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For anyone interested in a good video about this, there is YT video that details how the Ice Cream Machine's being broken is essentially a scheme that McDonald'

For anyone interested in a good video about this, there is YT video that details how the Ice Cream Machine's being broken is essentially a scheme that McDonald's corporate runs on their franchisees. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

voisin 3y ago
I am surprised the franchisees haven’t launched a class action. No other fast food chain has these issues.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  Surely the franchise agreement would prohibit such an action?
  - voisin 3y ago
    I am not sure such a clause would be upheld in a scenario where the franchisor blatantly acts in bad faith outside of industry norms to fleece the franchisee. There is a reasonable expectation of good faith.
    - liveoneggs 3y ago
      https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/business/subway-franchisees.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/business/subway-franchise...
  - krisoft 3y ago
    It's probably not even that. As a franchise you are under the thumb of the big corporation. They have a lot more money, and a lot more leverage to break you if you start suing them. They can probably inspect your premises, find 200 violations normally overlooked and then suspend your right to use their branding or suppliers. Sure you might win eventually, maybe in court. And then maybe you can sue them that the inspection happened in retaliation, but do you really want to risk that?
- daniel-cussen 3y ago
  [dead]
- kevinventullo 3y ago
  FWIW, I imagine the “invisible hand” is already in effect. That is, at the margins there are probably some potential franchisees who were dissuaded by McDonalds’ actions here.
  - saikia81 3y ago
    Is this an American joke I'm too European to understand? /s
droopyEyelids 3y ago
On the other hand, we have the fact that listeria just killed a couple people due to ice cream machines not getting cleaned properly. https://www.cdc.gov/listeria/outbreaks/monocytogenes-06-22/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/listeria/outbreaks/monocytogenes-06-22/i... Franchise owners use 'hacks' to disable the lengthy cleaning process on their machines to make more money at the expense of our health.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  that seems like a unrelated issue, the machines here aren't being disabled due to non-cleaning also that was last year also there's nothing in your link about it being due to someone hacking their machine
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    It's also obvious that technical measures would be useless at preventing this. Checking whether a local restaurant is following safety standards is for the local Health Inspector, not the machine vendor -- who would have the incentive to help them cheat as the one paying for their machines, if they weren't running a scam that makes the machine return false positives on purpose to generate profitable service calls. A prohibition on "hacking" only protects the scam.
  - adolph 3y ago
    Below is a milkshake listeria incident from this month. There is a balance to be sought between "right to repair" and safe operation of equipment. The discussion here [1] about dangers of ill informed self-service ebike batteries is an example. I'd like to see the standards for chilled dairy equipment maintenance before I would believe any claims about capabilities for self-repair. OLYMPIA – Listeria bacteria found in all milkshake flavors sold at Frugals restaurant at 10727 Pacific Ave. S., Tacoma, WA are associated with a foodborne listeriosis outbreak linked to six hospitalizations and three deaths. Investigators found Listeria in the ice cream machines, which were not cleaned correctly. No other Frugals restaurants are believed to be affected. The restaurant stopped using its ice cream machines Aug. 8, but Listeria can sicken people up to 70 days later. [0] 0. https://doh.wa.gov/newsroom/listeria-bacteria-found-milkshakes-sold-frugals-restaurant-tacoma https://doh.wa.gov/newsroom/listeria-bacteria-found-milkshak... 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37293557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37293557
nyokodo 3y ago
Can you summarize that video? I got about 7 minutes in and it still hadn't answered the question but did get an ad, so I gave up. Too much filler and noise!
- kevinventullo 3y ago
  From https://www.fastcompany.com/90923565/congress-mcdonalds-ice-cream-machines https://www.fastcompany.com/90923565/congress-mcdonalds-ice-...: The incentives here are all aligned against quick repair: Taylor makes more money when machines are broken. McDonald’s corporate has a lucrative service contract with Taylor. As a result, poor franchisees, who have no choice about what equipment to buy or how to service it, are forced to deal with broken machines and annoyed customers.
  - googlryas 3y ago
    Why wouldn't McDonalds just not do that, and charge more to franchisees, and pocket 100% of the amount instead of whatever cut they have to give to Taylor? Surely, franchisees and potential franchisees talk to each other, and if any appreciable amount of money was going out the door to fix the ice cream machine repeatedly, it would be a known cost of doing business.
    - MostlyStable 3y ago
      One possible reasons is that repair fees might not show up in planning the way a guaranteed franchise fee bump would. You can get your franchisees to pay more money if they don't know they are going to be paying it ahead of time, potentially. If the full extent of the repairs necessitated by the behavior were clear, obvious, and known ahead of time, then yeah, this would strictly be worse. But a slightly lower, but secret, fee might be preferable to a higher but obvious fee. That's just me speculating though. Could also just be incompetence or maliciousness, or maybe just once upon a time a particular person in McDonalds corporate took a bribe to make it happen. Who knows.
      - deleted 3y ago
Bukhmanizer 3y ago
As someone who used to take apart and clean those machines I expected to hate this video but found it pretty spot on. McDonalds was my first job and as someone who was pretty technologically inclined I started taking apart and fixing a lot of the old broken machines. I wouldn’t say the ice cream machine was completely impossible to fix, but it was absolutely a pain. We also had an older model so it may also have been simpler to fix. One thing I would add is that it also highlights the importance of having a good maintenance person even in McDonalds. The reason why I knew a lot of the tricks with the ice cream machine is we had a guy there, who had been working overnight maintenance for >10 years there. The video mentions that you can’t expect minimum wage employees who have only been there for 2 weeks to know how to do these things. But there’s so much involved with running a restaurant that you can’t expect a 15 year old with no experience to do. But so often these positions are treated like any other low wage/low skill job. He probably saved the franchisee millions of dollars in maintenance costs over the years yet only was paid ~$20 an hour (if that).
- specialist 3y ago
  Great share, thanks. To your last point: That's the mentality of treating labor as an expense rather than an investment.
jherico 3y ago
I've seen this video and while it's informative overall, it's also about 10 minutes or less of information stretched out to 30 minutes. super repetitive throughout and trying to constantly tickle you with the idea that resolution to questions are coming any second now.
- qudat 3y ago
  Totally agree. I couldn’t make it through 10 mins before being completely annoyed. It’s well constructed but frustrating to watch. It was constantly teasing their results throughout the video and I left knowing less than I did prior to watching.
- sen 3y ago
  Welcome to modern YouTube, where channels are heavily pressured to increase user watch-time or they'll get penalised. I'm a huge fan of YouTube, it's the only tv/video/etc type content I watch in life, yet they're intent on destroying everything that made it amazing in the first place.

voisin 3y ago

I am surprised the franchisees haven’t launched a class action. No other fast food chain has these issues.

0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
Surely the franchise agreement would prohibit such an action?
- voisin 3y ago
  I am not sure such a clause would be upheld in a scenario where the franchisor blatantly acts in bad faith outside of industry norms to fleece the franchisee. There is a reasonable expectation of good faith.
  - liveoneggs 3y ago
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/business/subway-franchisees.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/business/subway-franchise...
- krisoft 3y ago
  It's probably not even that. As a franchise you are under the thumb of the big corporation. They have a lot more money, and a lot more leverage to break you if you start suing them. They can probably inspect your premises, find 200 violations normally overlooked and then suspend your right to use their branding or suppliers. Sure you might win eventually, maybe in court. And then maybe you can sue them that the inspection happened in retaliation, but do you really want to risk that?
daniel-cussen 3y ago
[dead]
kevinventullo 3y ago
FWIW, I imagine the “invisible hand” is already in effect. That is, at the margins there are probably some potential franchisees who were dissuaded by McDonalds’ actions here.
- saikia81 3y ago
  Is this an American joke I'm too European to understand? /s

droopyEyelids 3y ago

On the other hand, we have the fact that listeria just killed a couple people due to ice cream machines not getting cleaned properly. https://www.cdc.gov/listeria/outbreaks/monocytogenes-06-22/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/listeria/outbreaks/monocytogenes-06-22/i... Franchise owners use 'hacks' to disable the lengthy cleaning process on their machines to make more money at the expense of our health.

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
that seems like a unrelated issue, the machines here aren't being disabled due to non-cleaning also that was last year also there's nothing in your link about it being due to someone hacking their machine
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  It's also obvious that technical measures would be useless at preventing this. Checking whether a local restaurant is following safety standards is for the local Health Inspector, not the machine vendor -- who would have the incentive to help them cheat as the one paying for their machines, if they weren't running a scam that makes the machine return false positives on purpose to generate profitable service calls. A prohibition on "hacking" only protects the scam.
- adolph 3y ago
  Below is a milkshake listeria incident from this month. There is a balance to be sought between "right to repair" and safe operation of equipment. The discussion here [1] about dangers of ill informed self-service ebike batteries is an example. I'd like to see the standards for chilled dairy equipment maintenance before I would believe any claims about capabilities for self-repair. OLYMPIA – Listeria bacteria found in all milkshake flavors sold at Frugals restaurant at 10727 Pacific Ave. S., Tacoma, WA are associated with a foodborne listeriosis outbreak linked to six hospitalizations and three deaths. Investigators found Listeria in the ice cream machines, which were not cleaned correctly. No other Frugals restaurants are believed to be affected. The restaurant stopped using its ice cream machines Aug. 8, but Listeria can sicken people up to 70 days later. [0] 0. https://doh.wa.gov/newsroom/listeria-bacteria-found-milkshakes-sold-frugals-restaurant-tacoma https://doh.wa.gov/newsroom/listeria-bacteria-found-milkshak... 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37293557 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37293557

nyokodo 3y ago

Can you summarize that video? I got about 7 minutes in and it still hadn't answered the question but did get an ad, so I gave up. Too much filler and noise!

kevinventullo 3y ago
From https://www.fastcompany.com/90923565/congress-mcdonalds-ice-cream-machines https://www.fastcompany.com/90923565/congress-mcdonalds-ice-...: The incentives here are all aligned against quick repair: Taylor makes more money when machines are broken. McDonald’s corporate has a lucrative service contract with Taylor. As a result, poor franchisees, who have no choice about what equipment to buy or how to service it, are forced to deal with broken machines and annoyed customers.
- googlryas 3y ago
  Why wouldn't McDonalds just not do that, and charge more to franchisees, and pocket 100% of the amount instead of whatever cut they have to give to Taylor? Surely, franchisees and potential franchisees talk to each other, and if any appreciable amount of money was going out the door to fix the ice cream machine repeatedly, it would be a known cost of doing business.
  - MostlyStable 3y ago
    One possible reasons is that repair fees might not show up in planning the way a guaranteed franchise fee bump would. You can get your franchisees to pay more money if they don't know they are going to be paying it ahead of time, potentially. If the full extent of the repairs necessitated by the behavior were clear, obvious, and known ahead of time, then yeah, this would strictly be worse. But a slightly lower, but secret, fee might be preferable to a higher but obvious fee. That's just me speculating though. Could also just be incompetence or maliciousness, or maybe just once upon a time a particular person in McDonalds corporate took a bribe to make it happen. Who knows.
    - deleted 3y ago

Bukhmanizer 3y ago

As someone who used to take apart and clean those machines I expected to hate this video but found it pretty spot on. McDonalds was my first job and as someone who was pretty technologically inclined I started taking apart and fixing a lot of the old broken machines. I wouldn’t say the ice cream machine was completely impossible to fix, but it was absolutely a pain. We also had an older model so it may also have been simpler to fix. One thing I would add is that it also highlights the importance of having a good maintenance person even in McDonalds. The reason why I knew a lot of the tricks with the ice cream machine is we had a guy there, who had been working overnight maintenance for >10 years there. The video mentions that you can’t expect minimum wage employees who have only been there for 2 weeks to know how to do these things. But there’s so much involved with running a restaurant that you can’t expect a 15 year old with no experience to do. But so often these positions are treated like any other low wage/low skill job. He probably saved the franchisee millions of dollars in maintenance costs over the years yet only was paid ~$20 an hour (if that).

specialist 3y ago
Great share, thanks. To your last point: That's the mentality of treating labor as an expense rather than an investment.

jherico 3y ago

I've seen this video and while it's informative overall, it's also about 10 minutes or less of information stretched out to 30 minutes. super repetitive throughout and trying to constantly tickle you with the idea that resolution to questions are coming any second now.

qudat 3y ago
Totally agree. I couldn’t make it through 10 mins before being completely annoyed. It’s well constructed but frustrating to watch. It was constantly teasing their results throughout the video and I left knowing less than I did prior to watching.
sen 3y ago
Welcome to modern YouTube, where channels are heavily pressured to increase user watch-time or they'll get penalised. I'm a huge fan of YouTube, it's the only tv/video/etc type content I watch in life, yet they're intent on destroying everything that made it amazing in the first place.