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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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
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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