5 ms·

Here's a great YT video on why McDonald's ice cream machines are always broken: https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4 https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4 TL;DW: there are some

• hansvm 2y ago
  Implicit here is the assumption that (a) when evaluating many franchises McD is still attractive for new owner operators despite the obvious flaw, or (b) switching costs are high for existing McD owner operator victims, and the issue wasn't known or believed to be this bad when they started.
• Aloisius 2y ago
  US franchises have been able to buy machines from Carpigiani instead of Taylor for ~7 years.
• jessriedel 2y ago
  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.
  • lbourdages 2y ago
    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.
    • imtringued 2y ago
      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.
  • aeturnum 2y ago
    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).
  • mcdow 2y ago
    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.
    • 14 2y ago
      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.
      • WD-42 2y ago
        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.
      • yakz 2y ago
        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).
        • qingcharles 2y ago
          Indeed, you can practically eat for free regularly at McD's if you use the app.
          • nick3443 2y ago
            Ehh I've used the app for a while, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But you get some"good' prices.
  • wvenable 2y ago
    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.
  • mschuster91 2y ago
    > 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.
    • vidarh 2y ago
      > 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/ 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.
  • valbaca 2y ago
    > 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.
    • tbrownaw 2y ago
      > You don't go to McD for the ice cream. Yeah. 'cause they don't have any 'cause the machine's broken.
  • tedunangst 2y ago
    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.
  • dangus 2y ago
    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?
• throw0101d 2y ago
  > Here's a great YT video on why McDonald's ice cream machines are always broken: https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4?si=IK1S-Yx9Zq4nEVrr https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4?si=IK1S-Yx9Zq4nEVrr As habit or policy, can we all agree to get rid of the tracking information in Youtube links? * https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4 https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4
  • mcdow 2y ago
    My bad! Fixed. Didn't even realize the YT links had tracking info on them!
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • colejohnson66 2y ago
      FYI, it's the "si" query parameter; It identifies the account that clicked the share button
  • sofixa 2y ago
    Similarly Instagram started adding tracking querystrings (igshid or something like that), and for a good few weeks any Instagram link with it was completely broken for me (few loops, errors, and throwing me to the home page), I had to manually remove that part of the url.
• cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Very weird, here in Canada I don't think I've ever been to a McDonald's without working ice cream machines.
• 486sx33 2y ago
  Well that or they have the option to buy the real Italian machine not the Taylor piece of crap. It’s just super expensive and comes from Italy
• tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
  Most importantly, McDonalds has a strong incentive to avoid headlines like "37 people hospitalized after shit-bacteria in improperly maintained ice cream machine", which is why the machines self-monitor and shut down at the slightest excursion from some specified norm. And McD wants the machines maintained by the official technician, because they'd rather screw their franchisees a bit than risk someone ripping out the offending sensor. IMO, the perverse incentives come on top of this (Taylor has no motivation to make the machines more transparent since they profit from the call-outs, McD either doesn't care or may even prefer this since it could reduce the risk of "creative" solutions like an employee holding an ice cube next to a sensor), but the "McD would rather have 50% of the ice cream machines 'broken' than have a single one serve E.Coli to its customers" is what kicked this whole thing off.
  • coconut08 2y ago
    then why is it that its only the ice cream machines that have problems not not things like the soda fountain any other food production tool?
    • edm0nd 2y ago
      Perhaps because the environment the ice cream machines create are the most friendly to bacteria and other things that cause the most issues?
      • entropicdrifter 2y ago
        Then why does the Frosty machine always work at Wendy's? That's made by Taylor too.
        • chongli 2y ago
          The Wendy's frosty machine doesn't have the same automatic cleaning cycle and pasteurization feature that the McDonald's ice cream machine has. Thus Wendy's employees need to tear the machine down and clean it by hand, a long and tedious process. The whole reason McDonald's wanted this machine was to reduce training costs and labour. However, the machine does need to be operated correctly or it simply shuts down.
• dang 2y ago
  Stories and comments about that video: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E0%20SrDEtSlqJC4&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=SrDEtSlqJC4&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... List of related threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41949811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41949811