121–130 of 151 posts
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It is the franchisee who pays for repairs. Of course it was McD's idea. They make a cut.
I doubt they make more from repairs than by selling ice cream made by functional machines.
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"Better" for whom? McDonald's is massively successful with $200 billion market cap and its stock essentially only goes straight up. The franchisees have always had gripes with corporate, always want to save a few pennies, but these arguments are tiny in the grand scheme... most franchisees are also enormously successful and fantastically rich. Nobody is forcing you to go to McDonald's, stick with INO if it makes you…
No doubt. I am not saying that McDoanlds is unsuccessful, rather that by customer satisfaction surveys In and Out wins. They also have, perhaps, a less scalable model of business and so can never grow to McDonalds size while also maintaining that quality. Interestingly, Chick-fil-a has learned to scale and maintain quality.
Every INO is company-owned, overall I think it manages to keep quality pretty high at all it's stores. Of course part of that is due to the extremely limited menu, and also that INO has never been known for fast service. INO basically tells customers up front, we aren't convenient and we aren't fast and we don't sell anything except burgers... that's 3 areas of potential customer dissatisfaction that they take off the table. All that is left is price, which is good not great, and taste/quality, which, to its credit, INO is pretty fanatical about. Edit: and cleanliness/service, also strong points for INO
I don't see any basis why the complaint is interesting - there's assertion that the ice cream machine manufacturer is copying features of the competitor's device, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and, in the absence of patent protection (the word "patent" is not mentioned in the article) absolutely permissible; and there's some assertion of "stealing trade secrets" without asserting any actual compromise o…
That is NOT market competition...at all and it is 100% shady. Competition is "I make something, you make something better". It's not "You make something. I make something to make it better. YOU try to put me out of business by LEGAL means." That is not competition.
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If McDonald's want's to error on the side of caution, isn't that their prerogative?
Problem is McDonald's isn't paying for all the unnecessary service calls, it is the restaurant owner that have to buy the McDonald's mandated machines that end up paying. So you have McDonald's which has no incentive to change things, Taylor which profits from the situation since their devices are mandated and the restaurant owners who have to foot the bill for hundreds of pointless service calls.
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Well, 1. and 2. is about contracts between McDonalds and their franchisees, so if a franchise owner feels unfairly harmed by this restriction, then they can sue McDonalds , it's not something about which Kytch should be able to sue Taylor. And, once again, it's perfectly reasonable and very common for franchise agreements to mandate certain suppliers for some products, goods and services, and the close ties don't mak…
The copying invalidates the claim that the original device was harmful. It was safe enough that they decided to literally copy it. Unless they can provide contemporaneous evidence that they felt there was a specific aspect of it that was harmful. At this point it seems like the only reason they said it was harmful was to avoid franchisees from using it, which would quite clearly qualify as defamation.
They "copied" parts of it. We don't know they "copied" it all. I don't know how the device could be harmful, but presumably the harmful parts were not "copied".
Note that i used quotes around copied. I wouldn't use that term because it implies something that is protected by copyright and that doesn't seem to be the case.
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I haven't been following this super closely but I think you're missing an entire angle of this. The copying part is just a symptom, the real issue was that 1. McDonald's forced all franchise owners to use this machine that would break often, and could only be fixed by this other company McDonalds had close ties to. 2. McDonald's didn't allow franchise owners to allow this other tool that allowed franchise owners to k…
Well, 1. and 2. is about contracts between McDonalds and their franchisees, so if a franchise owner feels unfairly harmed by this restriction, then they can sue McDonalds , it's not something about which Kytch should be able to sue Taylor. And, once again, it's perfectly reasonable and very common for franchise agreements to mandate certain suppliers for some products, goods and services, and the close ties don't mak…
A contract between two parties can unfairly harm a 3rd party. Especially if one of the two parties is abusing its market power to push anticompetitive clauses. For example requiring "authorized" car mechanics to buy only overpriced Ford-branded repair tools. This way Ford uses its car marketshare to push into the repair tool market. Tool manufacturers that don't have a car manufacturer backing them simply can't compete.
Of course Ford would probably argue that the markets are related, and that it has a legitimate interest in ensuring its mechanics use adequate tools. That only its own tools qualify as good enough is just a big coincidence..
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One part of this I don't understand is why would McDonald's benefit from their franchises constantly needing their ice cream machines serviced.
Mcdonalds doesn't make money selling hamburgers. It makes money leasing real estate, and equipment to franchisees.
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I've never seen them provide value for money here in Europe compared to what was already available. What boosted them - and killed a lot of the local competition - was that tourists seemed to prefer them. We had plenty of fast food here that was quite ok before then.
Here in Germany, we still have a lot of other fast food, like the local Döner shops, or local "Asian" shops selling mostly Chinese, Thai and/or Vietnamese dishes (usually their menus are a mix), or pizza-to-go places or the good old "Currywurstbude" (selling Currywurst of course, but usually things like Schnitzel and even burgers as well). Even my own minor city (about 250k people) also has a lot of other fast food (…
I don't eat there at home, I'm not interested in trying them in other countries.
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> I don't see any basis why the complaint is interesting Hard disagree. I'm finding this saga fascinating. You don't think Taylor lying to Wired journalists, and being called out for doing so, is interesting?
I have always found our putting up with Corporate PR lies so crazy. This wasn’t a stretch of the truth, or a belief what they were saying was true and missed a single internal email. Taylor’s statement was knowingly completely untrue. Say what you want about the China social credit system but if there was a way the associated press could blackball Taylor/the spokesperson for Taylor from ever publishing another statem…