people and losing their reputation for good food safety. If you can't trust McDonalds to be a safe choice, why would you go there at all?
- Grustaf 6y ago
  Did you watch the film? The idea is that McDonalds are knowingly letting another company overcharge their franchisees, it's not about safety. Supposedly other fast food chains use the same machines without these problems.
  - curryst 6y ago
    Someone above posted a Wired article you should check out. Basically, McDonald's uses the same machine to make both ice cream cones and milkshakes, meaning it has 2 hoppers. In addition, it uses a pump instead of gravity, which allows them to serve more ice cream cones per minute but makes it vastly more complicated. I can see how McDonald's would make a strategic choice to lower their time to serve a customer in exchange for a machine that is broken part of the time. They actually track and chastise workers based on taking more than some absurdly short amount of time to serve a customer. It seems like a corporate strategy for them, and this is in line with that.
  - blagie 6y ago
    I agree about the first part, but I'm not sure about the argument about other franchises. The employees at most McD's are in a different class than most other franchises. This isn't universal, of course, but for the most part, McD's hires from the very bottom end. This isn't bad -- I see people with Down's, strong autism, and similar working at McDs, happily, and those folks need jobs. To do that, you want equipment which is a bit more fail-safe. Otherwise, we'd have safety issues at McD's every week, and they're exceptionally uncommon. That's because of a robust process. Ice cream machines with more fail-safes at McD's make sense to me. The really incriminating part of the video comes at the very end, where they locked out Kisch.
ChrisRR 6y ago
Mcdonalds don't make their money from food, they make it from real estate. A broken ice cream machine meme probably does next to nothing to their revenue.
- Grustaf 6y ago
  I'm familiar with their business model, but obviously McDonalds will always want to a) protect their brand and b) optimise the earnings of franchisees, since that is where THEY get their revenues. His argument is that "big businesses protect each other", but that obviously doesn't make sense unless McDonalds owns Taylors.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

mrob 6y ago

Because losing 14% of ice cream sales beats getting sued for poisoning people and losing their reputation for good food safety. If you can't trust McDonalds to be a safe choice, why would you go there at all?

Grustaf 6y ago
Did you watch the film? The idea is that McDonalds are knowingly letting another company overcharge their franchisees, it's not about safety. Supposedly other fast food chains use the same machines without these problems.
- curryst 6y ago
  Someone above posted a Wired article you should check out. Basically, McDonald's uses the same machine to make both ice cream cones and milkshakes, meaning it has 2 hoppers. In addition, it uses a pump instead of gravity, which allows them to serve more ice cream cones per minute but makes it vastly more complicated. I can see how McDonald's would make a strategic choice to lower their time to serve a customer in exchange for a machine that is broken part of the time. They actually track and chastise workers based on taking more than some absurdly short amount of time to serve a customer. It seems like a corporate strategy for them, and this is in line with that.
- blagie 6y ago
  I agree about the first part, but I'm not sure about the argument about other franchises. The employees at most McD's are in a different class than most other franchises. This isn't universal, of course, but for the most part, McD's hires from the very bottom end. This isn't bad -- I see people with Down's, strong autism, and similar working at McDs, happily, and those folks need jobs. To do that, you want equipment which is a bit more fail-safe. Otherwise, we'd have safety issues at McD's every week, and they're exceptionally uncommon. That's because of a robust process. Ice cream machines with more fail-safes at McD's make sense to me. The really incriminating part of the video comes at the very end, where they locked out Kisch.

ChrisRR 6y ago

Mcdonalds don't make their money from food, they make it from real estate. A broken ice cream machine meme probably does next to nothing to their revenue.

Grustaf 6y ago
I'm familiar with their business model, but obviously McDonalds will always want to a) protect their brand and b) optimise the earnings of franchisees, since that is where THEY get their revenues. His argument is that "big businesses protect each other", but that obviously doesn't make sense unless McDonalds owns Taylors.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]