HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Here's a little investigation about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

This great (mini) YouTube documentary gives some background what lead up to the lawsuit. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4)

⬐ atlantas

Seconded. That is excellent piece of work; some of the best journalism I've seen in years.

⬐ w-m

The video makes some good points, but overall it’s very repetitive. Just count how many times the shot of the manual with “call a service technician” is used, always with similar narration, or the one of the finances of the company who make 25% of their revenue with parts and service.

This could have easily been a 5 minute video. Also, it does not offer any explanation why McDonalds is the only customer of the Taylor brand machines with this issue. Burger King is also “an old company”, why doesn’t it apply to them?

⬐ ziml77

McDonald's machines are custom manufactured for them by Taylor. It's not surprising that other places don't have the same issues.

⬐ daenz

That gives a huge amount of context, thanks! Here's where Kytch is mentioned specifically https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4?t=1379

⬐ JohnWhigham

Despite how fucking shitty YouTube has gotten, it's content like this that could never be available anywhere else on the Internet today for free.

⬐ hackernewds

Why is YouTube "fucking shitty"? And why then if it were so that this content could never be available anywhere else (since _any_ storage cloud service could host it)? I think your answers to the second will counteract the first

Relevant link for those who want more context on the constantly broken McDonald icecream machine situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

I don't think the WIRED article isn't really doing justice to what Kytch is trying to show. The important argument is whether or not McDonald and Taylor conspired to prevent Kytch from selling / franchisees from purchasing this equipment, essentially a 'right to repair' argument.

If Kytch wins, there could be ramifications for the tractor debate in the agricultural world as well.

I thought this video had some compelling arguments about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

Johnny Harris has a pretty good video about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

⬐ ghostbrainalpha

The way he takes everything so seriously, but doesn't become a joke himself. I love that dude's style.

I hope he gets funding to do a major show on Discovery Channel or something some day. He could be the David Attenborough of interesting but trival things.

⬐ skmurphy

thanks for posting it, this is first class journalism.

⬐ dredmorbius

Chiming in to say thanks, that's excellent, and I'm impressed by the reporting and investigation.

(TL;DR: Exclusive support contracts and recurring revenues.)

⬐ neom

It is a good watch. Leonard French did a good synopsis of the case (Kytch v. Taylor) for the startup referenced in the Johnny Harris video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXwD_HeC8Ms

Just pointing out this is a Johnny Harris, who put out a video [1]. I was wondering what the vice president has to do with McDonalds icecream machines.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

I had a look at what machines they use here in Australia and they seem to be similar to Taylor machines that they showed being used in the USA (this video: https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4). However, they almost always seem to be working without issue. If they are almost the same machine (would be for 240v) then I guess I’m glad that whatever is going on in the USA hasn’t reached here. Now the frozen drinks machines (slurpee, slushie, slush puppies) are down a lot more often but even then it isn’t down as much as the ice cream machines in the USA.

But talking about McDonald’s McFlurry - in the USA do they still flurry it with the blending mixing spoon? They used to do that in Australia but now a McFlurry has no flurry and instead it’s just a plain sundae topped with Oreo crumbs or mini m&m’s.

The video in question, if you haven’t seen it: https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4

⬐ malloc2048

For those who rather listen. The podcast 'The Sporkful' has an episode called 'Hacking McDonald's Broken Ice Cream Machines'

(And I just noticed when looking up the link, they also have video)

https://www.sporkful.com/hacking-mcdonalds-broken-ice-cream-...

And if you both don't want to watch video, nor listen to the podcast episode, the page has a full transcript of the episode.

I found it to be a pretty interesting story.

The REAL Reason McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

⬐ userbinator

Accompanying HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26936774

> The real problem is that McDonalds corporate forces franchisees to buy a crappy version of the machine that generates huge income for Taylor

Wendys also uses the same vendor with a better machine, which is where this starts to look malicious rather than incompetent. The broken machine is one specifically made for McDonalds.

In general, this is anti-consumer in two different ways - you don't give me ice-cream with the apple pie and whenever it breaks, you throw away a couple of gallons of the mixture to be safe.

There was a deep-dive into this from Johnny Harris[1], which dug through the manuals for the machine, sales projections from Taylor and why McD franchisees are easier marks for this than others (the revenue volume is huge).

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

The McDonalds ice cream machine story is pretty interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

⬐ runlevel1

The Kytch device is discussed and demoed at 22:37 -- the whole video is very interesting, though!

Kytch was also mentioned in this excellent mini-documentary about the whole topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

Worth watching, IMHO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

Supposedly the whole operation of the machines is obtuse and error prone on purpose.

same for mcdonald ice-cream machine

https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4

Making something that only you can repair can be quite a lucrative business. This documentary is quite interesting:

McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

⬐ theshrike79

A similar thing is happening with EVs.

Many car dealers don't make their money from selling cars, they make most of their money from being the only authorized repair shop for said car model. And to keep the warranty valid, you need to service the car at an authorized shop.

EVs, by design, don't require as much maintenance or as often as ICE cars. This will result in a disruption in the existing chain at some point. We'll see what actually happens in 5-10 years.

⬐ sokoloff

> And to keep the warranty valid, you need to service the car at an authorized shop.

Magnusson-Moss repudiates this for US consumers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson–Moss_Warranty_Act

⬐ theshrike79

Yea, same for many EU countries.

Also EVs require some specific knowledge and equipment random Mom & Pop shops won't have for a while. Just working with HVDC systems alone is a huge hassle.

⬐ throwaway0a5e

Some dealers make bank on the service.

Some dealers are basically in the business of originating loans.

It all depends on how the owner happens to structure the business.

Often you'll have multiple dealers in the same network that take a different route because that's what works for their brand and location niches.

⬐ bserge

Batteries will need swapping (not often, but a high price), and there's the added bonus of being able to "encourage" people to come in for repairs by just tweaking some OTA updates. I wonder who will get caught doing that first.

⬐ olyjohn

I keep hearing this thing about EVs not needing as much maintenance. Apparently nobody has looked at their maintenance schedule on their cars. Most cars don't need anything except a few oil changes by 100,000 miles. So many dealers throw in free oil changes now... and you can still have them done by Jiffy Lube if you want for about $50. People regularly hit 200k miles just doing oil changes, and changing out all the wear items that EV owners also have. If you can't afford the oil changes, you probably can't afford an EV either.

Brakes, coolant, tires, gearbox oils? Your EV still has all that. The power unit itself on an EV may be simpler, but mechanical failures in an engine in an ICE car are pretty damn rare. You're not servicing anything inside the engine, just like you're not taking apart the electric motor in your EV for maintenance.

⬐ theshrike79

200k miles? That's over 320000 km?! There's exactly zero chance a statistically significant number of combustion engines get that mileage with "a few oil changes".

I've owned cars with 200k km in them an I would describe them as "beaters" at best. I've had to replace clutches, radiators, turbos and god knows what else and they haven't even gotten close to the 300k km mark.

As for my EV, the first maintenance on schedule that isn't just replacing the air filter is at 160k km. I've saved hundreds if not thousands just from scheduled oil changes at that point.

⬐ 542354234235

>Apparently nobody has looked at their maintenance schedule on their cars.

Pot, meet kettle. EVs and Plug-in Hybrids cost less to maintain than ICE vehicles. [1] Over 200k miles, ICE vehicles are about double the maintenance cost of EVs or Plug-in hybrids.

At 50k miles; EVs $600, Plug-in $1,050, ICE $1,400.

100k miles; EVs $2,000, Plug-ins $2,600, ICE $4,400.

200k miles; EVs $6,300, Plug-ins $5,900, ICE $12,300.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/10/owning-an-electric-car-...

⬐ remirk

Great conclusion. This video could have been summarized in 10 minutes though. For the most part, no real information about the problem was given. I guess this is just how YouTube documentaires in 2021 are.

⬐ atoav

Making something only you can repair lands you on my personal everlasting blacklist of shame (and I guess the everlasting blacklists of shame of others as well).

⬐ mhb

Or maybe not. Extensive discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26936774

⬐ skeeter2020

McDonalds has very strong incentives to reduce labour costs to zero. This started with very clear & limited roles which meant cheap rates, but now means reducing the number of employees. At $5/hour it's cheaper to train and manage people to do the job; @ > $15/hr you can justify an army of machines and a few technicians, even if your ice cream machine seems to be broken a lot of the time.

⬐ shagie

If you poke at McD's corporate jobs in IT, you'll find a bunch of jobs in machine learning, audio processing and similar for an AI drive through project.

https://careers.mcdonalds.com/global-corporate/jobs?categori...

Many of the tech positions have been filled (from what they were a year ago)... though still more than a few.

⬐ gruez

Yeah, the non-sinister explanation is that mcdonalds decided to go with a self-cleaning machine to reduce the possibility of workers messing up the cleaning cycle, taylor implementing that badly, and no one else using self-clean machines.

>So, the end result of having a soldered fuse was exactly the same as a socketed one: it was successfully repaired. I don’t see the justification for the extra BOM item.

You joking? You realize houses and cars have socketed fuses that can be replaced almost turnkey. This is a simple solution to build into the product a UI that let's the user know a socket was blown and allow the user to replace a fuse like replacing a AA battery. FUSES are designed to fail and be replaced. Making those FUSES inaccessible is ALSO a design choice because it's contradictory.

There was a point in time where every phone had a replaceable battery. You think that replaceable batteries disappeared because companies wanted to save costs? Sockets for batteries have been part of the design philosophy for consumer products for decades, the fact that these sockets are removed from phones is not a cost saving measure.

This issue is much more widespread than you think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

⬐ kube-system

My above point is was that cost is an example of an engineering tradeoff, not that it is the only engineering tradeoff.

Phone batteries are designed to be replaceable. They’re internal because of design considerations, not cost. In fact, nearly all cell phone batteries are secured with removable adhesive because they’re specifically intended to be replaceable.

Homes have circuit breakers (fuses haven’t been mainstream for a while) because the load is not predefined, and can be occasionally exceeded by the end user. This is not the case for a consumer appliance with a known load. An unexpectedly high load is an indication that another component has also failed. There’s some diagnosis that should be done when replacing a fuse on a system with an unexplained over current situation.

⬐ neonological

Your logic doesn't make sense for why socketed fuses even exist. So why do cars have socketed fuses then? Do cars have unexpected loads? Not nearly as much as houses. Cars have socketed fuses same as houses because fuses are designed to fail and be replaced. This is the logical intention of fuses.

Making something that is designed to fail and be replaced (fuses) inaccessible is a contradictory design philosophy... Unless this design philosophy is INTENDED to make the product fail. You place a component designed to fail inside a vac and make it inaccessible then that means you are designing the vac to fail.

Phone batteries are not designed to be replaceable this is a lie or pure stupidity. You realize that glue or adhesive is not designed to be removed right? It's designed to be permanent. Screws and socketed components are designed to be removed.

Additionally the iPhone isn't even designed to be opened. It's extremely hard to open that device and it's completely obvious the reason is because that device is designed to both fail in a certain time frame and only be serviceable by apple technicians. Here's how easy it is to "replace" a battery you claim was glued into the phone as a design decision to be "replaceable": https://youtu.be/gkCyl7kRGns

>My above point is was that cost is an example of an engineering tradeoff, not that it is the only engineering tradeoff

Who in the universe isn't aware that tradeoffs outside of cost don't exist? Kind of useless if the point is to obvious. How about you address my point in the fact that deliberate decisions were made to make products fail and that these failures are not design tradeoffs.

A thinner phone for an irreplaceable battery in the iPhone is not actually a tradeoff. In fact if you look inside the phone they very much could've screwed the battery in without increasing the thickness of the phone.

You realize that Steve Jobs once said the iPod was designed to only last a year?

⬐ kube-system

> Your logic doesn't make sense for why socketed fuses even exist. So why do cars have socketed fuses then?

1. Cars cost 600x what a shop vac does, so more people attempt to fix them.

2. Some fuses in cars are, in fact, not socketed. Particularly for the higher-current and more dangerous circuits where unexpected overloads are of a greater safety concern and are less likely to be due to fluke events. For instance, fusible links[0]. It would certainly be possible for automotive designers to design a socketed fuse in place of a fusible link, but the cost to do it would be 'high' relative to the frequency of failure, the risk, and the likelihood of user-serviceability. Again, an engineering trade-off.

[0]: https://m.roadkillcustoms.com/understanding-fusible-links/

> Do cars have unexpected loads?

Yes, every car I've ever been in has accessory circuits that a user could easily overload. And I have done so myself many times. Also, there are a lot of electrical parts on a vehicle with limited lifetime that are prone to mechanical failure: relays, bulbs, accessory actuators, etc. When these items fail, they can stall/short and cause an overcurrent condition.

You wouldn't throw away a $30k car because a bent pin on a $1 tail light bulb shorted out. You'd replace the $0.10 fuse and get another $1 tail light bulb. But, you'd probably throw away a $25 blender when the $18 motor laminations short out, because the failure would cost more to fix than the entire product is worth, especially if you're paying labor to fix it.

Fuses exist to fail when some other failure condition happens. Many failures on a car are economical to fix. A blender is totaled if nearly anything happens to it.

> Phone batteries are not designed to be replaceable this is a lie or pure stupidity. You realize that glue or adhesive is not designed to be removed right?

Mainstream phones (iPhone, Samsung, etc) are typically designed with adhesive that has removal tabs which deactivate the adhesive and allow someone to remove it cleanly. They could simply leave this feature out if they didn't want it to be replaceable, but they didn't. Their intentional adding of this feature is evidence that they do intend for the battery to be replaced. Example: https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/yAxAcOuZkVKD1xAY.hug...

> Additionally the iPhone isn't even designed to be opened. It's extremely hard to open that device and it's completely obvious the reason is because that device is designed to both fail in a certain time frame and only be serviceable by apple technicians.

It's hard to open as a result of the design/engineering trade off. Just because it's hard to open doesn't automatically imply that someone must have plotted to make it hard to open. It just means that end-user serviceability wasn't a high-priority design feature. It's hard to open simply because glue is a cheap way to make something thin, waterproof, and cheap to manufacture. If Apple really wanted to waterproof their device while intentionally make it unserviceable, the electronics industry has way better ways to do that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potting_(electronics)

> Who in the universe isn't aware that tradeoffs outside of cost don't exist? Kind of useless if the point is to obvious. How about you address my point in the fact that deliberate decisions were made to make products fail and that these failures are not design tradeoffs.

Your point is valid for instances of proven malice, but one should not assume malice where a valid alternative explanation exists.

⬐ neonological

1. People would like to fix vacs too. Cheaper doesn't mean everybody just replaces a vac every year.

2. Fusible links are designed that way for safety. The hood of a car is designed to be opened so that even a fusible link can be fixed.

3. When I asked: Do care have unexpected loads? I answered that question right after I asked it. The question was rhetorical.

I'd rather replace a fuse in a 25$ blender then buy a new one. But either way, you wouldn't throw away a $100 dollar vac or a $500 dollar iPhone just because a $0.10 fuse shorted out.

>Mainstream phones (iPhone, Samsung, etc) are typically designed with adhesive that has removal tabs which deactivate the adhesive and allow someone to remove it cleanly.

True. BUT these batteries are still extremely hard to remove as they are locked into the case. They were designed to be hard to remove so that apple service people can repair the few phones that statistically beat the warranty.

We both know that the iphone is basically designed with a battery that is so hard to remove that it can be basically classified as not removable by the average layman. Very different from the way all phones use to have removable batteries.

>It's hard to open as a result of the design/engineering trade off. Just because it's hard to open doesn't automatically imply that someone must have plotted to make it hard to open. It just means that end-user serviceability wasn't a high-priority design feature.

That's my point. How do you know it's a tradeoff? How do you know it's not a design decision? Basically Apple is incentivized to make the phone hard to open. Additionally all apple policies of "repairing" a phone basically make "repairing" the phone cost as much as buying a new one. With every policy surrounding the phone is positioned, it's more than likely that the decisions are deliberate.

>Your point is valid for instances of proven malice, but one should not assume malice where a valid alternative explanation exists.

My point is valid for instances of suspected malice. The motive exists. Do you trust someone trying to sell you a new crypto just because there's no evidence of malice and that an alternative explanation exists? No. It's stupid to believe there is no malice.

It is far wiser to assume malice exists wherever profitable incentive exists, such is the nature of business.

⬐ colund

This keeps popping up

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932344

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26922378

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26924855

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27086080

This. Check out the recent news on why McDonalds ice cream machines tend to fail. https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4

Spoiler: it’s because the machine is broken and only one authorized company is allowed to fix it

⬐ dang

Some past related threads:

The Reason McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26932344 - April 2021 (3 comments)

The Real Reason McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26922378 - April 2021 (1 comment)

ArsTechnica has retracted the story about McDonald's Icecream - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26918415 - April 2021 (8 comments)

McDonalds' Secret Ice-cream Menu [censored?] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26894406 - April 2021 (2 comments)

They Hacked McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines–and Started a Cold War - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26874436 - April 2021 (3 comments)

I reverse engineered McDonalds’ internal API - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24861623 - Oct 2020 (420 comments)

⬐ Fezzik

This seems crazy... I worked at Dairy Queen for 4 (5?) years through high school and beyond, often 6 days a week, and our soft-serve machine never once broke. This was between 97 - 2001+, so 20 years ago soft-serve machines were a solved problem. It seems insane that McDs franchisors would tolerate this sort of nonsense.

⬐ scyzoryk_xyz

I too, like, apparently many others here, have worked a soft-serve machine.

My understanding is that the McD one is different and tries to remove the need for disassembly and cleaning at the end of the day. I imagine McD making so many different things with so many different machines requiring all sorts of different maintenance this is a useful optimization as opposed to a Dairy Queen.

⬐ alpb

That was my reaction to the video: Aren't there franchisors with many stores in a large metro area that can actually carry a lawsuit or get together with other franchisors to start a class-action lawsuit?

⬐ viztor

Why would they? As long as their business is profitable, there is no reason to launch a lawsuit that could cost them their business just for some repair cost.

⬐ alpb

Imagine you have 50 EC2 instances and each of them suffers 15% downtime monthly. Amazon is asking money to reboot them and get them up and running.

⬐ viztor

That's different isn't it? Those McDonalds aren't completely shut down, but suffers 'performance' issues where they still have most of their revenue, just not all of what they would regularly have. And your business don't depend on AWS, while most McDonalds restaurants do depend on McDonald to have a business to begin with.

⬐ bmn__

> It seems insane that McDs franchisors would tolerate this

Their hands are bound. The situation arises from the contract whose terms are dictated by McD HQ. The relationship is entirely asymmetric.

The only working remedy in form of the Kytch add-on got nuked from orbit.

⬐ 1cvmask

Here is the site to see if the ice cream machine works or not:

https://mcbroken.com/

Here is the original HN thread on this subject:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24861623

⬐ azhenley

I used mcbroken three times. Each time it said the machine was working but the workers told me otherwise. The site continued saying it was working until they closed. :(

⬐ rashiq

Unfortunately it doesn't work if the restaurant doesn't update their pos system. There's a few false-positives but I haven't heard of any false-negatives.

⬐ melkel

this story is so much more than mcBroken

⬐ JohnJamesRambo

I find it insane someone from corporate doesn't think 10-20% downtime on a product they make heavy profits from isn't a big deal. And yes I know McDonald's is a real estate company and the franchise owners are the ones losing money etc. but still.

⬐ gambiting

Question - I keep hearing about this frequently as a meme on the internet, but I have never ever been to a McDonalds that didn't have a working ice cream machine(here in UK). Is this unique to US for some reason?

⬐ grishka

Same in Russia.

Anyway, US McDonalds is worse than the ones in literally every other country I've ever been to.

⬐ garmaine

They’ve improved significantly in the last 10 years or so. Still attract a certain sort of trashy clientele though. The Walmart of fast food.

⬐ grishka

I visited the US twice, in 2014 and in 2016. So are you saying it was even worse 10 years ago? The most surprising thing I remember about US McDonalds is that a "small" drink was something like 500 ml. This is madness.

⬐ sReinwald

Same here in Germany, but I'm also not ordering a lot of ice cream at McDonalds.

My guess is that the national subsidiaries (McDonalds UK/McDonalds Germany) might have different approved vendors for their equipment than the US mothership. From glancing at Taylor's website they seem to only operate in the US.

⬐ monkey_monkey

European McDonalds use a different machine manufactured by an Italian company – Carpigiani. It's apparently better designed and more reliable.

⬐ unixhero

Just watch the video :)

⬐ aembleton

I watched it but didn't notice it saying if this was specific to the US. Maybe I had zoned out by then.

⬐ atdrummond

It happened all the time at the McDonalds next to Charing Cross. Never really happens here at the Isle of Man McDonalds.

The main difference between those two is that the former is open 24 hours a day, while the latter is closed 12a - 5pm, a window which just happens to be perfect for running the Taylor’s daily cleansing cycle. (It can’t be solely a function of increased customer throughput, which is the other variable I considered, as the Manx McDonalds has way more people visit it during the TT than the Charing Cross restaurant ever has. Yet the machine was up the entire TT for at least the last three years the race was held.)

⬐ leovander

TIL Kytch[0] is a packaged up Raspiberry Pi "Built with Raspberry Pi inside.". And I was waiting to hear the words right-to-repair in the video [1].

[0]https://kytch.com

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl34nW9c4wo

⬐ deepstack

Nice. Would being better if it is build with Beagle Board, open source hard ware as well.

⬐ fouc

summary: McDonalds only allows their franchisees to use one specific machine for ice cream, from one supplier. Most of their other equipment they have more than one choice for suppliers but not for the ice cream machine. The supplier is Taylor, which supplies ice cream machines to many other restaurants which do not suffer from the same problem. The Taylor-made machine for McDonald's is deliberately designed to have a secret menu that only “authorized service personnel” are allowed to use and the main menu only throws obscure & unhelpful error messages and the Owner manual is not helpful at all. This forces franchisee owners to pay thousands of dollars a year these service people to come and “fix” the issue with the machine.

⬐ slantyyz

According to the related Wired article, this isn't true:

"(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]

https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-...

⬐ frankfrankfrank

Unless it is an accidental oversight, since the video does not really go over the franchise agreement that much, if what you are saying is true, it highlights an issue that bothered me.

Even though the clear conflict of interest with Kytch is addressed, what is not addressed is that if owners simply buy the Italian machine or McD is sued for the clear corruption and conspiracy to commit fraud, the whole startup essentially becomes worthless over night; so the video does not address that other machines can be bought or that the clear conspiracy to commit fraud should be investigated and prosecuted, or at the very least the owners should join forces to sue McD for fraud.

I wish the McBroken site kept track of performance metrics, i.e., which specific machines were down the most. The dataset would surely clearly show proof of the difference in the machines? This is conspiracy to commit fraud if I have ever heard of one; especially with McD coming out guns blazing to scare owners about adding a totally unobtrusive device to the machine that in no way tampers with anything? That alone could bury McD in court as it shows clear collusion and conspiracy.

⬐ m00dy

Is this automated ?

⬐ fouc

Sorry, is what automated? The machine doesn't call for a service technician automatically if that's what you meant.

⬐ m00dy

I meant your summary. Did you pull the transcript from the video and run through text summarisation model ?

⬐ fouc

I wish.. I wrote it manually after watching the video at 2x speed :D

⬐ gruez

> The supplier is Taylor, which supplies ice cream machines to many other restaurants which do not suffer from the same problem.

AFAIK the difference is that the other restaurants machines don't self sanitize.

>The Taylor-made machine for McDonald's is deliberately designed to have a secret menu that only “authorized service personnel” are allowed to use

While I can see this being nefarious, I can also understand why they did it: they don't want franchisees to mess with the machine in a way that could compromise the sanitation cycle. For instance, one reason why cleaning fails is that because the target temperature hasn't been reached. If there was a temperature calibration in the secret menu, you could add a +20F degree offset to the thermometer, which would almost guarantee the target is met, but would introduce risk of food poisoning if the temperature is actually too low.

⬐ fouc

Apparently the secret menu gives better error codes / feedback so that users are more informed and know how to avoid problems like "putting too much mix in the tank". Rather than being a means of just faking the parameters.

⬐ gruez

>Apparently the secret menu gives better error codes / feedback so that users are more informed and know how to avoid problems like "putting too much mix in the tank".

Where was this mentioned? The part about the secret menu is around 19:47 (from skimming the transcript), and it only mentions "critical operating parameters".

⬐ fouc

I think it was mentioned later in the video, or implied at some point.. I also read the wired article too [1]

[1] http://archive.is/xzYL8

⬐ maximus2001

Louis Rossmann's YouTube video "Let's talk about ice cream and why it matters"

10 minutes that nails it

https://youtu.be/tl34nW9c4wo

⬐ cowpig

ok this is better thanks (a quicker, rantier version that touches on related right-to-repair issues)

⬐ dreen

"I am blown away that a software this cryptic and hard to use can exist in 2020"

A common misconception. Most software is bad. There is more software now than any time before. Therefore, the amount of bad software increases with time.

⬐ monkey_monkey

This Wired article is highly relevant, and discusses some of the reasons these machines are often broken, and McDonald's fight to stop a startup from helping diagnose/mitigate these problems.

https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-...

⬐ smcl

Is this "the ice cream machine is always broken" meme has always puzzled me. I don't go often to mcdonalds but with my ex-gf we would stop by if we're on a trip somewhere and she'd usually get an ice cream. I don't think we ever encountered the ice cream machine being out of service. Is it more of an issue in the US or did we just have extremely good luck?

⬐ emsy

German here, I encountered a broken ice machine maybe once but it was actually broken, not out for maintenance or something.

⬐ fireattack

I always thought the meme/joke is more about McFlurry than your standard ice cream.

I personally never encounter ice cream machine broken either.

⬐ smcl

Sorry to clarify, I'm talking about the McFlurry :)

⬐ ChrisRR

Well statistically, every 7/8 of the times it would be broken. If you go often enough, I would think 1/8 feels like it's all the time.

⬐ smcl

Ah but what I meant was in the ~50 or so visits in the last 5 years this has never happened to me. So I was wondering whether I was just lucky or if it’s an entirely different situation in Europe

⬐ nomilk

What a brilliant and intelligent expose. I look forward to hearing the collective response of the 16000 US McDonald Franchisees owners :)

Afterthought: since franchisees are locked into the C602's I wonder if they could do anything about this even if they tried. Sigh.

⬐ praptak

What is C602, except for the Intel chipset, which is clearly not what you meant?

Edit: (okay, it's the code for these machines. I thought it's a code for a clause in the contract, or something like this.)

⬐ raverbashing

I would really like to know how profitable it is to be a McD franchisee today, my guess is not too much.

So maybe this is the straw that breaks the camels back, who knows.

⬐ Xelbair

I never encountered a broken ice cream machine in McD, nor i know anyone who did.

I do live in Europe though.

⬐ tidenly

Same in Japan - I think this is a problem unique to America's McDs

⬐ starsep

I also have never seen nor heard of a broken McD ice cream machine. I am also from Europe, Poland specifically.

⬐ bkirkby

As I read the comments (not watched the video yet) where people are discussing the misaligned incentives of both the ice cream machine vendor (Taylor makes money on maintenance) and the McD franchisee (ice cream is a loss leader), I was reminded that a convenience store chain here in Utah has a self-serve shake machine (I forget the brand name) that has always been broken when I thought I'd try it out.

I asked my wife, who goes to Maverick every day, if my perception that the shake machine is always broken was accurate and she said "yes. I've never seen it working. I've always wondered why they keep them because they just take up space."

Fwiw

⬐ bombcar

Those complex machines are often bought by corporate and require lots of hand-holding (I've seen the employees at Kwik Trip cleaning theirs multiple times which must mean it takes a decent amount of time to do, or I'd rarely see it).

If the sales are mediocre it becomes a vending machine that requires work and the local management won't bother as it's not critical for the business - just like the ice cream machine isn't critical for McDonalds but I guarantee if they had the same problem with the soda machine they'd fix it somehow.

⬐ dependsontheq

The Taylor revenue from service looks totally reasonable in that business, restaurant equipment needs a lot of service and fails often and you often have no alternative on hand, having fast and helpful service has the same value a good machine has.

The software interface looks stupid, but ... that's really more of an industry problem.

⬐ LatteLazy

Exactly. It's complex, it has to refrigerate and heat, it has to do complex things with fluids and moving parts, it has to be 100% safe and hygienic, output has to be 100% reproducible and its operated by a high school kid who's still a bit high from smoking earlier.

A better question is why they don't have 2+ machines to both share the load and give some redundancy. I'm all for economic self interest, so I assume ice-cream isn't a money maker (maybe even a loss leader?) so no one actually cares if the machine is down all day as long as people buy something else.

⬐ simonblack

Whenever you need to know something, the answer is "Follow the Money."

⬐ tharne

The video is half an hour long, but well worth it. Not mind blowing stuff, just a good story.

⬐ tomerv

It's a good 10-minute story, but it was needlessly stretched to 30. It was so long and repetitive that he didn't even have enough stock footage to fill everything and had to repeat each shot 3+ times.

⬐ CryptoPunk

This is a well-produced video. Great to see this level of skill and work ethic present in Youtube video creators.

The only thing I disagreed with the journalist with is the story lens, or the moral of the story, that this is about big corporations helping each other. That's the easy anti-capitalist narrative that finds a wide audience, but it's not accurate.

McDonalds' actions are against the interests of the capitalists in this case, which are the shareholders. It's in the latter's best interest to partner with an ice cream maker that proves cost-effective for franchisees.

So this is really just a case of rent-seeking by an insider; maybe someone in the McDonalds corporate hierarchy with personal relationships or investments linking them with the ice cream maker Taylor, in which case it would be a worker acting against the best interests of McDonalds workers at large, the capitalists (McDonalds shareholders), and consumers. This doesn't provide the story with a sexy moral that fits in with some neat and tidy grand narrative, but it's more likely to be true.

⬐ noisy_boy

Some questions that I felt were not answered:

1. The video shows Taylor docs that have logo of Wendy's and other outlets that use their machines. So why those outlets are not facing the same issues? Do they use the same 602 model? Are the software versions same there i.e. same cryptic error codes? Any other differences compared to McDonalds?

2. One of Wendy's employees says that they wash the machine every night. Are McDonald's not doing this? Or are they prevented from doing so due to some reason like different operating instructions or model or something else?

3. Is the more user friendly software, that they mentioned that McDonald's blocked, being used by any other chain outlets? If yes, what is the experience of using that vs not using that?

⬐ bombcar

McDonald's is designed to run with the simplest possible steps. I suspect that "clean nightly" is a different process for MCD vs Wendy's, and that the MCDs is designed to "automate" more of whatever it does - and if it fails it locks you out.

In other words Wendy's and In-N-Out have more details procedures that the employees have to do (and "wash the machine" may include dumping all extra product, cleaning the insides and the dispensers) whereas the McDonald's "wash the machine" may be just clean the dispensers and load with product and let the machine do it's thing (and only every 14 days do a full clean).

But since the simpler machines trust the humans they can be made to run even if steps were missed.

⬐ adventured

> The video shows Taylor docs that have logo of Wendy's and other outlets that use their machines. So why those outlets are not facing the same issues?

The video mentions that McDonald's was/is locked into a specific machine from Taylor (which all franchisees had to buy), whereas one imagines that the other chains like In-N-Out Burger are entirely free to purchase a different machine from Taylor that doesn't have so many problems.

It seems like McDonald's locked onto one machine for a very long period of time. Other fastfood chains may have moved on from that machine after they noticed problems with it (or otherwise passed on it). It was confusing that the video repeatedly mentions other chains don't have the problem despite supposedly using the same machine (but is it actually the same machine, or is it merely a similar machine).

The nefarious aspect may be whether McDonald's corporate is getting a direct kickback in some (plausibly legal) manner from Taylor or its parent company, which bypasses the franchisees and McDonald's corporate calculated out that they come out better off net through the scheme of allowing high rates of downtime on the machines (compared to how much they would get from increased franchise sales of ice cream if the machines had high uptime, via the cut of gross sales that corporate gets from a franchise). It's super odd that McDonald's so tightly locked the franchisees into this specific garbage machine and for so long, even though they obviously knew how bad it was. Piles of reports would have shown up very rapidly at McDonald's HQ and yet they persisted; it suggests something shady going on at corporate that is against the interests of the franchisees.

> One of Wendy's employees says that they wash the machine every night. Are McDonald's not doing this?

McDonald's is doing that as well and that's where the machines are commonly failing. The employees come in the next morning after running the clean cycle overnight and find that it failed. So they have to go through a four hour process from there forward and it might fail again before that is properly completed, and so the cycle resets.

⬐ randymercury

The kickback scenario came to mind for me as well. It could even be something less nefarious than a formalized system on a corporate level.

Personal relationships with key decision makers, vegas trips, the old boys club etc. Two companies with that kind of old relationship.

⬐ noisy_boy

> It seems like McDonald's locked onto one machine for a very long period of time. Other fastfood chains may have moved on from that machine after they noticed problems with it (or otherwise passed on it). It was confusing that the video repeatedly mentions other chains don't have the problem despite supposedly using the same machine (but is it actually the same machine, or is it merely a similar machine).

Indeed - considering how much effort they spent on the details, they could have tried to obtain what the rival outlets were doing different considering they also use the same manufacturer and don't have same issues E.g. the model details on rival outlets to see if this issue was not affecting other Taylor models.

>> One of Wendy's employees says that they wash the machine every night. Are McDonald's not doing this?

> McDonald's is doing that as well and that's where the machines are commonly failing. The employees come in the next morning after running the clean cycle overnight and find that it failed. So they have to go through a four hour process from there forward and it might fail again before that is properly completed, and so the cycle resets.

Again, this is the same point - if both outlets are doing the washing, then why is it not affecting Wendy's? Difference in model or process of washing is not same or Wendy's have added additional instructions to deal with such issues e.g. not overfill the mixture etc?

Basically, the missing comparison is an obvious omission from, what is otherwise, a great video.

⬐ txomon

If someone is looking for when it starts diving into the situation... https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4?t=625

⬐ tedk-42

Must be a US thing because I don't recall ever being denied a soft serve cone in Australia.

It's probably happened before, but it's so infrequent that it's not a memorable trend/pattern.

⬐ Tepix

I haven't been to McDonald's much in the last years but i remember the ice cream machines often being out of service here in Germany, too.

⬐ janee

Interesting piece, wonder if it's some ancient vendor lock-in agreement...can't imagine that, but guess it's possible.

What would be interesting is a comparison of Taylor revenue from C602 service & repair vs McDonald's lost revenue / reputational cost from ice cream sales....I'm guessing franchisee extortion is more lucrative?

⬐ csours

I am not a fish. https://youtu.be/nZiDS-4Xd2k?t=797 and https://youtu.be/nZiDS-4Xd2k?t=925

User Experience isn't just selling ads or 'driving engagement'

⬐ thrower123

Somehow the local ice cream shops that are run by 14-year old girls never manage to break their soft serve machines.

⬐ fighterpilot

I initially thought the motive was that soft-serve cones were a loss-leader and this was a clever attempt at a bait & switch.

However, the kickback hypothesis seems more likely, with corporate & Taylor both benefiting at the expense of franchisees.

⬐ LatteLazy

Anyone know what the markup on ice cream is? It can't be much, maybe it's even a loss leader, hence franchises owners don't care. Otherwise this would be a much bigger deal.

⬐ Viker

People might not be aware but this is standard operation for any kind of integrated OEM ( other equipment manifacture)

You sell units at break even, hoping you make profit from service and support.

⬐ GiveOver

The video repeatedly quoted that 25% revenue stat for Taylor, but that didn't sound so high to me. I'd have preferred to see a comparison with similar companies

⬐ pontifier

It's intermittent reinforcement people! It's a gamble. If you want ice cream you have to keep going back again and again to play the odds.

And now I want some ice cream...

⬐ SoiGubz

They're not broken, it's just that they don't want to clean and maintain them because it's such a small percentage of sales for the effort.

⬐ punnerud

Can this interface be seen as an API, and interaction is fair use and should not void the warranty?

An extension of Google vs. Oracle, and LinkedIn vs. HiQ.

⬐ shrubble

So can you use it as a 'filter' for how well run a McDonald's is, in that better run places might have working machines?

⬐ jeromenerf

The most distasteful thing in this video (and there is a lot) are probably the actual ice creams.

I would worry more if the failure rate was going down.

⬐ colour

The only thing lacking is a link to the technician's manual, but I imagine that might unfortunately provoke some legal trouble.

⬐ divs1210

Weird that this is never the case in India - the ice cream machines always seem to be working.

⬐ captn3m0

I doubt if they are using the same manufacturer or a self-sanitizing machine. With low labor costs in India, there isn't much reason to pick a self-sanitizing machine.

⬐ dboreham

Same reason as the credit card machine is always broken in restaurants in Greece?

⬐ phkamp

I wonder if more civilized jurisdictions allow these machine to ferment for two full weeks without cleaning ?

Does anybody know the situation in any EU countries ?

⬐ fedreserved

Tin foil hat. Mcd wants to like taylors pockets and keep them in a dominant position to keep them in a position where they know about all of their competitors ice cream habits.

⬐ 02020202

tl;dr i read about this some time ago and essentially is just boiled down to the operators not letting the machines get into maintenance mode which it often needs to do...i think even daily. i think defrosting takes place as well so obviously this takes way too long to be out of service so they just ignore it and keep using it until sit breaks or it lock itself for maintenance.

⬐ tsudonym

Please switch to Nissei ice cream machines. Anyone who's been a tourist to Japan to attest to how good fast food soft serve is over there. This is why. https://www.nissei.nl/en/products/soft-serve-machines

⬐ tamaharbor

You can’t really call it ice cream (too much edible plastic). On the menu it’s named ‘cone’, ‘shake’, and ‘sundae’.

⬐ joezydeco

Cut it out.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/a-fair-shake/

⬐ tamaharbor

You are not going to change my mind. I was in Missouri in 1979 and they apparently had strict labeling laws. On the McDonalds Menu it said “Cone (contains 17% edible plastic)”.

⬐ readflaggedcomm

What qualified in 1979 as "edible plastic?" Gelatin, like pill outers?

⬐ ryan93

What do Missouri’s laws in 1979 have to do with McDonald’s?

⬐ kilburn

Missouri's laws were stricter than the norm

-> McDonals had to explicitly put "(contains 17% edible plastic)” in the menu there

-> the poster you are replying to saw that

-> said poster states that no fact checking website is going to change his mind (given he saw edible plastic as an ingredient in official menus back in the day)

⬐ wk_end

Your mind might be unchangeable, but if you want to change others’ minds in a world where memory is unreliable and anonymous internet posters even more so, you’ll need something more than a claim of a 40+ year old recollection of the McDonalds menu in Missouri to beat Snopes for credibility.

⬐ ipaddr

I 100% believe him. What we define as plastic may have changed. Perhaps we are all eating things that were formally classified as plastic. Perhaps someone was making a joke on their way to quitting.

I never discount a person or a users memory. They are usually right over my assumption. When I look closer I see more reasonable answers that I never considered before.

⬐ valuearb

If you believe everyone’s memories you believe a lot of false things. Human memory is notoriously unreliable, and old memories are often patched together out of stories, dreams and entirely different events.

⬐ dang

Please don't do that like this. If someone else is wrong or you feel they are, providing accurate information neutrally is sufficient. Swipes aren't needed, and add poison.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

⬐ jjeaff

Ice cream is a protected term. It must contain 10%+ milkfat (among other things). Which why sometimes you see avoidance of the term.

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfr...

And no, there is no plastic in McDonald's ice cream.

⬐ boatsie

Tldw: the machine throws obscure error codes (too viscous, failure to heat to proper temps, etc) and can “lock out” the operator, who has to then call an authorized service technician that bills hundreds of dollars for repair. Any attempt to self repair or hire someone else will void the warranty and is disallowed by McDonald’s corporate. The ice cream maker company, Taylor, reports 25% of their revenue is service and maintenance.

⬐ canada_dry

Still worth watching though. The last part (@ 23 mins) looks at how an enterprising 3rd party developer decided to help franchise owners solve the problem and got shut down by head-office.

⬐ loonster

Didn't make it that far. Time is too precious to waste on someone that is purposely wasting it.

⬐ canada_dry

> Time is too precious to waste

Sure. Which is why my default youtube playback speed is 1.5X.

⬐ fastball

Mine has just kept getting faster and faster, thanks to this Chrome extension[1]. Right now I average 2.5x speed for most videos, and 2.2x for people that talk fast.

[1] https://github.com/igrigorik/videospeed

⬐ benhurmarcel

This one is recommended for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/videospeed/

I find that most videos are understandable up to 3x. I watch most of them at 2.5-2.8x, down to 2x for people that talk fast or with a hard accent. Same for podcasts.

⬐ FridayoLeary

music videos must be fun, then

⬐ fastball

Can't remember the last time I watched a music video!

⬐ userbinator

Nightcore is a remix genre of music that is basically "turn the speed (and pitch) up". It can be surprisingly good.

⬐ bmn__

Alternatives:

Firefox, YT only: https://www.mrfdev.com/enhancer-for-youtube The improved playback speed ranges from 25% to 400% (also 800% but without audio) in adjustable increments.

For offline videos, VLC also is capable of changing playback speed.

⬐ matsemann

Are there video players or plugins having "dynamic" speedup? Like, playing everything faster by a fixed amount isn't optimal. Maybe the words could be said 3x faster, the breaks between words however be kept at 1.5x faster as to not make it one big mush, and space between sentences some third amount.

Edit: I see some podcasts app have something similar (albeit opposite). It shortens dead space between two people talking and try to not affect the speed of their speech.

⬐ NathanielK

Skip Silence[1] for chrome does exactly that.

[1]https://vantezzen.github.io/skip-silence/

⬐ ogurechny

Add to this a lot of overacting, and video clips repeating 20 times, and you'll have a half an hour program mostly about nothing.

One can easily see that YouTube (as a platform) became just a shitty television when the host unironically flips through stacks of papers exactly the same way it was done in the classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=128IR21ZQa0

⬐ LordAtlas

Yeah, this was at most a 10-minute video stretched with typical YouTuber bullshit to be nearly half an hour long. So much repetition. Need those "engagement" numbers to be high!

⬐ dandare

Thank you. That video was pain to watch, I hate this low-information-density bs.

⬐ bcaa7f3a8bbc

It seems that even a megacorp like McDonald needs the right to repair...

On second thought, not exactly the megacorp, but the franchise owners.

⬐ input_sh

Pretty sure McDonald's is fully aware of this and deserves a large portion of the blame.

⬐ syrrim

McDonald's the corp isn't hurt by this, individual franchise owners bear the cost. In particular, mcdonald's the corp mandates the particular icecream machine that is used, rather than allowing the franchise owner to pick from several machines. The video argues that this is done because mcdonald's is interested in benefiting the company that makes and services the ice cream machines.

⬐ jfoster

On the face of it, McDonald's corp should also be harmed by this. It makes their customers less successful through higher costs & lower sales, and it tarnishes their brand when a customer of their customers is unable to purchase an ice cream.

The two questions in my mind after watching:

1. What makes McDonald's corp okay with it?

2. What is the difference between the arrangement with McDonald's and the other franchises/chains? (Wendy's, In'n'Out, etc.)

⬐ bluGill

McDonald's Corp owns are significant number of restaurants directly. Most are franchises, but not all. Thus the company is directly hurt.

This feels more like someone not in the know of the real problems finding a false complaint that seems worse than it is.

⬐ lotsofpulp

I’ve seen franchisors collect kick backs from vendors for being an “approved vendor” the franchisee has to use.

⬐ laurent92

Given the meme is already circulating among the youth with McDonalds ice cream being the bottom of the joke, and given it reached the top of HN many times already, I say this hurts McDonalds image a lot.

When people think about “broken like a McDonalds ice cream machine”, I think McD can legitimately ask Taylor for damages at corporate level.

⬐ 1123581321

Independent Taylor distributors come out and get the service revenue, not Taylor corporate. Taylor corporate makes money from the parts that the distributors use, but new parts aren't required to work with the software. Taylor isn't internally structured to incentivize driving distributor revenue.

Taylor's McDonald's-only machines are different due to special requirements that come from corporate which ostensibly come from franchise meetings. They have zero ability to push a special machine on McDonald's without McDonald's being happy with the details of it. Taylor has to staff full-time people just to keep McDonald's happy; they are demanding.

That's not to say these heat-treatment machines were well engineered or field-tested.

(I've a lot of experience with Taylor and Taylor distributors through a vendor that sells to both.)

⬐ slantyyz

In the Wired article, the Kytch founder alleges that Taylor takes a cut of the distributor's profit from the repairs:

The secret menu reveals a business model that goes beyond a right-to-repair issue, O’Sullivan argues. It represents, as he describes it, nothing short of a milkshake shakedown: Sell franchisees a complicated and fragile machine. Prevent them from figuring out why it constantly breaks. Take a cut of the distributors’ profit from the repairs. [1]

1: https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-...

⬐ 1123581321

The article is wrong about that as far as charging hourly for service. The profit share comes from OEM parts and from selling the original machine wholesale to the distributor. There is some shared sales & marketing expense between corporate and the distributors’ group as well, including marketing the benefits of the service network.

⬐ cush

Imagine spending months 30 minutes milking that explanation?

⬐ nullsmack

Thank you for saving me half an hour.

⬐ Arnavion

Even if someone does want to watch it, do yourself a favor and skip to 09:00.

⬐ frombody

It's actually much more interesting than this person describes.

It turns out this company makes machines for lots of other fast food chains but McDonald's is the only one with this problem, and it seems to be intentional to allow Taylor to milk mcds franchisees.

It gets stranger when you realize that the majority of the problems seem to stem from the manufacturer purposely designing their machines to prevent their customers from operating them properly to inflate the need for maintenance .. even going so far as to silence an invention that allowed the machine to display human readable error messages to allow the operator to know things like if the hopper was too full to run the cleaning cycle.

⬐ AnIdiotOnTheNet

> the machine throws obscure error codes (too viscous, failure to heat to proper temps, etc)

Clearly they just need to adopt the modern computing style of error codes and just display a frowny face emoticon.

⬐ jokoon

Wooow, I would never have thought the issue would be software. So ironic. As a developer I just feel bad, it's like I'm working for the industry that is part of the problem.

Crazy to imagine that another simple non-software issue might have not been such a problem and would have been easily fixed.

I hope that one day, engineers will understand that the less electronics/software there is in a machine, the better it is. This trend should begin any time now.

⬐ throw0101a

> Wooow, I would never have thought the issue would be software.

It's not software, it's business processes which have ordered the software developers into a particular design.

⬐ ddevault

It's both. The software doesn't get written unless the programmers do it. You are accountable to the code you write.

⬐ RcouF1uZ4gsC

> Any attempt to self repair or hire someone else will void the warranty and is disallowed by McDonald’s corporate.

And from McDonalds point of view this makes sense and is ethical. The minute you start letting the franchise people make these repairs, they will inevitably cut corners (and get away with it 99% of the time). However, at McDonalds’ scale that would likely result in dozens of people dying at a minimum and huge brand loss.

⬐ valuearb

No one is dying from repairing a milk shake machine. McDonalds is concerned about poorly mixed shakes hurting their brand, which they regard as nearly as bad.

⬐ RcouF1uZ4gsC

No one is dying from actually repairing a machine. However, the soft-serve mix is very conducive to bacterial growth. People messing with the sterilization or the self-checks for sterilization could easily result in bacterial food borne illness which can be deadly.

⬐ imtringued

>People messing with the sterilization or the self-checks for sterilization could easily result in bacterial food borne illness which can be deadly.

Yes, it's deadly, this is exactly the reason why we should make sure that McDonalds staff can properly operate their icecream machines by making the machine as easy to use as possible. If you have untrained staff that keep running the machine out of specs because the machine is cryptic and user hostile to them then operator errors could slip past the machine self checks because machines aren't perfectly reliable.

By instructing McDonalds franchises how to properly operate their machines and by updating the UI of the machines to properly warn of dangerous operating conditions the franchises can achieve greater safety for McDonalds customers.

As it is right now, McDonalds is actively endangering its customers with these machines.

⬐ randompwd

> As it is right now, McDonalds is actively endangering its customers with these machines.

I would say it is quite clearly the opposite. Anything which could introduce safety risks to a customer necessitates a visit from a trained service technician to investigate.

⬐ KMag

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listeria is much more common in unpasteurized milk, but can also contaminate pasteurized milk. Infection in humans has roughly a 20% case fatality rate.

Listeriosis is rare, but if every McDonalds were serving spoiled dairy products, a one-in-a-million chance results in several deaths.

⬐ frombody

It seems that the majority of the time the hopper is too full to run the cleaning cycle.

The disconnect is that Taylor is making more money hiding this information from franchise owners in order to inflate their services.

The repair is nothing more than operating the machine properly, but the users aren't given any information to diagnose problems.

⬐ Grustaf

The real question is why McDonalds would go along with this. Presumably they have the leverage, why would they be incentivised to let even a cent of franchisee money going to another company if they can help it?

They want their franchisees to have as much money as possible, that's what benefits them.

⬐ ChrisRR

Mcdonalds don't make their money from food, they make it from real estate. A broken ice cream machine meme probably does next to nothing to their revenue.

⬐ seriousquestion

If that's the case, why do they bother selling food?

⬐ Grustaf

I'm familiar with their business model, but obviously McDonalds will always want to a) protect their brand and b) optimise the earnings of franchisees, since that is where THEY get their revenues.

His argument is that "big businesses protect each other", but that obviously doesn't make sense unless McDonalds owns Taylors.

⬐ mrob

Because losing 14% of ice cream sales beats getting sued for poisoning people and losing their reputation for good food safety. If you can't trust McDonalds to be a safe choice, why would you go there at all?

⬐ Grustaf

Did you watch the film? The idea is that McDonalds are knowingly letting another company overcharge their franchisees, it's not about safety. Supposedly other fast food chains use the same machines without these problems.

⬐ blagie

I agree about the first part, but I'm not sure about the argument about other franchises.

The employees at most McD's are in a different class than most other franchises. This isn't universal, of course, but for the most part, McD's hires from the very bottom end. This isn't bad -- I see people with Down's, strong autism, and similar working at McDs, happily, and those folks need jobs. To do that, you want equipment which is a bit more fail-safe.

Otherwise, we'd have safety issues at McD's every week, and they're exceptionally uncommon. That's because of a robust process. Ice cream machines with more fail-safes at McD's make sense to me.

The really incriminating part of the video comes at the very end, where they locked out Kisch.

⬐ curryst

Someone above posted a Wired article you should check out. Basically, McDonald's uses the same machine to make both ice cream cones and milkshakes, meaning it has 2 hoppers. In addition, it uses a pump instead of gravity, which allows them to serve more ice cream cones per minute but makes it vastly more complicated.

I can see how McDonald's would make a strategic choice to lower their time to serve a customer in exchange for a machine that is broken part of the time. They actually track and chastise workers based on taking more than some absurdly short amount of time to serve a customer. It seems like a corporate strategy for them, and this is in line with that.

⬐ frankfrankfrank

You clearly did not even watch the first 5 minutes of the video lol

All other fast food companies who use the same machines don't have that problem.

⬐ nickik

Why don't they have a service contract so the cost of so many errors burns this 'Taylor' company?

⬐ ianai

There’s no fixing operator error.

⬐ addicted

It’s not operator error. As the video repeatedly points out, the same machines, by the same vendor, installed in other fast food restaurants (Wendy’s, etc), do not face similar breakdowns.

It’s clearly a McDonald’s Corporate sanctioned plan.

⬐ martyvis

The video actually said that the Taylor machines at McDonald's were exclusive to them - the other franchises use a different model. (I'd wager the others are less automagic)

⬐ parineum

It seems clear to me that McDonald's is bad at training their workers to use the machine that other fast food restaurants don't have trouble with.

⬐ Black101

Makes you wonder what other shit like this McD has going on...

⬐ curryst

McDonald's uses unique machines that have two hoppers so they can serve both milkshakes and ice cream. More parts, more complexity. They also use a pump instead of gravity, so they can serve customers more quickly. That pump is probably what necessitates all these complicated moving parts, and makes it so much more prone to failure.

⬐ imtringued

If you build machines that operators keep breaking then your machine is crap and you deserve to go out of business.

⬐ MarkMc

I'm sure that if McDonald's paid Taylor a bonus for 99.99% uptime then at least half of 'operator errors' would disappear.

⬐ CyberDildonics

This is the opposite of operator error. Systemic problems require systemic solutions. If you have thousands of machines out there with reputations for always being broken, the problem is your machines.

⬐ vkou

The franchise model has the costs borne by franchise operators, but the contracts are signed by corporate.

It's possible that someone at corporate is getting kickbacks.

⬐ jay_kyburz

Thanks, This video is the most long winded, slowest, roundabout way to say what you said in I paragraph.

⬐ unixhero

Hey! Sounds like big blue and demonic big red!

⬐ Black101

You forgot an important part, the one about Kytch... and it's about 1/4th of the video.

⬐ wronglebowski

As someone who worked in stores for years, this isn’t entirely accurate. The machine isn’t just being an asshole to drive up service calls.

The machines are filled with a dairy product which makes the “ice cream”. This is boiled nightly to keep the mixture free of bacteria. If the nightly heat cycle fails to complete for one of a dozen reasons the machine locks out. Those unaware of the process usually end up calling for service even if it’s a operations error(not enough product to boil successfully)

Every two weeks the machine must be torn down and cleaned. It’s slightly complex but all well documented. Once the 14 day marker has been passed the machine is inoperable. It must be cleaned for food safety reasons. If your “cleaner” is out or you just have poor operations you’ll end up placing service calls out of confusion.

If the heat phase fails or the 14 day timer has expired the machine "locks out" and becomes inoperable. This is where the vast majority of service calls come from.

I never had an issue with a machine that was less than 20 years old. Taylor makes good equipments you just need the most basic level of operations proficiency.

⬐ throwawayboise

I worked at McDonald's in the 1980s. The machines weren't so fancy then. They didn't have a self-santizing heat cycle. We broke them down and cleaned and sanitized them every night after close. The next morning they were put back together and turned on. Once a week we discarded any remaining dairy product to break the cycle of any bacteria that might be present. Same with the milkshake machines.

In several years of working there I cannot recall any breakdowns of these machines.

⬐ joezydeco

Same here. But I also recall that when the health department would do spot checks of bacteria and coliform counts on the machines, they were always in or near the danger zone.

All you need is one kid that didn't wipe their ass correctly before assembling the beaters and you've got a health problem in the making. The self-sterilizing machines were designed to prevent this.

⬐ cptskippy

I worked at McDonald's for 6 months in the late 90s and it was the same process. I actually quit because someone started the machine breakdown early, incorrectly, and without telling anyone because they wanted to leave at close.

⬐ hellbannedguy

I worked at the concessions stand at Muir Woods in the early 90's. Every night the machine was emptied, and the removable parts were put in the dishwasher.

Every morning the goo was put back in, and there was never a complaint, or a down day. I rang up a lot of $1.00 Softies.

(Loved my coworkers. Still think about them all the time. The greatest group of people I had ever met. Hated the private sector corporation who did everything they could to lower the percent they had to give back to the government.)

⬐ evil-olive

> Every two weeks the machine must be torn down and cleaned. It’s slightly complex but all well documented. Once the 14 day marker has been passed the machine is inoperable. It must be cleaned for food safety reasons. If your “cleaner” is out or you just have poor operations you’ll end up placing service calls out of confusion.

This seems entirely reasonable to me. I've heard horror stories about bacteria & mold growth in commercial ice machines from infrequent cleanings.

But...how high is the barrier to entry to becoming a "certified" ice cream machine cleaner? How much training is required, how much does it cost, etc?

In other words:

> Once the 14 day marker has been passed the machine is inoperable.

Who has "admin rights" to reset this "most recently cleaned" timestamp?

Is there any reason why I, if I'm a McDonald's manager, couldn't take the training myself, and be the person who does the every-two-weeks maintenance?

⬐ parineum

> Is there any reason why I, if I'm a McDonald's manager, couldn't take the training myself, and be the person who does the every-two-weeks maintenance?

I'd go out on a limb and say that it's McDonalds corporate that doesn't trust the franchise owner with the machine, not the manufacturer trying to swindle franchise owners.

⬐ evil-olive

Sure. But replace "franchise owner" with "shift manager" or whatever other job title you want.

The question remains - what's the barrier to entry to becoming "certified" as an ice cream machine cleaner?

Is it legitimately a difficult cleaning process that requires an extremely specialized skill-set that only the High Priests of Ice Cream Machinery are able to perform?

Or, as seems likely to me, cleaning the machine is relatively simple, but the ability to reset the "time since last cleaning" setting may be artificially restricted?

If I were the manufacturer of these Taylor ice cream machines, setting them up with a "one of our certified technicians needs to touch them at least once every 14 days, or they stop working" seems like an excellent way to seek rent / generate passive income.

⬐ parineum

I think the barrier of entry isn't training, it's trust. McDonalds corporate signed a contract with Taylor with the caveat that only Taylor maintain the machines because they trust Taylor to do it correctly and, because the contract with McDonald's is probably enormous, Taylor has a lot of incentive to make sure nobody gets listeria from McDonalds.

It's "artificially restricted" in the same way that I could give anyone a key to my house (duplication is trivial) very easily but I don't.

⬐ sokoloff

That’s an unusual usage of the phrase passive income if a tech has to go out and lay hands on the machine.

⬐ wronglebowski

As I've tried to express elsewhere, it's really not difficult. Anyone can do it given a few hours training.

Suggesting the franchise owner do it or even the store manager is far off from how these operations work in my experience.

Franchisees (Owners) have so much to do. They never "have" to work a single shift after they complete onboarding. While this can take around 9-12 months once most are done they never look back. Owners are tasked with running and growing the business, focusing on their local community and the people element. Any equipment work is not considered a good use of their time.

⬐ Broken_Hippo

It has been 20 years, and surely the machines have changed. But it wasn't difficult to learn to tear the machine down. Considering this is a company that often has picture instructions for employees and tends to make things easy to understand, I can't imagine it has gotten more difficult. The store I worked at did this every night after running disinfectant through the machine: The parts we took off were cleaned every night. There were trays to keep the parts organized. These were organized in a way that made them easy to grab for proper assembly in the morning. Occasionally the morning staff had some problems, but those were usually fixed in time for there to be ice cream at lunch.

In other words: Store employees can do all of the basic stuff necessary with the machine.

Again, though, the machines have likely changed (Though they probably work similarly). And if the current machines need cleaned and sanitized less often, employees probably don't do it as often. I'm gonna guess instructions can fix this, though.

⬐ wronglebowski

There’s no real certification. Usually you’d watch the training materials, then shadow someone once, then do it live with someone who trained watching. It’s not hard you just need to have done it a few times.

There’s no admin reset or anything like that. There is a maintenance menu and an admin menu but even in the higher level “secret” menus changing this was never an option. I’ve seen people try and short the main board with a screwdriver to get it to “reset” the date.

It’s a very intelligent machine and when it’s cleaned you need to go through the cleaning “process” in the menu. Wash, rinse, sanitize etc. it monitors the process with various sensors and it being flushed so many times. Faking it isn’t an option, I’ve seen too many people try.

⬐ mjrpes

The video says the Taylor machines at other fast food places (Burger King, Wendy's) rarely break down, or at least much less than McDonald's. So you're saying this is untrue? If not, why the discrepancy?

⬐ arbitrage

mcdonald's has much higher customer volume, and possibly much more intense burst traffic ... lunch & breakfast, for example.

the higher frequency of machine breakdown probably should first be linked to frequency of use, rather than trying to find something nefarious going on.

⬐ gruez

the other machines don't self-sanitize?

⬐ slantyyz

The Wired article explains this more clearly than the video. These machines do more than the ones at the other places.

"But what makes the machine special is that it has two hoppers and two barrels, each working independently with precise settings, to produce both milkshakes and soft serve simultaneously."[1]

1: https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-...

⬐ dsr_

Sounds like having two machines would cost them some space and increase the reliability.

Do the franchise owners want that increased cost and reliability?

⬐ dncornholio

If it's mostly operator errors, than why not make the information clear to the operators on what the error actually is? Your post only confirms how bad Taylor machines at McDonalds are. It looks they are deliberately making the machines obscure to the operators

⬐ monkey_monkey

Yes, this seems to be exactly what they're doing – I posted a link on another thread to a Wired article that sheds some light on why these machines break down, and how McDonalds have waged legal war on a startup trying to bring some transparency to the internal operations of the Taylor machine.

Here it is again, to save searching through the comments: https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-...

[edited to add link]

⬐ Wowfunhappy

As a note, a lot of that wired piece is also in the video, including the startup. :)

⬐ wronglebowski

Seems to be paywalled? Even if this was the best idea executed at the highest level it wouldn't matter. This is all politics.

Any time the franchisees try and circumvent the system of corporate it brings massive amounts of force to the table. Mcdonald's 100% intolerant of any kind of franchisee revolt or action against their direction. It's got nothing to do with the mission and everything to do with it being "outside the system".

⬐ zinok

This doesn't appear to contradict the GP at all.

You have pointed out that when the machine locks out, there is an actual reason behind it. I don't think anyone claimed that it's simply triggered by an RNG or a timer.

However, why are the machines this opaque and difficult to keep running? I think the point has been clearly made, that an incentive structure optimises for low reliability. Nothing you said contradicts this.

⬐ h0l0cube

> worked in stores for years

Specifically McDonalds? The video states these problem aren't experienced at the same magnitude at other franchises, and alleges that McDonalds franchisees are locked into purchasing a downgraded model with indecipherable error messages.

⬐ grecy

Do you have any explanation why this is purely a McDonald's problem, and other fast food places who use essentially the same ice cream maker have much, much less down time?

⬐ arbitrage

mcdonald's has more customers.

⬐ mrweasel

That would explain why the ice cream machines a never broken at some location, but frequently at others. It depends on how the franchise is managed and run.

⬐ Taniwha

'boiled' is AFAIK a misnomer - I believe it is pasteurised ... at 151F - not actual boiling

⬐ seanmcdirmid

I was crew for a few years in the early to mid 90s. Back then, the machine simply needed to be cleaned nightly (water cycled through, all the gaskets cleaned and relubed). Not hard, but definitely required some training and most weren’t taught. It was rarely broken but we often started cleaning early so....

I guess it’s just way different now.

⬐ whydoineedthis

It's a restaurant - 99% of the machinery in there has to operate within certain boundaries for food safety. Somehow every other machine manages to be fine, execpt this one that has a 15% failure rate.

Also, other restaurants service dairy - also with a much less than 15% failure rate.

There are simple solutions for everything you just said. Taylor makes garbage equipment and is ripping off franchise owners. McDonalds corporate likely owns stock in the company and uses it as a side hustle of revenue from franchise owners.

⬐ miked85

Do you have any insight into why the machines are broken so often then?

⬐ wronglebowski

They aren't "broken". It's operations failures. The basic fact of

1. Keeping the machine full of the right amount of product to complete it's nightly heat cycle

2. Have someone trained to fully clean the machine every 14 days

Is a burden too great for many franchisees to bear. The turnover is too high and investment in people too low to keep them operational. Nothing about them is "broken"

⬐ h0l0cube

It seems like you didn't bother to watch the video, but used the OP synopsis as an accurate distillation of the investigation... which it isn't. McDonalds (purportedly) have to use an inferior machine. This machine is used by many other franchises, including Wendy's, but the UX has been specifically throttled in the McDonalds mandated model such that the error messages are opaque. So much so, that when a newer version was rolled out, one of the techs posted a video wondering if anyone else noticed the error messages were getting worse (and the video was promptly taken down). Thus training becomes much more difficult when error messages are in Eldritch screeches instead of plain English, like every other model.

I'm not sure if you've worked at McDonalds (you've never specifically stated in any comment) and you've never specified when. Is it possible things are different now to when (or whichever franchise) you worked?

⬐ asdff

Why are they using such a complicated ice cream machine? I worked in food service in the 2010s and ours was pretty simple. One switch at the back for on and off and that was it. It took one person like 10 minutes to break it down and have it cleaned at the end of the night. The hardest part was wiping the exterior down. You basically just put a bucket underneath, ran the ice cream out, then ran hot water through it (forgot if we used some sort of sanitizer here), and hand washed a couple pieces. Other commercial icecream machines I've seen work like this. This mcdonalds machine is blowing my mind. I wonder why they opted not to use the bog standard ice cream machine every other fast food place uses.

⬐ Cederfjard

It sounds like the idea is to only have to spend time manually cleaning it every fortnight instead of daily, and perhaps to limit waste of the product? But perhaps that gets offset by the fact that the increased complexity seems to make it so difficult to operate that it leads to constant interruptions and expensive service calls.

⬐ asdff

It just seems like some vendor got the contract before a cost benefit analysis could be done. I mean 15 minutes out of a shift worker's time costs mcDonalds maybe $5. $5 for a day of ice cream sales seems like a cheap service contract to me.

⬐ ogurechny

Most likely, the real answer was given straight away: a worker from other company says they clean their machines daily. I'd expect that in common language that means they disassemble and wash them the old way without using any automatic maintenance programs. But then you wouldn't have a vaguely sensational video on a pop cultural topic with a million of views.

I guess it's a typical big company nonsense. Someone probably had an idea that daily cleaning is too time-consuming and expensive, and the task to solve that problem was introduced. Some lab made tests, and defined The Only True Way of keeping the product edible. (Side note: re-boiling a mix of fats and sugars each day for two weeks? Who would eat the result of that? Who thought it was a reliable idea?) The cleaning period could only be stretched to the maximum, for obvious business reasons. That resulted in tiny error margins (which maker can't voluntary change without spending money on new research). So presentations on clear financial gains were made, and the new option was proudly implemented. Some employee has probably been keeping eye on changes in cream composition, regulations, and related research, and issuing new checks for the machines. However, in reality this doesn't work that well (even indifferent part-time workers who don't give a damn after a shift are part of reality you can't simply rule out). But the goal of reverting or altering the process is not really important to McDonalds, as making it work is now pain in the store owner's ass.

You have probably noticed similar cases in computing, when some high-tech solution are introduced, and their gains are shared with lots of pathos, but the resulting system looks way too complex and unstable even from a distance.

⬐ slantyyz

The video is not a complete story.

I suggest you read the Wired article that came out a few days ago, as it addresses a lot of the questions being asked here.

https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-...

It should be worth noting that the story in this video and the Wired article appears to have been initiated by the creators of the Kytch.

⬐ LorenPechtel

And note that the very existence of the Kytch says there's a big problem with the UI of the machines.

⬐ sverhagen

Poor UI is also a bug. And why do other fast food chains not have this problem then? I appreciate that McDonalds tries to safe money on training of new staff, but I just can't imagine that they do so much of a worse job at it than the competition.

Did you see the video?

⬐ nathanvanfleet

I guess you didn't read the article or watch the video.

⬐ amelius

Doesn't most of this apply to milkshakes as well?

⬐ kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj

If the machine is made for min wage employees and 14% of them are constantly broken, the machine is a failure

⬐ noahtallen

> If the nightly heat cycle fails to complete for one of a dozen reasons the machine locks out. Those unaware of the process usually end up calling for service even if it’s a operations error(not enough product to boil successfully)

This example is covered in the video. ;) The thing is, at least according to the reporting, even these operations errors are not clearly defined by the messages given by the machine. So, according to franchisees they talked to, all roads lead to the service technician, even if the problem doesn’t need one. That obviously leads to more downtime.

It’s part of the problem because Taylor is incentivized to keep people calling in technicians, which means they deliberately update the machines with error codes even more difficult to understand. (Examples covered in the video too)

Additionally, the video covers that many other chains, such as Wendy’s, use machines from Taylor with no problems. Supposedly, this is something specifically wrong with the model given to McDonald’s, because franchises don’t have a choice to use other models.

When the video came out, about 14% of machines in the US were “broken”, which is pretty terrible for an industry application regardless of the cause!

⬐ Spooky23

The reporting is based on conversations with franchisees, who are a part of the equation here too.

McDonalds franchisees are always in a tug of war with the company over various issues, especially loss leader products like ice cream and the dollar menu. Thus, it mysteriously “breaks”.

In some markets, a cone is $0.29 — it’s a money loser that the franchisee doesn’t like and probably doesn’t drive traffic in many locations.

I’d look at the human element before declaring a major manufacturer of a simple product incompetent. They wouldn’t be consistently failing for their biggest customer over many years.

⬐ hnbad

This is funny to me as the milkshakes are relatively expensive here in Germany yet the machines in some locations still seem to be perpetually broken. I'm not sure if the milkshake and ice cream machines are the same thing but if they're not I guess some franchisees just don't want to deal with the hassle of keeping them operable regardless of whether they're loss leaders or not.

⬐ rdedev

This seems to be an issue with only McD. According to the video other vendors like Wendy's don't have this problem.

Remember that McD the company has nothing to loose from failing ice cream machines. That loss is taken by the franchise owners

⬐ Spooky23

Not necessarily. McDonalds owns many restaurants themselves as well.

⬐ gruez

>According to the video other vendors like Wendy's don't have this problem.

because their machines don't self-sanitize.

⬐ 60secs

The video covers this. All franchises for all companies typically do this overnight.

⬐ gruez

They all have to be cleaned nightly, but they're not all self-sanitizing. The woman at the wendy's drive-through said they "wash" the machines nightly, which suggests they take it a part and wash it rather than running a self-sanitizing cycle.

⬐ jbm

Out of curiosity, is there a difference, work load aside, in the end result of the two processes?

⬐ raverbashing

> It’s part of the problem because Taylor is incentivized to keep people calling in technicians, which means they deliberately update the machines with error codes even more difficult to understand. (Examples covered in the video too)

I do believe this happens but I'm also "skeptical" of the ability of a high attrition place with underqualified workers working under pressure to get themselves up to date in maintenance practices and manuals.

Edit: and yes, the franchisees are the ones who get the short stick. Franchises are thorny and usually not in the favour of the franchisee.

⬐ friend-monoid

I can imagine that it’s hard to keep up to date with maintenance practices and manuals when the manuals are explicitly unavailable, as is the case for McDonalds.

⬐ bluGill

This isn't a high attrition work place!

Sure in general McDonald's is. However there are always a few people who have been around for years who know a lot more than the average worker. They are in management or maintenance. They have more training, and better wages. (not to be confused with the person who has been there forever but never advanced to such a position)

⬐ matthewdgreen

It is very common for engineers to hypothesize (often with limited evidence) that the problem is “the users” rather than the technology and its support infrastructure. I think this can be true, but two points:

1. The high-attrition low-skill workforce at fast food restaurants is a fact of the industry. (I am not endorsing it either.) So if a solution is failing widely when faced with the reality of its users, then the system is flawed not the users.

Of course, you might argue that it’s impossible to build a system that works with this type of users, which leads to:

2. The video argues that failure rates at competing fast food restaurants are vastly lower. While I can’t verify this myself, if we assume it’s true then it’s strong evidence that the problem here is unique to McDonalds and therefore doesn’t represent some systematic impossibility.

I don’t care much about ice cream machines, but in the broader technological sense I dislike “users are the problem” arguments. The whole point of tech is to make users’ lives easier. When other people are doing that and you’re not, there is a problem.

⬐ sumtechguy

There is another bit in the vid I watched there was a dongle they could buy for awhile. It was telling them exactly what they did wrong and how to fix it. Basically taking the obscure error code and turning it into human with pictures. The franchise dudes were extremely excited for it.

That lends a decent amount of credence to a 'process' issue. If that many people are messing it up. Then something is wrong either in the physical or training realm or both. I usually have to have this conversation every few years when someone says 'oh we will just train the users'. Then I go 'dude I know how this should work and I am totally lost, do you expect someone who does not give much of a crap about it to pick it up?'.

One thing the vid misses though is the lockout rate could be coming from mcdonalds itself in a different way. They do not want to end up on the wrong side of a lawsuit and bad publicity. Remember the lady who spilt coffee on herself, and got 2nd/3rd degree burns. That cost them a lot of time, money and bad press. So they may have set the machines to be oversensitive.

⬐ raverbashing

I agree with you, and I was not blaming the users/the workforce. As you said it is a fact of the industry.

McD is known for making their processes simple and repeatable and it seems the machine is failing that paradigm.

(And oh well, my comment was speculative and made before I saw the video, the users really can't do much when the company hides information from them - though we don't know exactly how the procedures are laid down in the manual and how they can be improved. it's one thing if the manual says "fill this up and press the button" another if it says "fill this up to this line and check A, B and C before pressing the button")

⬐ slantyyz

> McD is known for making their processes simple and repeatable and it seems the machine is failing that paradigm.

Which, coincidentally, is based on Frederick Taylor's theory of Scientific Management. Pretty sure Frederick Taylor and the Taylor making the ice cream machines aren't connected in any way though.

⬐ wronglebowski

While I understand this viewpoint and I don't necessarily disagree with it, this one piece of equipment is unique and that's why I think it is so often "broken".

No other piece of equipment has the mix of complexity and niche impact on the restaurant. Even the brand new at the time espresso machines are mostly self cleaning. There's no other object that requires this(minor IMO) skill level to operate. So it's just left undone. It's widely regarded that while it's a high profit machine most of the time you can run a highly successful business without it.

⬐ saalweachter

Anecdotally, my local McDonald's never has trouble with their milkshake machine-- it's my local Burger King that frequently does.

So a franchisee-specific training problem would make a lot of sense.

⬐ VLM

My sister worked there as a kid and labor on demand had certain chaotic results.

To give an IT analogy if an IT department staffed based on corporate's seemingly random rolls of the dice it could be painful to make sure weekly backups get done weekly, for example. Especially if the only feedback was when the restore process occasionally broke down. Whereas if some dude is always at work every Friday morning at 8am he can get in the habit of being the guy who always runs the backups. Also imagine if the only way to run backups was to flip the power switch for a half hour and hope you know how to complete the backup in less than a half hour... nobody wants to be that guy who shut off the DB server even if maint is required...

⬐ ethbr0

On the other hand... if you're swapping people in and out of a roll, it forces you to have an SOP and training.

If it's the same person for 5+ years, I can guarantee there's nothing accurate written down (even in regulated industries).

Given the two problems, I've seen more dumpster fires as a result of the latter than the former.

⬐ sct202

Wendy's has 2 soft serves (vanilla and chocolate). McDonalds has like 8 ice cream/shake drinks, so it shouldn't be a surprise that McDonalds would have a more expensive and complicated machine to get 4x as many varieties.

⬐ ping_pong

Are you mansplaining about how the ice cream machine works after watching a video, to someone who actually used and maintained the ice cream machine?

⬐ zizee

Can we please keep gender warfare off HN? (or at least when it has nothing to do with the story/discussion)

⬐ C19is20

Isn't "mansplaining" nowadays so far gone that, as a word, it has become gender-neutral and is used instead of "condescending".

⬐ bumblelad

No. It's literally got the word 'man' in it. Nothing gender neutral about that. Please stop and don't encourage this kind of behavior.

⬐ ranguna

I'd say: no.

⬐ gruez

I literally never heard of it used in a women-explaining context.

⬐ arbitrage

I use "womansplaining" or "ladysplaining" when i'm talking with other women, sometimes.

⬐ StavrosK

The sentence would have worked just as well with "being condescending" in place of "mansplaining". To me, mansplaining has clear gender overtones.

⬐ wronglebowski

I always had access to a Taylor manual and a Taylor technician via phone at no cost. Even with machines that were far out of warranty. Troubleshooting was never an issue for me.

I never worked anywhere else with a Taylor machine. Perhaps other companies have better deals or easier to use equipment. I would like to know if Wendy's and others machines operate using the same food safety standards.

⬐ praptak

Was it at McDonald's? The article specifically says that it's McDonald's machines that require (edit:excessive) maintenance and not the ones used by other companies.

⬐ numpad0

From this comment tree I wonder if the problem is some evil company being greedy, or is it a lack of incentives in McD and franchise owner to update SOP to properly train and assign a worker to properly maintain the machine to keep the machine running to offer ice creams consistently.

Why do they keep an item on the menu if they are not being able to make it reliably?

⬐ wronglebowski

It's a minor but important part of the profitability picture. While this is much less true today, one of the core concepts was always that McDonald's could execute things at scale no one else could.

Now there's a ton of competition and specialty shops, but in the past this wasn't always the case. A small town might only have one other location where you can get "fresh" ice cream. If you can execute on this machine properly and you have the market to support it they can be huge profit makers.

⬐ megameter

"Food safety standards" would not result in downtime rising from <1% to over 10%.

⬐ syshum

>>>I always had access to a Taylor manual

You expect people to RTFM.... come one this is 2021 no one reads manuals any more...

//wish that as sarcasm but the number of times I have seen a solution to a problem that plagued people for weeks be found clearly laid out in the manual for a given product is far to high

⬐ sverhagen

> I always had access to a Taylor manual and a Taylor technician via phone at no cost.

Was that technician for free? Or did your franchise owner pay for it, out of (your) sight? The claim isn't that they do a poor job with technicians, just that they are perversely incentivized to profit from it.

The video also explains there was a (very limited) owner manual, while all the secrets were in the service manual. Which of those did you have access to?

I find it potentially a bit of a low blow to question Wendy's and others' food safety standards.

Did you see the video?

⬐ setr

Payment type would also matter. If it’s a flat monthly fee then they’re incentivized to avoid service calls. I imagine franchises and Taylor itself would also vastly prefer such a scheme, as it would reduce cost variation.

⬐ sverhagen

I understand that companies like Taylor benefit from income streams being predictable. But as per the video it seems that their revenue model was predicated on having as many incidents as possible, each billed separately.

⬐ carlmr

If you have many incidents, they become statistically predictable again.

⬐ wronglebowski

I had access to both. We did not pay for any of it. In fact the Taylor facility in our local market offered free “training” days once a year specifically for McDonald’s employees.

McDonald’s is much more political than people think. The franchise I worked for was very well connected and well represented. It’s possible that this access was something they pushed for or is not well known.

⬐ Tibbes

It's clear what the incentive is for Taylor (the ice cream machine maker), but I wonder what the incentive is for McDonalds.

There must be some cash-flow from Taylor to McDonalds, but something as simple as "pay McDonalds $X million to specify Taylor machines in their franchise contracts" seems like a kickback.

Maybe the key is that the video shows that this particular machine is "by Taylor and McDonalds" (the McDonalds logo is on the instruction manuals). Perhaps McDonalds therefore get royalties or something similar.

⬐ etempleton

Never assume malice when simple incompetence is likely.

I have read—somewhere I can’t remember—horror stories of how badly run the corporate owned McDonalds are vs the franchise owned locations. Simple procedures like cleaning out the soda machines on a regular basis are never completed or even known that they should be completed by staff or management leading to mold build up.

In a corporation as successful and large as McDonalds changing anything even if it is seemingly a logical and good idea is more dangerous than doing absolutely nothing. Being a friendly and agreeable employee will be better for career growth than being a hard-driving and demanding employee.

Being the employee that advocates changing vendors away from a long-time proven vendor is a great way to annoy and create headaches for your boss.

⬐ montroser

In case you don't want to watch 30 mins: Franchisees are bound by their agreement to purchase and operate a very specific buggy model of ice cream machine, the manufacturer of which makes much profit from their exclusive service contract, and so has no incentive to fix.

This is a youtube video on the same topic. Inventor of this device tipped this youtuber off, and so the youtuber looks to confirm the reasoning behind the device. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4 Long story short, McDonalds created a monopoly for the icecream machine company, and then they abused it. This device comes into play, then McDonalds tells Franchisees not to use it.

⬐ niij

To save everyone the click, yes the "Youtuber" == Johnny Harris

⬐ airhead969

McDonald's franchise owners should file a class-action lawsuit against Taylor for purposefully engineering it to fail.