5 ms·

I really don't understand how McDonald's board and leadership has let this situation happen and continue. These ice cream machines are the printer cartridges o

by cletus 5y ago

I really don't understand how McDonald's board and leadership has let this situation happen and continue. These ice cream machines are the printer cartridges of McDonald's. Pointless DRM and obfuscation designed to maximize authorized call outs (with associated costs). Now you can argue taht McDonalds gets a cut of that (which may or may not be true; I just don't know) but all of this comes at the cost of customer experience and brand perception, which are two things McDonald's very much does care about. That's why I'm surprised they've let this go on for so long. I really have trouble believing the board is unaware of this issue and have chosen not to resolve it.

throwawayboise 5y ago
Yeah I don't get it either, for the same reasons. All I can think of is... I worked for McDonalds back in the 1980s. They had soft serve and milkshake machines then, but they were simpler. They almost never broke down. I do not recall any breakdowns in fact. The machines did not have an automatic pasturization/sanitize cycle. They had to be taken apart, cleaned and sanitized every night after closing, and then put back together the next morning. That took an extra person on the closing staff just to clean the machines, and another person the next morning to set them back up. Roughly two hours of labor a day, every day, to do those tasks. An experienced person could do it faster, but that's a ballpark. So McDonald's was betting on the labor savings offsetting the costs of the newer, more complicated and less reliable machines. Overall that may be working out on paper, but the perception of soft-serve being "always broken" is something I am surprised that McDonald's tolerates.
Topgamer7 5y ago
The pessimist in me says someone who sits on the board has a stake in the ice cream machine company, and they make bank on the crazy service fees for each tech they send out to "fix" the machines.

by cletus 5y ago

throwawayboise 5y ago

Yeah I don't get it either, for the same reasons. All I can think of is... I worked for McDonalds back in the 1980s. They had soft serve and milkshake machines then, but they were simpler. They almost never broke down. I do not recall any breakdowns in fact. The machines did not have an automatic pasturization/sanitize cycle. They had to be taken apart, cleaned and sanitized every night after closing, and then put back together the next morning. That took an extra person on the closing staff just to clean the machines, and another person the next morning to set them back up. Roughly two hours of labor a day, every day, to do those tasks. An experienced person could do it faster, but that's a ballpark. So McDonald's was betting on the labor savings offsetting the costs of the newer, more complicated and less reliable machines. Overall that may be working out on paper, but the perception of soft-serve being "always broken" is something I am surprised that McDonald's tolerates.

Topgamer7 5y ago

The pessimist in me says someone who sits on the board has a stake in the ice cream machine company, and they make bank on the crazy service fees for each tech they send out to "fix" the machines.