Posted by LorenDB 10/25/2024
Not all McDonalds use the Taylor machines. Some use machines from other manufacturers such as Carpigiani [2]
Taylor’s the largest manufacturer of commercial ice cream making equipment in the US. Franchisees also have the option of using Carpigiani machines, but they’re Italian so parts and service are not as easy to come by. And all ice cream machines are known for being easy to break, especially if used by poorly trained teenagers.
This also makes no sense, if McDonald’s wanted to make more off the franchisees from ice cream, surely they’d rather do it by having the machines work (so they can sell product). They sell the mix that goes in the machine to the franchisees. It would be idiotic to try to gouge them by making the machine crappy rather than just charging them more for the mix and using a good machine. Then they wouldn’t need to employ these imaginary service techs and the franchisees would be happier with the situation.
Occam's Razor suggests that the most likely explanation is that the McDonald's Corporation is deliberately setting their franchisees up to fail by continuing to sign contracts with Taylor. Which I agree makes no sense.
Occam’s razor might suggest that their competitors use a different machine entirely (I really don’t know but Wikipedia’s page on Taylor only mentions McDonald’s).
McDonald’s corporate making a bad decision about a machine seems a whole lot simpler than some convoluted conspiracy theory, doesn’t it?
That excuse wears thin after 10+ years.
I’m sure they’ve done the math somewhere, and possibly determined this is more of a meme than an IRL business liability
> The ruling doesn’t change the underlying statute making it illegal to share or sell tools that bypass software locks.
I think this also includes sharing code.
> Integral to the Court’s decision was the conclusion that Section 1201’s ban on circumvention of access restrictions is a regulation of “conduct” rather than “speech.”
- Are the machines listed as "broken" on https://mcbroken.com/ actually broken? Or is that more of a meme, with many just undergoing routine cleaning, etc.?
- Why does this seemingly happen only in US? In European McDonald's it's pretty much unheard of.
- Why would McDonald's Corp. be happy with the status quo? Is it some kind of tactic to squeeze more revenue from the franchises? If so, why not address it in the franchise agreement and just let restaurants sell more ice cream?
A lot of people like to treat this as a conspiracy, but I think it's much more likely it's the corporate people being paranoid about local franchisees overriding the machines, and that leading to listeria outbreaks happening in the only non-sealed food item that isn't heated to safe temperatures shortly before it's handed off to customers.
I don't know about the contrast with Europe, but it might just be geographical size causing time delays for individual techs showing up. McDonald's franchisees are everywhere, and the U.S. is gigantic.
The Surprising Reasons Soft-Serve Ice Cream Can Be Dangerous To Eat
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/surprising-reasons-soft-serv...
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7149927
From 2005:
More than 120 people were sickened after eating ice cream at their local McDonald's. The health department says the restaurant's dairy mixture somehow was contaminated with staphylococcus, and a mechanical malfunction in the soft serve machine allowed the bacteria to grow. So many people became so ill, so quickly, the director of the local emergency room told me he at first thought there was some kind of bioterrorism incident in the town.... Nancy Smith says she had taken her grandchildren for an outing, and stopped at McDonald's to buy them a treat. Her grandson Darien had a milkshake, and she says he was violently ill an hour later. He became limp and listless, Smith says, and they rushed him to the hospital, scared to death. Then she got sick. She says she had just three sips of Darien's shake, but it was enough to make her very ill. She told us she was vomiting so violently, she thought she was going to have a heart attack. She's now suing McDonald's, as are many of the other people who got sick in that incident.
I just figure margins must be low on their ice-creams, so when it's broken they sell more fountain drinks and make more money than they would if the ice-cream machine was fixed.
Because only in the US, employees fill it up above max line.
I have a pretty negative view of politics, too, but it doesn't mean we can't be happy when something good happens – no matter how small. The government doesn't pay well, and while we know the names of a dozen or so shitty self-serving jerks in Congress, most people in the government are genuine people doing it to help others.