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mcdonalds gets sued for $900 million by a company that tried to fix their broken ice cream machines. (long post warning)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/broken-ice-cream-machines-lead-to-dollar900-million-lawsuit-against-mcdonalds/ar-AAUCOHV?ocid=uxbndlbing

a small company of 2 people created a device called "Kytch," to help easily fix the Mcdonalds ice cream machines that are always broken. it can also predict when a malfunction could happen.

every mcdonalds franchise owner loved this new product because of all the money they saved on repairs. many of them reported spending "thousands of dollars per month in service fees" to the Taylor company in order to fix the ice cream machines.

the Taylor company creates the ice cream machines mcdonalds uses. this company is the only one professionally trained to clean their product because it is so complicated for everyone else to learn. the taylor company says "25% of the company revenue was made on repairs and maintenance." that's a huge amount for just the repairs.

(slightly off topic but still relevant). the Taylor company and Kytch creators worked on a previous device together called frobot. the frobot has the same problem as the ice cream machines: they malfuntion too often. "It became clear to us that there's way more money in broken money machines than machines that actually work" says Kytch co founder Jeremy O'Sullivan.

when mcdonalds discovered Kytch, they told the franchisees to stop using it. McDonald's said in the following statement "After we learned that Kytch's unapproved device was being tested by some of our franchisees, we held a call to better understand what it was and subsequently communicated a potential safety concern to franchisees."

this "safety concern" was bullshit because Taylor decided to reverse engineer a kytch, and use it for themselves. to add insult to injury, McDonald's went so far as to warn other companies, including Coca-Cola and Burger King, not to buy Kytch products. the $900 million lawsuit is an estimate of how much kytch would be worth today if mcdonalds didnt sabotage them.

it makes sense for Taylor to fight so hard for the broken machines since they get paid to repair them. but its a mystery why mcdonalds hates kytch and is siding with Taylor. maybe mcdonalds gets a commission for every repair? nobody knows for sure, but that theory makes sense

this video shows you how complicated and time consuming it is to clean a mcdonald ice cream maker.

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In a non-dramatic sense I hope the clown gets cucked here so that right to repair has even more firm case law to stand on.

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This is the first time I hear about the issue and I'm not a layer or anything, but I already have formed a strong opinion about it which I'm going to share with everyone: I don't think that a third party has a leg to stand on regarding McDonald's ordering its franchisees to buy services from a particular company even if they were blatantly getting kickbacks from it. It's not about right to repair, if McDonald's requires that Ronald McDonald's balls should be painted in a particular shade of turquoise produced by a particular Licensed Partner, there's nothing any other paint maker can do about it.

On the other hand the franchisees themselves could probably sue McDonalds for imposing additional costs not specified in the contract, if they weren't in fact specified in the contract, which they probably weren't.

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If McDonald has a contract with Licensed Paint Company, then the franchise is basically a pyramid scheme at that point.

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It entirely depends on whether the franchisees were given a fair explanation of their responsibilities and their costs. If the costs include buying ridiculously overpriced turquoise paint or whatever, but it's still worth the profits, then I don't see a problem, it's no different from McDonald's telling them that they should only buy the ice cream machines from them in the first place.

Where the suit might grow legs is if there wasn't an explicit clause saying how they are supposed to service those machines and now they found a much cheaper way to do it and suddenly McDonald's is inventing these financially emburdening requirements out of thin air. But again, the harmed parties that should make a class action lawsuit are the franchisees.

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I dont think the case will implicate right to repair, it sounds like its a tort claim for interfering with their business. Idk which tort and Im not going to bother finding the pleadings so I could be wrong

It would probably involve right to repair if the franchisees were coplaintiffs

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Right to repair is in a legal sense a handful of different concepts and legal principles. In this sense, the tort is self-sealing, which has a long case history banning it (classic case: a car company can't sell you a car, and force you to service it only at a business owned/in partnership with them. A modern example of this is how OBDII diagnostic tools and software must be made available to 3rd parties, after about 10 years of proprietary tools coming into the market in the mid-80s).

Right to repair relies on enforcing provisions against self-dealing, and seeks to expand the definition to sneakier tactics, like sealing modular components, software the bricks equipment after maintenance is done, and putting needlessly breakable structures in devices that prevent reassembly.

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Yeah I know all of that but I am saying the article is not clear on what their cause of action is or what relief theyre seeking. The suit is TL;DR because its a Sunday and I aint spending an hour working for free. But theres a link to it in the article so I skimmed out of curiosity and it looks like theyre alleging the following causes of action: deceptive trade practices, negligent interference with business expectancy (idk what this is, we dont have it in leafland under this name), intentional interference with business expectancy (i assume thisis what leafs call intentional interference with economic relations), trade libel, false advertising (x2, different statutes), and tortious interference with contract

They also state conspiracy a few times but not as its own cause of action :marseyshrug:

So yeah it actually probably will come up.

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If McDonalds had working ice cream machines Burgerland would be at least 1% more obese

:#marseychonker:

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You forgot a few zeroes there, champ :marseypatriot:

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If McDonalds had the overseas quality that their foreign McDonald chains have they have domestically, Burgerland would be 5% more obese.

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Foreign where? They are fricking figusting shit heaps here so I cant imagine ut can get worse.

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Korea has better quality and more options.

https://www.mcdonalds.co.kr/eng/menu/list.do

Look at this shit. If Burgerland had these options, Burgeroids would be way more obese. Even just having a double big mac or a bacon big mac in the US alone would kill way more Americans yearly.

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Oh wow so burgers just have like the basic cheeseburgers and big mac? Why do people even go there?

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As a burger I’m convinced everyone who goes to mcdonalds are npc bugmen. Nobody I know ever eats there.

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The only people I know who eat that shit are poors.

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Other than the shrimp and whatever the frick a bulgogi is, this is basically what we have here in Brazil, are you telling me Americans have even less choice? That makes no sense to me.

Actually, I think we have even more shit with a "gourmet" line or whatever.

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Americans have so little options that the occasional reappearance of the McRib is when business spikes for McDonalds.

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I know they're absolutely garbage in bongistan, but mainland europe seems to be fine. For burgerland I guess it depends on the specific franchise?

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Every single Mcdonalds is identical here in burgerland, and every single one is complete garbage

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Meh. Milk and diary products don't have so much fat and sugar usually isn't too excessive in those either because milk is naturally sweet. I don't think ice cream affects burger obesity crisis so much

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the Taylor company creates the ice cream machines mcdonalds uses. this company is the only one professionally trained to clean their product because it is so complicated for everyone else to learn.

Nope, no machine is too complex unless it's completely proprietary nonsense and ice cream machines are basically just giant mixers. I managed a few restaurants for a short period of my life, it's not that it's too hard to learn how to fix it's that they have special codes that allow them to access the software. It's how these companies stay in business, they don't make money off the machines, most of their income is repairing and maintaining them.

Luckily I managed a small chain that wasn't corporate, so we phased out any bullshit products like that. If it couldn't be repaired by any general handyman, we got rid of it. We had a gelato machine that was similar and the closest technician was 90 minutes away, lots of fatties would get mad at us when they couldn't get their gelato for dessert. The fatties rejoiced when we got rid of it and were able to serve gelato full-time

and the majority of the time it wasn't even broken. It just automatically triggers a code after a certain amount of time, they say it's "required scheduled maintenance" but it's basically just a fee for a guy to show up, type in a code and invoice you until he comes back to do the same thing every 2 months. It's a total scam but it's kinda funny McDonalds is in on it

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Wired had an overly lengthy article last April and yeah: corporates gonna corporate. Location owners were happy, Taylor made less money, so the thing has to go. https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-makers-started-cold-war/ (if paywalled, use https://12ft.io/ )

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That cleaning & repair video doesn't look so hard, but probably too hard for mcwagies to figure out

:#marseywagie:

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yeah its probably not too difficult, but it takes a lot of time and there are many different parts

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Thank god for the ice cream machines breaking down, that's probably the only time they get cleaned

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this is such a stupid lawsuit, if anything, kytch is guilt of piracy

right to repair maniacs need to understand how the real world works, hopefully kytch loses and gets sued back


poor "people" shouldn't be allowed to own things

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Your post violates the bondservant contract I attached to the site TOS and you are now subject to summary execution. Please travel to your local Wal-Mart at your earliest opportunity.

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extremely based

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how the real world works

Not for long :marseytrollgun:

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:#marseychefkiss:

Snapshots:

to clean a mcdonald ice cream maker:

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McDonald's is actually mostly an elaborate ruse to sell overengineered machines to franchisees. Everything in maccas is a billion times more complicated than it needs to be.

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maccas

oi g'day mate lets put another shrimp on the barby

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  • "It became clear to us that there's way more money in broken money machines than machines that actually work"

Pretty sure this is the case for everything

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Except vaccines, chud.

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Me omw to get booster #76

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After way too much research in to this it seems like they are basically never broken, it’s entirely user error. They issue is dairy being overfilled when starting cleaning cycle, that leads to it becoming interrupted in the middle of night. The cycle can take many hours from what I understand it - it basically sterilizes itself through heat. Interrupted cleaning cycles can cause various issues, with the main one bei by having to restart it and close the machine for the day.

The solution to this is either a design change that keeps the machines from being over-filled by under trained employees, or a machine with a much faster cleaning cycle if regulations allows. They should switch to some sort of keurig style machine for loading of the dairy, where it comes in pre-set amounts. This would make it r-slur proof :mcmarsey: :marseywagie:

However, central corporate can blame restaurant owners for under-training their staff and the maker of the ice cream machines can blame user error while taking in service charges.

There are basically no other ice cream machine makers that make such precise and high quality equipment. I would for sure buy that brand. It’s even used in some Michelin star restaurants

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Lol yes, but it's a problem you can fix easily and the company actually makes it impossible for staff to do.

It's actually a huge racket. They sell machines to other chains that have this issue at a much lower rate, so this is mcdonalds only.

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Mcdonalds also hires r-slurs, so.... . If Taco Bell had these machines, they'd have even worse reliability.

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This also agrees with that article that came out saying inner city machines were more likely to be broken at any given time

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Cleaning out an icecream machine sounds a lot like douching.

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is micky dee's ice cream even good? those darn things are operational for a day out of the month

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Yes its very good and creamy

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maybe mcdonalds gets a commission for every repair?

Without Kytch, isn't McDonald's paying Taylor to repair the machines in the first place? And so therefore, they should love Kytch?

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no. im pretty sure its the mcdonalds restaurant franchisee who has to pay for it

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:marseyglow:

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