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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]

#181

Post by gruez »

mjrpes wrote: post #58
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…

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?

the other machines don't self-sanitize?

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

#182

Post by wronglebowski »

monkey_monkey wrote: post #145
dncornholio wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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-... [e…

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".

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

#183

Post by 1123581321 »

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…

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.)

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

#184

Post by friend-monoid »

raverbashing wrote: post #96
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,…

> 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 maintenanc…

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.

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

#185

Post by 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?

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

#186

Post by grishka »

garmaine wrote: post #110
grishka wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

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

#187

Post by fouc »

m00dy wrote: post #170
fouc wrote: post #169

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…

Is this automated ?

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

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

#188

Post by fouc »

gruez wrote: post #176
fouc wrote: post #169

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…

> 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…

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.

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

#189

Post by tomerv »

tharne wrote: post #35

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

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.

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

#190

Post by 60secs »

gruez wrote: post #177
rdedev wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>According to the video other vendors like Wendy's don't have this problem. because their machines don't self-sanitize.

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