The REAL Reason McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken

[JEDI]

4/23/21:

someone reversed engineered the McD app and figured out which McD stores had broken ice cream machines.
and he made a website about for it.
at any point, there's an avg of 15% of McD ice cream machines in the US not working.

it involves the mandatory daily cleaning cycle, which takes hrs and is usually run at night.
the machine wont work until the cleaning cycle is SUCESSFULLY completed.
the problem is when the cleaning cycle fails to be completed.
and apparently, it fails often.

other fast food places (ie: Wendy's, chick fill-A, etc) also use the same manufacturer for their ice cream machines.
theirs dont break down nowhere nearly as often.
but McD has an exclusive contract to use this particular one model.

it's been happening for so long that a 3rd party entrepreneur came up with a solution.
He created a device that plugs into the machine and made a cell phone app.
the app not only diagnosed various problems but offered solutions that WORKED!

Franchisees started buying the device+app.
then McD corporate squashed their franchisees from buying/using it saying it violated their contract with corporate.

i actually watched the whole video.
it's pretty interesting.

but the one thing i dont get is why doesnt McD corporate demand the manufacturer fix their exclusive model?!
apparently it's been happening for so long that someone had the time to create a device and write an app to fix it.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Growing up in life we always had a news anchor guy that would do reports on shitty restaurant reports and would get to appoint he called "Sliiiiime in the ice machine!"

That's what I suspect Is in every soft serve ice cream at chains.

 

[lxskllr]

Thanks for the summary JEDI.

 

[Zorba]

I'm pretty sure they can't legally call it ice cream. "Frozen Desert Product."

After seeing what actually went into the soft serve machines on cruise ships, I won't ever get soft serve unless I know it is real ice cream:

 

[gorobei]

the video came up in my feed as well. it will be interesting if they end up pushing out a firmware update to change the 4 digit repairworker code Harris showed in the video, if they cant use the 3rd party tool at least accessing the hidden repairworker menu can help.

Louis Rossman covered some of this as part of his right to repair direct ballot measure push. the icecream machine manufacturer ordered some of the 3rd party tool to reverse engineer it so they can sell it to franchise owners rather than just fix the damn problem in house.

 

[kage69]

So in addition to bullshit coffee machines that are rarely cleaned, their "ice cream" machines suck too?

Add this to the list of reasons I don't understand people giving McDonald's business.

 

[TheELF]

So in addition to bullshit coffee machines that are rarely cleaned, their "ice cream" machines suck too?

Add this to the list of reasons I don't understand people giving McDonald's business.

I don't know about the coffee situation but this story is about how MacD looses money for being "too clean" so it's the complete opposite of rarely cleaned.
I never heard of anybody not giving somebody business for being too clean.

the machine wont work until the cleaning cycle is SUCESSFULLY completed.
the problem is when the cleaning cycle fails to be completed.
and apparently, it fails often.

 

[Red Squirrel]

You know I never gave it much thought about how often they clean those machines, and how well. You tell a 16 year old to clean the machine, which is a pita, and he's being paid $15/hour for it. Do you think he is really putting 100% effort into it? Probably not.

But damn those McFlurries are good. I get a craving once in a while and go get one. Surprisingly the machine here is never down... but maybe that's because they don't clean it.

 

[deadlyapp]

You know I never gave it much thought about how often they clean those machines, and how well. You tell a 16 year old to clean the machine, which is a pita, and he's being paid $15/hour for it. Do you think he is really putting 100% effort into it? Probably not.

But damn those McFlurries are good. I get a craving once in a while and go get one. Surprisingly the machine here is never down... but maybe that's because they don't clean it.

I didn't watch the article, but more than likely this machine self-cleans about 95% of the components. The only things you would possibly need to clean are the nozzles/external components. No different than a high end espresso machine.

 

[Stiff Clamp]

Apparently, even fake repairmen are granted access to the machine . . .

 

[Red Squirrel]

I just watched the video, feels like a 60 minutes episode lol. Really interesting stuff though. At the end of the day, it all boils down to right to repair, which apparently Taylor are completely against.

 

[IronWing]

The cleaning cycle runs with the product in the machine and basically just pasteurizes itself. Since the machine is down a lot, the same batch of product could be frozen, pasteurized, and refrozen multiple times, mmm.
With each cycle, the machine and product pass through the happy bacteria temperature range twice, double mmm.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The cleaning cycle runs with the product in the machine and basically just pasteurizes itself. Since the machine is down a lot, the same batch of product could be frozen, pasteurized, and refrozen multiple times, mmm.
With each cycle, the machine and product pass through the happy bacteria temperature range twice, double mmm.

I was thinking that too, I would think that would cause more issues than anything.

When they started explaining it I assumed it would dump out the excess and then run water through itself or something, not just leave the same product in it. In theory there could very well be expired product that always stays in there, since I imagine they just keep topping it up and it probably kind of just mixes in. I guess it gets enough mileage that it's not an issue? I imagine having the product sit so long inside forms mold after a while too but guess it's a small enough amount to be considered safe. Yum.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

I don't know about the coffee situation but this story is about how MacD looses money for being "too clean" so it's the complete opposite of rarely cleaned.
I never heard of anybody not giving somebody business for being too clean.

- Clearly you're not familiar with the old "Guide to eating out at Ethnic Food Places" esp in Southern California with the letter rating system for restaurants.

Grade:

A - Restaurant takes too much damn time to clean and not enough time actually making good food. Probably not a legit ethnic food place anyhow, meant to cater to natives. (i.e. Chipotle)

B- A solid ethnic food restaurant that will work for everyone. They have a maintained kitchen, but cooktops and fry oil are seasoned everything gets that delicious depth of flavor. Like mom's home cookin'. (A taqueria where everyone speaks broken English)

C - A good "real" ethnic food place, probably caters to a largely immigrant population. Rough with the cleaning and the flavor, but its a good kind of authentic. Like your mom's cooking.(A Taqueria where they have to find someone that speaks English)

D & F - Yeah don't eat here unless you want the authentic Delhi Belly experience. (A street food vendor in Mexico that isn't getting any business).

 

[Red Squirrel]

When I worked at help desk we used to check out the health unit site to see which local places were on the list of infractions and that's how we picked where we order from, it kind of became a meme. Reading the list of infractions and being like "Yep, that's dirty. Let's order from there". The dirtiest places were always the best poutine places lol.

When we had a Burger King it actually got shutdown for being too dirty. I kind of wonder how bad it was if they actually got shutdown lol. I wonder if things like THIS happened lol.

 

[Stiff Clamp]

4/23/21:

it's been happening for so long that a 3rd party entrepreneur came up with a solution.
He created a device that plugs into the machine and made a cell phone app.
the app not only diagnosed various problems but offered solutions that WORKED!

Franchisees started buying the device+app.
then McD corporate squashed their franchisees from buying/using it saying it violated their contract with corporate.

i actually watched the whole video.
it's pretty interesting.

but the one thing i dont get is why doesnt McD corporate demand the manufacturer fix their exclusive model?!
apparently it's been happening for so long that someone had the time to create a device and write an app to fix it.

I watched the video.
Turns out the 3rd-party-developed monitoring device can create a state where the machine functions while being serviced ... endangering the serviceman somehow. That's why corporate disallows it.

Also McD's indicated they are working on a remote monitoring device of their own.
Not that THAT would make a Taylor icecream machine more reliable. Just more informative

 

[Muse]

I'm pretty sure they can't legally call it ice cream. "Frozen Desert Product."

After seeing what actually went into the soft serve machines on cruise ships, I won't ever get soft serve unless I know it is real ice cream:

View attachment 43624

Oh boy, that looks really unhealthy.

 

[JEDI]

The Cold War Over Hacking McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines

Secret codes. Legal threats. Betrayal. How one couple built a device to fix McDonald’s notoriously broken soft-serve machines—and how the fast-food giant froze them out.

www.wired.com

The ice cream machines cost the franchisees $18k each

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I watched the documentary a couple of weeks ago. Just nuts. But for some 'oddly' convenient reason now the McD's near mean all have working machines. Hmm.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

I ended up watching it too. It's not at all surprising.


1. Make friends at the top of the food chain of a corporate megalord like McDonalds.
2. Sell them an "exclusive" must-buy model - where even external franchise owners are demanded to buy. Corporate doesn't care, you're buddy-buddy with the maker.
3. Make maintenance a pain in the ass thats hard or impossible to troubleshoot with YouTube videos.
4. ????
5. Profit!

It's not at all weird - it makes sense.