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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

I'm honestly shocked McDonalds corporate let this situation fester. Like I've seen the allegation that corporate is incentivized to milk franchisees but honestly I just don't buy that.

The McFlurry machines being broken is now part of popular culture. It's a meme. There are websites to track if they're "broken". And they're broken a lot.

How can a company like McDonalds take that kind of brand hit? Screwing franchisees makes even less sense.

Honestly I'd be more inclined to believe that it's some current or former McDonalds executive with a relationship to Taylors such that they or someone they know is directly benefitting from the support contracts.

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The traditionally strong MCD franchiser <> franchisee relationship has actually been fraying for the past couple of years.

“Shareholder value” imperatives are driving short-term thinking at the corporate HQ.

Ok, so how does the franchisee paying high fees to Taylors for "support" help McD's bottom line? Are they getting a kickback of some kind? Maybe. I'm not sure I've seen any evidence of that.

Best guess: Taylors made a generous bid to McD corporate to become the exclusive provider of ice cream machines. This bid gives a chunk of money to McD corporate and promises maximum machine costs and maintenance call-out costs for franchisees. However it has no guarantees for call-out frequency, so as per a razor-and-blades business model this is how Taylors is now getting all their profits and the KPI they are maximising.

I don't understand this.

Why would mcdonald's take a bid from a company saying, essentially:

"Our package includes unnecessary maintenance costs and ill-perceived customer opinions of service. But we will pay you for that, and force the maintenece cost on your business partner, the franchise."

WHy wouldn't mcdonalds just choose s supplier that has a machine that works? And why would taylor pay them so that they can charge the franchisee...?

It smells more like internal corporate corruption than a deliberate top down policy.

Nonetheless corruption is tolerated from above for all manner of different reasons.

I'm pretty sure I've seen similar behavior at large, rich corporations where they've been milked via crappy contracts with shitty companies which have only an indirect effect on the bottom line.

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