iFixit Petitions Government for Right to Hack McDonald's Ice Cream Machine
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And you seem to see this more and more. It seems that these days the product quality itself doesn't matter, it's all about the contracts that your legal team setup in the background. I have to ask the engineers that work at these companies: does it bother you that the only reason people use your product is that they would get sued if they tried using another product? How does it make you feel that your product is so bad the only thing keeping your customers in the door is the contracts your legal team drew up.
Unless it is public procurements, then I blame too strict lowest bidder rules.
When I worked in state government, every vendor of products was simply a middleman who marked a bunch of stuff up that you could easily buy from standard wholesale sources. Their catalogs would be three-hole binders of photocopies from other people's catalogs and printouts from ecommerce webpages with the prices whited out, and a pricelist typed up in word at the back. Every vendor of services was connected to an insider who tipped them off that purchases were about to be made.
The lowest bidder was selected from the people who could jump through the hoops required to submit bids, and who also fit the carefully written RFP.
https://www.westword.com/news/youre-toast-5092405?showFullTe...
Westword is Denver's alternative weekly newspaper. Quiznos started in Denver.
It's just that often the value is "I bought this and even though it provides no value, it's pretty enough that it impressed my boss and I got a raise and promotion"
Simply don't do that, then. It's not hard. (And… why even increase your liability and reduce your hiring pool by being relentlessly unethical? The trade-off isn't worth it, even if you're a stereotypical heartless executive.)
I entirely agree with your sentiment but financially, Adtech has done quite well for itself.
Reply: A lot of people reading this comment do unethical things, so we probably shouldn't be on our high horse in this thread.
I don't necessarily endorse that line of thinking as I believe it falls under the purview of "classic whataboutism".
(That parent should have the guts to broaden their scope of condemnation. Unless throwing the first stone in a glass house was a clever Socratic prompt intended to lead to this discussion.)
indeed, with whataboutism, the intent never is to solve the problem, only to deflect, with the aim usually of ensuring the problem remains unresolved, and perhaps even undiscussed
> If the OP didn't point out that tech overall has become a cesspool industry doing comparable things, then someone had to.
I suppose this is true if you start with the assumption that someone is going to engage in the intellectually dishonest fallacy of whataboutism
as for your portrayal of HN, it is as self-serving as your prior analogy.
Someone not doing X indeed doesn't say whether you should be doing X, but it stands ground that X has a flaw for adoption - and talking to someone that doesn't do it is a great way to examine why, and possibility use it to your argument.
"they" have no "stance" or "argument", they're just the ones who happened to point out the problem. They themselves are irrelevant. They could strangle puppies for fun, and they could still point out the problem as well as if they donated both kidneys to child orphan strangers. They're just the person there at the time, pointing out the problem. It could have been anybody pointing out the problem, the problem is still a problem.
that's why tu quoque is a fallacy: attacking the person who pointed out the problem, doesn't resolve the problem, and doesn't seek to, either. It seeks to silence the person who pointed out the problem. Shooting the messenger is a related problem-solving anti-pattern, for similar reasons.
You are right that Tu Quoque is often used to silence the problem statement representative, but it shouldn't become a go-to card for individuals to claim when they're hypocrisy is pointed out (which I've seen, not saying it did here).
this entire statement is the exact opposite of true: anyone can raise awareness of the problem regardless of who they are, it doesn't make them a "representative" of anything (just imagine them reading an anonymous comment card they pulled out of a box) and any inconsistency you see between them and the problem is irrelevant, and is a distraction if brought up
that is why tu quoque, what you are describing, is a fallacy
> For an individual wearing a lanyard with the problem statement being, "there are too many lanyards in the world", you are well above your means to inquire on his participation within the problem firsthand, and how they're contributing to it (or lack thereof).
you would be engaging in the logical fallacy of whataboutism, because your questioning of him doesn't address the problem, and is in fact counterproductive in solving the problem, because you are attacking an ally in solving the problem
this illustrates why tu quoque is a fallacy when trying to solve the problem
put another way, because their identity is irrelevant, a 100% equally valid question would be for him to ask you what are you are doing to solve the problem
the analogy is bad anyways, because in this real life topic, the whataboutism user is wrongly conflating two different actions, as well as ascribing actions to people who didn't do them. All the people who responded here pointing out that they don't, in fact, sell private data, were conveniently ignored by the original tu quoque perpetrator
Any new technology can be looked at through the lens of evil. I used to write code for stick-on wireless biosensors that massively improved living conditions for neonates and the chronically ill. Some health insurance company could use the exact same tech to institute a system like what the car insurance companies have with those "safe driver" tracker dongles.
Yeah, global warming is also entirely my fault because I just don't recycle hard enough.
Look, I'm all for better repair options and Right to Repair, but McDonald's is selling consistency and their reputation is on the line (not the franchisee) when something goes wrong or people get sick.
For those reasons alone, it's not unreasonable to force franchisees to use a specific brand of machines, contract a specific company for repairs, and use specific OEM parts. CYA big time in so many ways.
What people are forgetting here is McDonald's has an interest in these machines working as well as possible (revenue + reputation), and the franchisee also has an interest in these machines working as well as possible (revenue). The franchisee however, does not necessarily care about the McDonald's brand and reputation, and given the option might choose degraded parts/safety to save money - causing a problem for McDonalds.
So... McDonald's says you have to use these approved machines and get service/parts from this approved vendor. Case closed...
The only people who seem to really care about this issue are customers. That won't be enough to force a private company to open the door to any yahoo repair company with Wish.com replacement parts.
I don't see how that line of thinking is any different to the argument manufacturers are making regarding right to repair. The response is simple, all parts must be G.A. and manufacturers can't force the company they are sourcing their parts from to not sell to third parties.
McDonalds can very well sue the franchise for not following the guidelines and ordering bad parts.
McDonald's is also large enough of a customer that we can assume the specifics of this machine were tailored or custom-made in part just for McDonald's. The automated cleaning and self-diagnosis system is exactly what someone like corporate McDonald's wants - take those liabilities out of the hands of individual franchisees and fallible employees. Make is as dead simple as it can be... machine says no-go, then it's a no-go.
McDonald's will not allow a system where a franchisee or random-employee decides the machine is "clean enough" and proceeds to use it anyway, potentially getting people sick.
So what will be accomplished here in this specific situation? Probably nothing...
This makes the arguments about repuatational risk from shoddy repair parts fall flat.
From Cones to McFlurries to Milkshakes, I'm pretty sure they all use the same machine. McDonald's sells a tremendous amount of ice cream products.
> I wish I could find the videos now, but there was a decently convincing (although with the usual "documentary grain of salt" caveats) argument that McDonalds took a payout to allow Taylor to predatorily extract value while providing shit service to their Franchisees.
I find that very hard to believe. You're right, it's a meme for a reason after all, but sabotaging themselves makes no sense even if Taylor paid McDonald's for that racket. McDonald's has nothing to gain in that situation, only loss of reputation and revenue.
> This makes the arguments about repuatational risk from shoddy repair parts fall flat.
It doesn't though, and cannot just be hand-waved away. Imagine what the memes would be like if the machines were further degraded by bad parts or worse, got people sick at random locations.
McDonald's has a right to force consistency. It's their brand, and ultimately their wallet that bears the consequences.
The fact that these machines are likely custom made, or partially customized just for McDonald's is even more reason why it's reasonable for McDonald's to force franchisees to use specific vendors for repair/parts.
Even with right to repair, McDonald's can force franchisees to use specific equipment and parts and vendors. That is their right as the brand owner.
Which means... there is no reality where joe-random repair company is going to be allowed to repair joe-random franchisee's machines using parts sourced from who knows where. It's just not going to ever happen, there's too much liability.
McDonald's wants a machine that's so brain-dead simple to use safely and keep sanitarily that even a new-hire with 5 minutes of training can operate it effectively. They get that by forcing standardization on one unit and one vendor, and software safety mechanisms that provide a firm no-go when something isn't right.
> And I'm pretty sure that people have done (informal) reliability studies by things like calling random franchises, and Mcdonalds isn't just more popular, it's actually less reliable.
You'll need some sort of source for this. Most fast food chains only sell one ice cream product, usually shakes or cones, maybe both. McDonald's sells McFlurries which are very popular, in addition to seasonal products and then the regular products. Given McDonald's is also the largest fast food chain in the world, it stands to reason they sell more ice cream products than anyone else.
Which would, yes, mean the surface area is larger and more exposed. People go there specifically for a McFlurry and come away dissapointed. How many people go to Taco Bell specifically for a milkshake and nothing else?
The point is not "can they do this" the point is "is it necessary for them to do it for brand reputational reasons".
The steelman argument I've seen for this state of affairs is that (apparently) the McDonald's machine is much more complicated to allow it to self sanitize/clean every night and only need full disassembly every 2 weeks. The machines used at other chains apparently don't' have this automatic process and must be disassembled and manually cleaned more frequently. That would all be well and good...if it worked. The frequent state of disrepair of McDonalds machines pretty clearly indicates it does not.
They are mandating the use of a low-reliability machine, presumably in the name of lower labor costs (which you'd think you wouldn't have to _mandate_ since the franchiesees probably care more about labor costs than anyone), also mandating an expensive service contract for those machines. I'm just really really skeptical that 3rd party parts would make this situation worse. People already have the impression that McDonals ice creams machines are usually broken. I don't think this opinion is based on a quantitative assesment of uptime, where, if it got 10% worse, their opinion would decrease by 10%.
To try and summarise: I thin your argument that 3rd party parts would create enough of a reliability problem to meaningfully change their reputation, which is _already_ one of lack of reliability (deserved or not), is completely implausable to me.
> They literally _are_ doing that. Someone made a 3rd party troublehsooting tool that solved the majority of problems without needing to call a Taylor tech, and McDonalds corporate disallowed it.
And so what? It's non-standard and non-approved. McDonald's has no idea what that firmware/tool actually does. You (and the makers) claim it was better, but how do you actually know? Maybe it just bypasses safety and sanitary standards McDonald's has set for these machines... giving the appearance in the short-term of being more reliable.
In the end, it's McDonald's who will be sued if someone gets sick from a milkshake. Therefore, they can and will enforce standards, including machines and vendors. Heck, they probably have approved vendors and parts for everything inside a McDonald's, not just the ice cream machines. The toilet paper dispenser even most likely... but surely the stoves, fryers, etc.
Right to Repair has nothing to do with this specific situation. It's about corporate standards set for franchisees.
Additionally, the franchisees aren't even complaining about this. It's customers, like you and me, who are mad we can't get a McFlurry or something.
That's not going to compel any change other than make McDonald's realize they might need more machines per location.
That doesn't really jibe with the article:
"The machine overheats if it’s used too much within a certain time period. This results in mushy goop coming out or the machine shutting down and refusing to work until it resets and cools down," Shahram Mokhtari, iFixit’s lead teardown tech, said in iFixit’s teardown.
Gonna go out on limb and rankly speculate that for health critical systems it's not advisable to assume that OUTPUT_GOOP || FAILSAFE is functionally equivalent to FAILSAFE.
The last thing McDonalds wants are customers getting sick from listeria and having blood on their hands[1].
1. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/20/us/tacoma-milkshake-listeria-...
Which means they don't get deep cleaned often enough, even at reputable places.
Do people get sick and die every day from these machines? No, of course not. But we cannot trivialize the liability and risk here.
If every restaurant had a self-cleaning smart self-diagnosing machine like McDonald's has, all the better.
You should think carefully before ordering a soft-serve anything from most places...
My Mom asked the person at the counter why does their soft ice cream taste so good. The person said "Because we clean the machine every day."
But clearly they are dropping the ball all the way to the third basement. If a piece of equipment is so bad that it's lack of reliability becomes a meme then you have issues.
What I really don't understand is that it seems that the franchisees are paying for the equipment manufacturer per service call. It would make much more sense to pay a fixed fee per ice cream machine per unit of time subject to some SLA. If you properly set up the incentive structure that makes the equipment manufacturer incentivised to seek ways to provide reliable, easy to maintain machines.
It is not like this is impossible. The same manufacturer sells reliable machines to all the other chains! So they can do it.
> The only people who seem to really care about this issue are customers.
And the franchisees? Who are losing money every time they are turning away costumers. (Not talking about the lost business because they are not seen as a reliable purveyor of ice cream, and people who crave ice cream go to some other place.) And losing money every time they call service for a piece of trash equipment.
I couldn't find numbers - however I have a feeling the issue isn't less reliability than expected, but rather McDonald's serves more ice cream products (by volume) than most or all other fast food chains.
Anecdotally, people travel to McDonald's only for some of their ice cream products, such as McFlurries, and then leave disappointed when the machine is not working. Very few people go to, say, Burger King just for a shake. This pattern makes the issue more visible.
> The same manufacturer sells reliable machines to all the other chains!
We have no real evidence of this though, do we?
It makes zero sense to have these conspiracy theories that McDonald's is being paid to push unreliable machines on franchisees or something. Few if any franchisees are even complaining about this issue, it's customers like you and me who are mad about not getting a milkshake, and then companies trying to shoehorn their way into the lucrative commercial repair business.
If McDonald's thinks everything is ok, and franchisees on average are not complaining, then what's the real issue?
No matter how we spin it, this particular situation has nothing to do with Right to Repair. It's about corporate standards for franchisees.
Here's my contribution. Someone downthread said other chains use Taylor with a fixed-fee service contract, which directly incentivizes Taylor to deploy quality machines.
Here's the rub: is that the complete picture?
In other words, is it possible the Taylor repair service labor fees for McD customers (and recurrence) are justified because the machines themselves are a heavy loss leader for Taylor ? And what is the cost for non-McD vendors to acquire a similar-purpose machine, with fixed fee servicing ?
That will help resolve if this issue at the core is justified, vs legal (or business) stupidity by McD corporate / malfeasance by Taylor.
Mcdonalds will chose a provider with good enough parts or have a broken down machine... like it has now.
Volkswagen doesn't make oil, doesn't make it's own brake discs and doesn't make it's own wipers.... so what? You can buy TRW or ATE or Brembo or whatever brakes, castrol, shell, elf or whatever oil and valeo or bosch or whatever wipers. And a car is a lot more dangerous than an ice cream machine.
So, what's the issue?
This entire thing is not about Right to Repair. It's about corporate McDonald's contractually enforcing standards on their franchisees. Which is reasonable.
Oh, come on. It's an ice cream machine, not an aircraft. And it's not the end of the world if someone becomes sick because of a shoddy repair. It will inevitably happen in any kitchen. Restaurants, including fast food joints, cause tens of thousands of food poisoning incidents every single day.
Restaurants, including fast food joints, cause tens of thousands of food
poisoning incidents every single day.
I'm not sure why you think this fact requires a citation.
48 million people annually is at the high end, and a multiagency report puts that number at 9 million known cases.
> Each year in the United States, an estimated 9 million people get sick, 56,000 are hospitalized, and 1,300 die of foodborne disease caused by known pathogens.
https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/ifsac/pdf/P19-2020-report-Tri...
The other, is, of course, that restaurants make up a minority of meals in the US. While over half eat at restaurants regularly, that 56% is around 2–3 times a week.
https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/survey-shows-how-ofte...
The franchisee, however, has a countervailing desire to reduce their own costs which McDonald's is fairly insensitive to. McDonald's needs the ice cream to be available, sure, but are they above accepting kickbacks from Taylor the ice cream machine company to keep Taylor's cash flow going?
We are living in an obscenely corrupt and top heavy business environment where much money is to made by insider dealing in large companies with entrenched market positions. There really should be no better evidence of that than the fact than the evidence presented here: America's largest, most famous fast food chain, incapable of reliably serving ice cream to its customers because it's subject to vendor lock-in.
Anecdotally I know in the McDonalds near my old apartment the people would say the ice cream machine was broken in part because they just didn’t want to have to clean it. So they really would prefer if people not order ice cream.
Seriously it would be a drop in a very big bucket.
Here's a summary: https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-...
The Mcdonalds machine is a "2 in 1" unit where it produces soft serve but also has a separate mechanism for mixing up milkshakes in 3-4 flavors.
Also the Wendys machine requires complete disassembly and sanitation each night where as from what I can tell the Mcdonals machine does not.
I'm sure it's been this way a lot longer than I imagine, but it feels to me like in the 80s or so companies became a lot more interested in making their shareholders happy than they were in making their customers happy.
But "companies became a lot more interested in making their shareholders happy than they were in making their customers happy" is the BIGGEST problem with modern capitalism. That is why US is approaching 70% obese population and other dramatic social problems.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...
Working McFlurry machine map: https://mcbroken.com
Franchise owners use 'hacks' to disable the lengthy cleaning process on their machines to make more money at the expense of our health.
also that was last year
also there's nothing in your link about it being due to someone hacking their machine
A prohibition on "hacking" only protects the scam.
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-milkshak...
Apparently one of the biggest failure modes is "overfull supply hopper doesn't heat fast enough". Just reporting that tells you what you need to do to fix the problem. Dump a couple cups out and rerun the cycle. Or "feed too viscous"--dump the entire thing and run water on a cycle. Then reload with a fresh batch.
This seems to be emblematic of that machine.
And, the problem isn't that these machines don't have good error reporting. The problem is the fact that these machines are terribly unreliable. A 15% failure rate is bad. However, there is no money to be gained from fixing the issues. So, neither Taylor nor McDonalds's will spend any money to fix it.
It's also emblematic that, given the health sensitive nature of the machines, no other company attempts to do heating in place. I presume that somebody in those franchises looked at the reliability numbers and laughed Taylor out of the room.
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.
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.
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.
You mandate that franchises have to buy my machines, and only me can service them.
We both benefit economically from this agreement.
Also, machines enter in service mode without needing it just to give me more business.
1. McD HQ mandates franchises buy a special model Taylor-Made machine (not the same that like Chick-fil-a and others use). This is why McD machines stop working but other companies don't.
2. Every night there is a very specific maintenance routine that needs to be ran to clean and prep the machine for the next day. If it's not followed perfectly, the process will likely fail and the next morning workers will be greeted to a cryptic error code. Sometimes re-running the process will clear it, sometimes it wont. But this can take hours.
3. If re-running it doesn't fix it, then the franchise owner is stuck with the dilemma of bleeding money not having a working ice cream machine for customers, or calling an expensive hourly certified Taylor-Made repair person.
4. So they usually end up calling the repair person.
The idea is that McD HQ is working with Taylor-Made to make this problem happen so that franchise owners have to pay for expensive repair people.
Apparently the error codes have been reverse-engineered with a USB device that a third party created. But Taylor-Made is said to deny warranty and service etc if you try to use one.
TaylorMade is a manufacturer of golf equipment. They are not related to Taylor Company, the maker of these ice cream machines.
Is it possible that what goes into those machines at McDonald's is thicker than Chick-fil-A's mix, rather than the machine being to blame? Just like some kinds of motor oil are harder on an engine than others.
I mean I guess there could be other reasons of features or quality or something, but it seems a bit strange. I mean, in the end, it's just McD machines that constantly break down, so if anything you would think HQ would want to improve this situation somehow, when it seems they are completely uninterested.
If you already anticipate that your ingredients are going to break machines quite often, and that you'll require a lot of repairs, it would benefit you to standardize on a single large-scale support contract rather than leaving it up to every independent operator for themselves. Kind of the same way taxi fleets usually mandate one single specific model of automobile despite thousands of independent medallion holders.
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).
To your last point: That's the mentality of treating labor as an expense rather than an investment.
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.
That's absurd and should not be legal
There seems to be this other company that made a device to read error codes, and then theres legal trouble surrounding that and the copyright on the firmware of the original controller board.
But all this seems like not the best approach-
The electronics on the original boards themselves do not appear that complicated. This machine itself, mechanically, cannot have all that sophisticated of mechatronic interface.
Why not just circumvent everything with a completely new 3rd party control board that replaces the OE electronics completely and runs the machines?
People design and develop systems every day for fun even that are an order of magnitude more complicated than the control system of this ice cream machine.
Are the machines leased or owned? Because if they are owned outright (which is implied by the fast that ifixit was able to buy a used one to work on) then wholesale replacement of the control electronics would just void any warranty but would not be able to be hit with any sort of firmwarm hack copyright claim, assuming any new software writted for the control logic was clean-sheet engineered and not reversed from the Taylor control system.
At some point if they are leased, breaking the lease and buying the machines outright and then upgrading the controls would potentially be the way forward for the franchises.
Unless in the lease there is a clause that breaking the lease requires repossession of the hardware from the premises.
At which point franchises need to stand up to McDonalds corporate and demand a new supplier of machines of a new design.
McDonald's is trying to run an industrial volume process with ingredients subject to contamination and spoilage... using minimum wage young workers with varying levels of attention/dedication to details.
It's a difficult set of constraints that includes a non-negligible amount of blaming the machine for willful lapses in procedure.
McDonald's appears to sell a lot more soft serve (by volume) than any other fast food chain. People go there specifically for McFlurries and others, and then leave disappointed when the machine is not working. Few, if any, go to Burger King or Arby's only for a soft serve product.
So, the issue appears more visible. But that's not evidence that McDonald's machines are less reliable. It could simply be they're the most used.
[1] https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/content/dam/sites/corp/nfl/p...
Point is, they can't even get "no pickles" right.
For reference, here's a first person report from one of the previous times this was brought up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26938854
Burger King appears to also use Taylor equipment, although not the combo 2-in-1, do-it-all model that McDonald's does.
Wendy's uses a custom machine built by Kappus for their Frosties. [0] [1]
[0] History https://www.wendys.com/blog/history-of-frosty
[1] How It's Made https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oorX3mHgHQs&t=95s
Also, they're a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway since 1998.
The REAL Reason McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken by Johnny Harris
You're getting at the heart of it. McDonalds used to use very simple Taylor machines that were very reliable. The only problem was they had to be taken apart, cleaned, and sanitized at the end of every day. That required an extra employee at closing for about an hour, and another employee the next morning to put the machine back together. This wasn't difficult, but it wasn't totally obvious either so it did require an employee who had been trained on how to do it.
McDonald's wanted to save the training and the $10-$20 of labor, and a few dollars of product waste that this was costing them every day, so they asked Taylor to develop a machine that didn't have to be taken apart and sanitized every day. Taylor did that, and the machine got a lot more complicated. It heats itself up to a temperature that will kill bacteria, then cools back down. If there is a power glitch or fault or for any reason that cycle is interrupted, the machine locks out and has to be "repaired."
Also, as part of the daily cleaning and re-assembly of the old machines, all the O-rings and seals would be inspected and lubricated and replaced if they were cut, worn out, etc. Now that doesn't happen so you get more failures of seals, leaks, etc. which can also shut the machine down.
The cost of maintenance is thrown onto the franchisee (350$ per 15min as explained in the article) which McD doesn’t have to care about. So Taylor seems them cheap because they know they will get their end from maintenance which the franchisee pays for
If Taylor machines were actually a real threat to the viability of many McDonalds franchises, McDonalds corp would make changes. It is against their interests for McDonalds franchises to fail and they already employ several severe and strict measures to reduce the likelihood of failure.
If this system seems overbearing, then simply start your own burger shop, or get a franchise from a fast food brand who doesn't give a shit like Subway. Subway will give a franchise to somebody with a tenth as much money, don't care if franchises sit on top of each other, etc. Not incidentally, Subway has an abysmal reputation for consistency, quality, cleanliness and food safety. McDonalds food is crap, but it's crap in a way that is consistent and safe (in the short term; it might give you diabetes but it probably won't give you botulism.)
McDonald's investors: they also own the companies that make the expensive failure-prone ice cream machines. They are double dipping by writing themselves expensive repair contracts.
Let's make something very clear here. McD does not concern itself with the woes of the franchisees. Not one ketchup sachet worth of worry. Costs? Not their problem.
Reputation loss maaaaybe.
Taylor gets exclusivity from McD and in turn gets exclusive access to maintenance.
I see other commenters making the point "they are trying to make bottom dollar employees operate a machine with food safety worries". Absolutely correct. Which should be grounds for McD to ask Taylor to incorporate the more user friendly panels and operation.
Now think why McD is not doing that
That's exactly what this machine is.
The issue is that it's doing something novel--sterilizing the machine while full of liquid--in order to be able to be run by unskilled (read as: super cheap) labor.
The fundamental issue is not that the machine breaks down--that's to be expected in a novel industrial machine.
The problem is that there is no incentive to fix the design of the machine. Taylor gets no extra profit for doing more R&D and fixing the machine--precisely the opposite, in fact, as they get less repair revenue. McDonald's, itself, gets no extra profit for doing more R&D and fixing the machine, either, and would have to spend money on training if they went back to traditional machines.
The total market for these machines is effectively the number of new McDonald's. Call these a $20K machine and McDonalds opens 500 stores per year in the US. That's $10,000,000 in new sales revenue in a year, max. That puts net profit at about $1,000,000 per year (call it 10% of gross revenue--probably optimistic for this kind of machinery)
And now we hit why Taylor certainly isn't jumping to fix this and no competitor really wants into the space. Net profit of $1,000,000 per year gets dwarfed by the service revenue really quickly.
It’s not the warranties that concern them. The franchisees are worried about running afoul of McDonald’s corporate, which limits what franchisees can do even to owned equipment.
But Taylor (presumably) won't repair them if they have modified boards and it's a breech of contract for them to hire anyone else to repair them.
They have zero monetary incentive to allow the franchise owners to fix the machines in any way. It's a net loss to them if they don't break down as often or they can service them without an expensive technician.
I was surprised by this, b/c I've been able to view court documents for SF Superior Court without paying anything. AC even charges per search query!
(You can see some other Kytch legal proceedings there for free. https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=kytch%20vs%20gamble&type=r&... )
They should be free and readily accessible even if they cost a lot to produce and host (which they don’t)
- for civil litigation the claimants can pay any costs as part of filing fees
- for criminal government can bear the cost as part of prosecution.
You don't really want 10 people one after other to go and request all papers from all trials since the court started...
SF court just a county over is able to this for free.
I am not saying there are no costs , but whatever costs they just be charged to the litigators in civil or the government in criminal once not to the public every time
The semi-joke is that we have the best legal system that money can buy.
What a wretched abomination! This imposes against the spirit of man the toolmaker, man the creator, man the scientist to let each company prohibit exploration & understanding & fiddling with the things they have released unto the world. Black boxes are against the Enlightenment spirit that has given rise to society.
Ah, it was a point in Web scraping for me but not for thee, and cited in this comment, citing a 20 year old Mark Lemley observation in Terms of Use, https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2023/08/web-scraping-f... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37264970
This is bad for the people you are elected to represent -- snooze.
This is bad for your stock portfolio -- we have to act now!
That's a sentence I wasn't expecting to read, ever. There are only two types of people that I have ever met that would fall into that category: kids, who don't know any better about what food stuff they eat, and addicts.
This is not true though.
Even with Right to Repair laws, McDonald's can and will force franchisees to use the approved machines, contract the approved repair vendor, and use approved parts.
It's McDonald's decision, whether we agree with it or not. It's their reputation, and ultimately their wallet at stake. They can, and will contractually force franchisees to do what they want. That's how franchises are run.
The reality is this is not a Right to Repair issue. This is a franchise contract issue.
A contract does not contravene federal or state law.
It does in this case. If you do not follow McDonald's instructions and/or contract, they will terminate your franchise.
As much as you believe a franchisee has a right to use whatever machine they want, and repair it with whatever parts they want, that's just not how franchises work.
They are franchises, not individual restaurants. They do not get a choice over how long to cook the burgers, what size fries to offer, what grills to use, and what soft serve machine to use and it's sanitization standards.
There's an approved parts and vendor list for everything in a McDonald's restaurant. Franchisees basically get a catalog of approved things they can use.
McDonald's sells consistency above basically anything else. They have clearly decided having machines be inoperable is better than risking getting someone sick. The machine's are designed for inattentive employees with little to no training to operate effectively and safely. If the machine says "no go", then that's final. McDonald's wants that safety and consistency across all stores, and that is their right as the brand owner.
No Right to Repair law will change the terms of franchise agreements. Franchises that refuse to honor their agreement will simply be terminated. That's McDonald's right.
Honestly... as far as fast food franchises go, McDonald's is perhaps the most clean and consistent - given their massive size (double their next closest direct competitor). It's a marvel things are as safe as they are, given the varying quality and level of caring each franchise owner can have.
People cut corners when things get tough. A franchisee with autonomy over things like deep cleaning of the soft serve machine will choose not to do it if they can sell more (quite literally what people are advocating for in this very thread). It's not their reputation and brand at risk, it's McDonalds'.
Frankly, it's a good thing McDonald's exerts this level of control.
Contracts cannot remove all rights. For example, they can't force you to place yourself in harms way, or to harm others.
There is no law that forces McDonald's to extend you a franchise license. It's their right to run their brand how they want.
Part of the franchise contract would be an agreement to use their approved vendor/parts list.
> or to harm others
Their policy exists for exactly this reason - prevent food borne illness from difficult to clean and maintain machines, ie. soft serve machines.
Anyone who has worked in a restaurant with a soft serve machine knows how much of a PITA they are to maintain and clean. Which means they don't get properly maintained or cleaned on average. McDonald's policies force franchises to maintain the machines. It's really simple, and it's really good.
However, it's unreasonable to assert a franchise should be able to use whatever devices, machines, standards and consistency they want... which is what is being advocated here it seems.
You can go anywhere in the world and get a Big Mac or McFlury and expect it to be the same consistency as anywhere else. That's what McDonald's sells - consistency. If they lose that control, then they are not a brand anymore, just a loosely connected chain of independent restaurants doing whatever they want. That's not in anyone's best interest.
McDonald's can deny a license for pretty much any reason, or no reason, and nobody would be able to compel them otherwise. It is their brand, and nobody has a right to operate using that brand unless McDonald's allows it. That's the entire point of a franchise - use someone else's brand.
Ever go to a fast food restaurant and get watered down soda? That's what happens when the franchise owner has autonomy over those types of decisions. Save a few cents and piss off customers. Who do you get mad at - the franchise owner or the brand?
While gross, nobody gets sick from watered down soda - people can get sick from improperly cleaned soft serve machines. McDonald's avoids that by exerting this level of control.
DMCA 1201 applies to copyrighted material, and even then, only to measures that control access to the work. The Chamberlain v. Skylink case in the court of appeals for the Federal Circuit (which is binding in all other federal courts) established that the prohibitions can't apply to software the user is already entitled to use. The Court put it this way:
"Consumers who purchase a product containing a copy of embedded software have the inherent legal right to use that copy of the software."
these are so awful there is a website tracking when they are down at mcbroken
A company called Kytch built a small, third-party device that could be attached to the soft service ice cream machines that read and interpreted Taylor’s error codes. Kytch has been engaged in a lawsuit in California state court with Taylor and McDonald’s for more than two years.
It is much more interesting than I expected.
Namely, that McDonald's franchises agree to only use repair labor from a contractually enforced monopoly. McDonalds and the ice cream machine company collude to extract money from franchises. He also compares McDonald's ice cream machines to Wendy's, which are the same brand under a different contract scheme and finds that Wendy's does not have the same problems.
I think there’s a possibility Mcdonald’s hates that they need to sell Ice-cream. There’s a probability Icecream’s an inescapaable loss leader and their lowest margin item and that it is a poor loss leader due to it’s substitution effect with probably their highest margin product - soft-drinks. Because neighbouring restaurants offer ice-cream - Mcdonald’s also needs to - because people often feel like an ice-cream. If they don’t provide ice-cream while BurgerKing does then they lose high margin Fries and Softdrink sales. By offering icecreams with the minimal tolerable 85% reliability (ice cream isn’t a deal breaker - few people cancel an order when they can’t get a sunday with it - but it is an enticer - they remember Mcdonald’s ice-cream is nicer than Burger King’s when they get it - it’s the equivalent of Wendy’s ice-cream but cheaper). So there’s a possibility they’ve figured out that 85% reliability maximises high margin sales and minimises low margin ones.
Maybe they’ve figured out how to offer low cost high-quality ice-cream just enough of the time to maximise gross profit. A second order effect of 15% reliability - is the lack of reliability also discourages ice-cream orders - because - people try to avoid disappointment and decision making in group situations under time pressure.
Markup on soft-drinks and fries are massive compared to ice-cream. As you mentioned Free flow ice-cream probably has the highest food safety management cost on top of the low gross margins. It also gives staff cold hands and melts quickly in summer. It’s not a great loss leader but an inescapable one. Their other option would be to raise ice-cream prices but wendy’s grade ice-cream is an enticer. It would possibly cost more profit than 85% reliability.
There’s potential for profiting from co-operation on the lack of machine reliability but the franchisees will also be maximising profits by offering the minimal amount of ice-cream possible to not cost big-mac + frys + soft-drink sales. Mcdonald’s could possibly be paying high machine fees for exclusivity so Burger King doesn’t get an option of higher quality Ice-cream.
The only person really missing out is someone wanting an ice-cream 15% of the time - who like the franchisee - may be disappointed in the reliability of the ice cream machine - but is also better off financially - even if they don’t realise it. A possible third order effect is it breaks food addictions to things like ordering thick shakes on the way to work - regular consumption of sugar + saturated fat is not a healthy combination. Health management is a large concern for Mcdonald’s.
I’m happy with low-cost high quality ice-cream 85% of the time. I prefer that option to more expensive Ice-cream. I think this is part of the magic of the market economy. The invisible hand.
Are carrot problems killed by their public disclosure? I hope not, I like the 85% probability of cheap delicious ice-cream.
An amazing thing would be if there was tech in the machines making failure rates non random. I wonder if they fail more in winter than summer for instance which would educate the consumer about the lack of reliability so when summer comes less ice-cream is ordered.
This just my 3 minute thought experiment (brain fart) but could be a great topic for a behavioural economist such as the freakonomics blog to cover.
For one, franchise owners decide when to do repairs that are prohibitively expensive. Two, the failures are not "random" and likely store based (one franchise down for 2 weeks rather than 10 franchises down a day) because it's owner discretion on when to fix it. Three, there is demonstrated profit in the McDonalds <-> Taylor collusion based monopoly.
There's no need for an elaborate spreadsheet conspiracy. Taylor is using a contract which enables them to charge exorbitant amounts for labor and prevent the free market (iFixIt and Kytch) from providing equivalent labor (theoretically under equivalent liability) at a much cheaper cost.
There is very clear conflict of interest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
Mcdonalds is making a contractual obligation on behalf of the franchises and that contractual obligation benefits McDonalds at the cost of the Franchises.
> “The current barriers to these works include service passwords and digital locks,” the petition reads. “Commercial ice cream machines, such as the Taylor manufactured ice cream machines used by McDonald’s, frequently fall into disrepair when its daily pasteurization cycle fails. Circumventing the digital lock on the software would enable owners and repair professionals to diagnose and perform the necessary repairs to get these devices back up and running.”
They're talking about a safety-sensitive process failing and consequently locking out use... mere syllables before asking for the ability to circumvent locks.
Which prompts the concern that some fast food employees, their managers or small business owners, sketchier repairpeople, and Aliexpress gadgets are going to effectively use that lock circumvention ability to circumvent a safety feature, eventually killing children whose parents treated them to ice cream cones.
Please stop doing that.
But the article and the linked vice.com article suggests that the device isn't just decoding error codes, it's also providing a hardware bypass for safety features like lockouts.
We're going to start limiting what McDonalds can do to control quality of product because the tech community thinks it knows better?
Dairy is not a product to play loose with the rules on.
Q: Why don't you call your 'shakes,' 'milkshakes'?
A: Great question. Our shakes contain milk from our reduced-fat soft serve, which makes them thick and creamy. Dairy regulations actually vary from state to state on what can officially be called a 'milkshake.' We like to keep it simple and refer to them strictly as 'shakes.'
(Note they say "reduced-fat soft serve" and not "ice cream")
If we're going to dunk on corporations can we do it for legitimate reasons?
-- https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/vanilla-cone.html...
The franchise owner may have a contract with McD or Taylor in which they agreed not to make certain repairs, but I’m pretty sure they do not, because otherwise Taylor wouldn’t need to lean on the DMCA to argue that certain repair tools are illegal.
There is no danger in unlocking the cleaning process so the cleaning process can be restarted.
if you're going to mcdonalds, with your children, with the view that they will serve you and your children spoiled, contaminated food, and kill you and them, unless a little computer gadget physically prevents them,
you might either have poor judgement,
or you might be a contrived plot device in an implausible hypothetic scenario dreamed up by a HNer
Imagine if a walk-in cooler had a high-temp alarm, and the machine shut itself down, and locked the cooler as a result, then told the owner to call the cooler OEM. Thankfully it doesn't work that way, it might alarm then you diagnose (radiator fan not running, fan coils covered in leaves, whatever) resolve and restart.
Also, what reasoning did McDonalds corporate have for telling franchisees not to use the device?
This must be some bizarre and long contractual agreement between McD and Taylor
They seem to be moreso than the abuser that is Subway, but I expect this is a situation where what's good for McD corporate isn't what's good for franchisees.
In short, McDonald's continues to use these frequently malfunctioning ice cream machines due to their long-standing exclusive partnership with Taylor. The cost of repairs fall on the local franchise owners, not McD Corp.
McDonalds has Walmart level bargaining powers with vendors. The current setup, where a machine breaks and you have to call a specific technician for insane rates is not an accident. McDonalds could change that tomorrow if they felt like it. No business relationship at McDonald's scale will ever be tilted away from their benefit.
The old machines had higher training and labor costs though, and over thousands of stores this was an issue. Presumably the newer machines are overall less expensive, even accounting for the lost sales on days where they are offline, and the associated repair costs. They may also be necessary for the newer ice cream products. In my day we only had vanilla soft-serve (cones or sundaes) and shakes with three flavors.
McDonald's isn't in business to keep Taylor repair techs employed. If it was costing them more than the alternatives, they would make a change.
>Ice cream shall contain at least 1.6 pounds of total solids to the gallon, weigh not less than 4.5 pounds to the gallon, and contain not less than 20 percent total milk solids, constitued of not less than 10 percent milkfat. In no case shall the content of milk solids not fat be less than 6 percent. Whey shall not, by weight, be more than 25 percent of the milk solids not fat.
Whether McDonald’s product meets that standard, I am not sure.
In addition, real ice cream purveryors would be up in arms over it. And they have in the past.
The ice-cream ingredients are:
"Ice Cream
Ingredients: EITHER: Allergen Ingredient: Skimmed MILK, Sugar, Cream (Allergen Ingredient: MILK), Whey Powder (Allergen Ingredient: MILK), Glucose Syrup, Stabilisers (Guar Gum, Carrageenan), Emulsifier (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids), Flavouring. OR: Allergen Ingredient: Reconstituted Skimmed MILK, Cream (Allergen Ingredient: MILK), Sugar, Whey Powder (Allergen Ingredient: MILK), Glucose Syrup, Allergen Ingredient: Skimmed MILK Powder, Stabilisers (Guar Gum, Carrageenan), Emulsifier (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids), Flavouring."
Source: https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/product/galaxy-salted-car...
Re: Why does my homemade bread go stale so fast?!
> Vanilla Reduced Fat Ice Cream
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/mcflurry-with-ore...
But it's a damn ice cream machine.
The stakes get a bit riskier when it comes to medical devices because it's much easier to imagine the scenario where you tamper with a pacemaker, you're going to kill somebody. You tamper with a dialysis machine, you're going to kill somebody.
Same problem, different stakes.
>But it's a damn ice cream machine.
It's a machine holding fluids that are highly conducive to bacterial growth, and is a pain to clean because it has tons nooks and crannies. Someone dying (if there's a preexisting condition) or getting seriously sick due to subpar cleaning is very plausible. People get sick from improperly maintained ice machines[1], and those are arguably simpler and are holding less hazardous liquids (plain water rather than milk).
What I don't agree with is the proprietary lock out. Franchise owners should be able to replace the pump header with generic options.
It's no different than for the origami manufacturer.
It's all covered in ISO 13485 (and another similar standard for the software portion if your product contains software). It's called the risk based approach. You define what's called essential performance or your device, things it must do or the patient or caregiver is harmed. You then do a FMEA to determine what failure modes exist, and what the result of each failure is. You then make sure you have mitigation in place for each of those situations. You then document that all, get it signed off internally, by the FDA, by your notified body, and by the test house (for 14485, FCC testing, etc). All that makes up the stack of documents that allows you to sell a medical product.
It's no different if it's a generic product or a new novel one, same process same standards.
For food machinery it's also thr FDA for things like design and materials, and it's the local health department for those items. It's a similar but different ISO standard you need to meet depending on the specific machinery.
The generic parts don't matter because the parts are tested to be suitable replacements
It's no different than car parts.
That's why I'm saying they need to label it if they serve rc not coke, just say what they're doing.
If they use one brand of straw that is approved vs another brand of straw that is also approved they don't need to label it, there is not material difference.
That's what I'm saying the parts in the ice cream machine are, not materially different.
The comparison you should be making is if they changed the ice cream base mix they put in the machine. Yes, in that case they should tell customers they are using soy milk or whatever, but If they use a different part in the machine that is equally suitable then it matters not.
> Poorly cleaned ice cream machines at a Washington-based burger joint were linked to a listeria outbreak earlier this year that landed six people in the hospital, three of whom died. Two of those who were hospitalized told investigators they had milkshakes from the same restaurant before getting sick.
The stakes are actually higher for the ice cream machine. Inproper use of the ice cream machine could kill dozens. A pacemaker malfunction would just kill one at best.
It's why airliners need to have triple redundant systems, doubke fault tolerant. Medical devices only need to be double redundant, single fault tolerant.
I (dont) love it when people whonhave not ever designed a real medical device that's actually on the market make claims about what it's like to design a real medical device that's actually on the market.
Its really more of a paperwork/comiance thing than anything. I.e. genaric drugs. Source- I've designed medical devices and food processing equipment for 20 years.
OP seemed to suggest that medical devices was rife with situations parallel to McDonalds/Taylor, and that just doesn't seem to be the case; partially because the landscape is more complex in terms of who pays, how liability is distributed, and how the maintenance work is done, etc.
Which isn't to say device industry doesn't have lots of its own problems, they just look different.
I was making exactly the opposit point you are.
I have actually worked directly with the manufacturer of the pumps in those machines (Watson marlow), and also designed and saw through to clinical release many similar complex medical devices with the same exact pumps.
The situation is nearly identical between these two examples, it's just the names of the forms you need to fill out are different, and the division of the company that supplies your components is different, but it's all the same thing just a different name.
However, my point was not meant to be about the pump design nor the regulatory bodies involved, so I think we are just miscommunicating. My fault for quick replies.
I was responding to "There are so many of these situations in medical devices." by which I took you to mean that there are many parallel situations the the McDonalds/Taylor issue in the linked article and the franchises inability to keep them in service, or accept 3rd party help in doing it; I read this as the core point of the article.
When I said "things are more complicated" I meant the relationship between the various entities and how systems get deployed, managed, maintained, etc. doesn't look the same.
So is that what you meant?
It's possible you just mean there are similar technical issues in the pumps, something I'm happy to accept you have direct experience in; in that case I just misread you. If you had said there are similar (identical) pumps in some medical devices I would have understood it that way.
It read to me like you were making a far broader claim.
I'm still saying the opposite, I'm saying that those 2 industries (food equipment and med devices) are actually very similar in the way they operate. Having direct experience in both.
Good manufacturing practices, maintenance, etc. Are all the same no matter the application. Things are remarkably similar if you look past the surface level.
What I’m having trouble with is seeing a parallel with the franchisees position in this story, in medical devices.
If you’ve seen something you think is equivalent , I’d be interested in hearing about it , but it just doesn’t match my experience.
From and engineering and prod dev point of view I can see some parallels, fwiw. That is pretty obvious .
The dialysis industry is dominated by 2-3 large players who dominate the market, reimbursements, everything. They are Da Vita, Fresenious and I think there is a smaller third one.
Dialysis machines are very similar in practice to ice cream machines. They have peristaltic (and other) pumps inside with wearable parts that need to be replaced on regular intervals for not only reliability and safety concerns, but for biological concerns. Bugs grow inside them, even though thy have a daily self sterilization cycle they run. So they need to do preventative maintenance every few months and change out plastic wear parts inside like pump heads, seals, valve seats, etc. Keep in mind these machines are used constantly, these companies view an empty seat at a dialysis center like lost revenue, so they do there best to keep the machines busy.
Da Vita buys Gambro Dialysis machines, Fresenious makes their own. In both these cases there is a huge volume of disposables and accessories that go with these machines, both the daily disposables but the PM stuff too.
Lots of these dialysis centers do things to improve their bottom line that is off label. They do things like washing and reusing dialyzers which are explicitly single use. They do so with other stuff also.
Some newer systems are starting to use different techniques to not allow this, not allow these kinds of practices.
This isn't just dialysis. So many medical products have the classic razor/razor blade model and they typically actively design in proprietary lock in features so as not to loose out on that precious razor blade revenue.
There is some tech parallel I agree in e.g. protecting consumables , but that’s an aside in this context , and largely symptomatic if the way health care is paid for in US that drives towards a razor:razor blade model.
Anyway that was a long walk for a short drink of water!
Essentially - this should be a fight between franchisees and McD's. It's also a bad look for McD - yes let's get a lot of bad PR about how we screw over franchisees. If they do that to their partners - what do you think they're doing to the food?
Who are we kidding - we know what they do to the food. The less you deal with the arches the better.
Until about 2 years ago, it used to be cheap and fast. Now it's neither of those things.
My bellwether is my youngest. He's 10 and would rather just eat at home if McDonald's is the only option. Last week he chose peanut butter sandwiches instead of chicken nuggets when we knew we'd be actively on the road during supper. So that's something.
When you have a machine that fails that often, and has become that much of a publicity problem, you would think a company like McDonald's would say OK enough is enough, we're changing the machines.
Given that there's been a lawsuit between the OEM and the startup making mods for the machine for 2 years and no such documents have been found in discovery, my guess is no.
There's no way I'm sitting through all that, and the chapter headings aren't very helpful either. Can you link to a specific timestamp?
If Taylor were scamming McDonalds, or were bribing somebody in McDonalds corp to go along with it, McDonalds corp lawyers would be crawling all over them. That evidently isn't happening, so it seems safe to assume that Taylor is doing exactly what McDonalds corp thinks they should be doing. If a burger shop proprietor doesn't like this, they're free to open their own burger shop without a McDonalds franchise. It shouldn't be hard for them to sell a superior product, but they'd lose access to McDonald's reputation. And protecting that reputation is probably the entire point of this ice-cream machine drama.
I remember one night closing our store. I was 16, and the dude in charge of cleaning the shake machine and the sundae machine was a bit of a stoner. Back in the day all the cleaning was manual (1982). So the dude would pull out all of the frozen shake mix, then run a soapy water mix through it, then a sanitizer rinse. Took some time, and closing was always a rush.
So he either forgot or decided to skip the sanitizer rinse.
Now if you put soap in dairy products, you end up giving people diarrhea. So a few days later we got a lot of complaints and the guy ended up being fired. He was dumb enough to joke about it.
It's not like it was his career; he was 18 and headed to college somewhere. For $2.10/hour, that's what you got. If the manager didn't doublecheck everything, stuff like this happened.
McDonalds tech is designed around the following principle; "Imagine how stupid the average person is, then realize half of all people are stupider than that."
There is a middle ground between let 15 year old kids fix it and only allow company technician who is billed at hundreds of dollars a hour to fix a common and trivial problem which a third party technician could do it for much less and much faster
If franchisees were willing to have maintenance people on staff, then there wouldn't be a need for complex, self-managing systems. But they either can't afford to, or are unwilling to pay the added cost.
Large Franchise groups (10+ locations?) could afford to do it perhaps in-house.
Point is there are many levels in between the two extremes right ? Food Safety does not automatically mean we have to be super conservative.
Why not a third-party professional technician that does not charge $300 for 15 minutes of field repair? Additionally, the video points out that the error codes are purposefully obtuse. At the very least we could require these be clear so anybody could understand what the code meant.
I'm curious to know if my experience is an outlier or maybe things have changed. Or perhaps some franchises don't put as high a priority on the ice cream, or perhaps even the claims are a bit exaggerated. Or maybe something else that I'm not considering.
Meanwhile, it seems like everyone else only talks about how they can never get ice cream at a McDonald’s.
https://ia902502.us.archive.org/3/items/gov.uscourts.ded.781...
I guess that would look very differently in the eyes of the companies who recently became their BFFs.
But we let worse things slide, so who cares. Enjoy your ice cream! :)
The device should be legal if you or I buy this machine. However installing it at McDonalds by a non “certified tech” might be in violation of the franchise contract
So the only people smart enough to repair them safely are the manufacturers?
So only take your car to the dealership for a service?
Meat is cooked just before the use, it does not get poisonous very easily. Ice cream is very different. How would you ensure that managers throw away "good enough" batches of ice cream every evening?
Not the right to break health and safety laws.
And enforcement is pretty lacking in itself. Most people won't report it to the authorities that they got the runs from some ice cream, the authorities will only hear about it when dozens of people arrive at the hospital with the same symptoms, and even then most public health departments have already been understaffed prior to COVID to follow up on the hospital reports and conduct inspections.
What McD/Taylor are doing here is, as fucked up as it is, the only meaningful way they can make sure they're not labeled a public health risk.
There is a chain of custody, paper trail, spare parts certification, logging... For example if there is a heat ex-changer that sometimes does not work, it may cause a lawsuit. McDonald (and insurance companies) wants to be able to sue ice cream machine manufacturer.
I also want to be able to replace any "suitable" parts in my car, but sadly government does not allow that! Remember, when everyone lost their shit with Volkswagen "cheating" in their software?
Kytch board: "reservoir is overfull, remove product and start again"
Ah yes, good thing we ensured those fucking rubes did not touch the ice cream! Better schedule a $2000 service call to solve this impossible error. Excuse me while I park my ferrari next to my grand piano.
If they're still the same machines from decades past when I worked at McDonald's then refilling the machine is just dumping a bag of mix in the container on the top. It doesn't take much qualifications. Slightly easier than refilling a printer.
The machines from decades past had a manual cleaning cycle that included draining the system, partial disassembly and disinfection of parts. Most assistant store managers (and some shift managers) are/were trained for this job. Of course most other restaurants are using these older designs without issue. Also, McDs themselves used these older machines without issue at the time.
The board members for McDs are also board members for the equipment oem, and the licensed repair orgs. It's about extracting money from franchisees more than it is about food safety. It could mean a reduction in maintenance and labor, but there's no reason that higher level store managers/assistants can't also be trained in basic maintenance on these newer machines.
Some of them actually did graduate from "ice cream academy". Local Ice Cream parlor has reputation to maintain. Sometimes it is even directly operated by ice cream company.
McDonalds just runs automated machine somewhere in corner. They have no reputation to maintain, it is just borrowed franchise.
A local ice cream parlor isn't making ice cream on the fly.
They are scooping it from premade buckets stored in special freezer cases during business hours and stored in walking freezers at close.
As other's have pointed out, McDonalds, or their franchises, wanted to eliminate the couple hours of labor usually required to clean those machines daily, and so developed their own mix, and Taylor made special machines that would "self clean" to support it. For safety reasons (probably), those machines lock themselves down if anything goes off the sanitized happy path, and only super expensive Taylor techs have the requisite knowledge to get them back on track.
McDonald's is alone in this struggle because they wanted to save $20 a day in wages. It's $350 per 15 minutes to fix the machines, so assuming it's just one button to fix them (it's not) it only has to break down less than once every 18ish days to pay off, but it doesn't scale well if the machines are less reliable than that.
Once upon a time, governments would step in and ensure a free market.
"(McDonald’s agreement with franchisees also allows them to use an actual Italian machine, sold by Bologna-based Carpigiani, that McD Truth describes as much better designed. But given that its replacement parts can take a week to arrive from Italy, far fewer restaurants buy it.)" [1]
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-...
"Then there is the Carpigiani K3. Take all the issues with the Taylor C602 and fix them and then you have a K3. It's by far the better machine with tech support that anyone can call into. The only complaint is that most of the parameters are initialized before being translated from German to English."
https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/jd2tbq/mcdonalds_ic...
[1] Specifically from Emilia Romagna, not far from Ravenna, i.e. it is not the case of a bi-lingual Italian/German region such as Trentino Alto Adige.
This ice cream machine thing is, IMO, an obfuscated method of transferring more value from the ground level businesses to McD's corporate, via the Taylor machine vendor middleman. In other words, paying more rent.
>But there were probably kickbacks to McDs when the use of this machine was mandated
I see this being insinuated since day 1, but after 2 years of lawsuits no document has surfaced during discovery to support this claim. I realize absence of proof isn't proof of absence, but given how much this piece of evidence will help Kytch's case, if not in court of law then in the court of public opinion, I'm inclined to tentatively conclude no such malfeasance has occurred.
Yes, McDonalds is a large owner of real estate. Does this mean that's where they get their profits? Not so much.
Most franchisees pay roughly 10% of gross sales to McDonalds as "rent" (this is in addition to the 4% they pay as a monthly service fee for other aspects of the relationship).
Since this "rent" is based on gross sales, the primary incentive on McDonalds part to increase the franchisee's sales.
Your argument also ignores that roughly 30% of McDonalds profits comes from stores it operates itself.
They don’t care to fix the software product or service here because they don’t have to , it is a captive market , you can buy realistically machines [1] from one company and service from.
McD also benefits from this due to Veblen luxury good like effects : being a limited product, you are far more likely to now the ice cream when the machine when it is running as it is now a special occasion adding to the overall satisfaction, we wouldn’t be talking about it so much if those damn things worked, like we dont talk about French fries machines .
[1] the Italian alternative is not the good enough they don’t have state side ops , parts can take weeks to arrive , few restaurants will actually buy them
In the specific case of Kytch, they built another machine that reads error codes off the electronics on a machine that deliberately attempts to hide the error codes from McDonalds franchisees. This doesn't modify the software on those electronics, so there isn't a copyright violation. And Taylor doesn't have a patent on usable error codes or reading them off a machine deliberately designed to obscure them. This shouldn't be covered by any reading of DMCA 1201, but they want the Copyright Office to say, "yes, this is legal" anyway.
I'm not entirely sure why you're invoking Ayn Rand in your grandparent comment.
If customers have problems with the machines, they should not buy them or use them. They have the freedom to choose. Additionally, if McDonald's has defrauded them in any way, they should sue McDonald's. There is a free choice.
iFixit may be great engineers who can perform magic, but they are literally asking Congress for an exemption to violate copyright law. This will not end with McDonald's; others will follow suit.
As for Ayn Rand's argument, because it provides the right expression in one line.
They are literally not. The Copyright Office cannot actually grant exceptions to copyright law, they can only grant exceptions to DMCA 1201(a), the part of the law that makes it illegal to break copy protection. This is because copy protection software gets in the way of otherwise legal uses of copyrighted material and DMCA 1201 was not intended to overthrow fair use[1].
What iFixit is asking for, is an exemption to break copy protection on things that copyright does not protect. Copyright owners are not entitled to prohibit repair of machines with their software in it. The legislative intent from Congress has been very clear[0]. The only reason why this is even a question is that some hack fraud of a company might decide to throw spurious 1201 claims at people fixing products they own. This wouldn't necessarily be Taylor. It could be, say, Future Motion; which uses DRM to block you from replacing the battery cells in their OneWheel electric skateboards.
This question is valid independent of the other questions regarding trade secrecy or contractual obligations you brought up, because DMCA 1201 does not apply to anything but copyright. The printer manufacturers[2] and garage door opener companies[3] found this out the hard way.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...
[1] Although it does feel like it at times.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexmark_International,_Inc._v.....
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamberlain_Group,_Inc._v._Sky....
1. Is the software lock protected by copyright law? If so, no one should copy it.
2. Did McDonald's/Taylor defraud the users? If so, the users can sue them.
3. Is Kytch copying the software lock and selling it? If so, that would be a violation. However, you have said that they are not copying it; they are simply reading error codes and providing a different output. In that case, I do not see why they would need to invoke DMCA 1201 for an exemption. This is a completely different situation, like someone creating a keyboard or stand for my laptop. Kytch should apply for their own copyright in this case. Their appeal should be made in this direction.