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Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often broken [video]

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Re: Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often broken [video]

#51

Post by zizee »

ping_pong wrote: post #50
noahtallen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

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?

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

Re: Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often broken [video]

#52

Post by KMag »

valuearb wrote: post #37
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 an…

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.

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.

Re: Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often broken [video]

#54

Post by hellbannedguy »

throwawayboise wrote: post #48
wronglebowski wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 w…

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.)

Re: Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often broken [video]

#56

Post by fastball »

canada_dry wrote: post #32
loonster wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Time is too precious to waste Sure. Which is why my default youtube playback speed is 1.5X.

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

Re: Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often broken [video]

#57

Post by 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?

Re: Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often broken [video]

#58

Post by mjrpes »

wronglebowski wrote: post #36
boatsie wrote: post #3

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 an…

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…

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?

Re: Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often broken [video]

#59

Post by 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.

Re: Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often broken [video]

#60

Post by adventured »

noisy_boy wrote: post #57

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…

> 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.

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