21–30 of 162 posts
Don't light your grill in someone else's lawn and expect your party keep on forever.
This is bad for the consumer and for society.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26936774
And of course the McBroken website: https://mcbroken.com/
I cant think of anything more definitionally anti-competitive than keeping mcflurry machines available so you can crush any DQ that pops up in your vicinity by fixing it ("oh whoops... it was unplugged!"), and then also crushing a business that aims to solve your problem to help serve customers better. Let's get the FTC on this, afaik it's illegal to advertise a product you have no intention of actually serving. eg:…
DQ is Dairy Queen. For anyone else that is confused.
>Kytch has argued that Taylor was incentivized to keep its machines broken; repair and maintenance contracts across its business lines accounted for a quarter of the company's revenue stream in 2018, according to a document Taylor published at the time. But Kytch cofounders Nelson and O'Sullivan admit that doesn't explain why McDonald's would similarly seek to prevent a fix for its embarrassing—and expensive—ice crea…
In other words, the machine has determined it's unsafe to serve the contents (because soft serve needs to be pasteurized at certain intervals), not that it's physically incapable of doing so. Therefore it's "broken".
(Disclaimer: I've never used one of these soft serve machines, just read through manuals and stories about them.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The gist I'm getting is that McDonald's doesn't want to be in the ice cream/soft serve business. But it also doesn't want more competition than it already has. So every McDonald's has an ice cream machine as a more sort of "break glass in case of emergency" situation. Or in this case "in case of DQ". But if there is no DQ in the area, why operate the machine? Just have it be "broken". It's not like people have an opt…
> But if there is no DQ in the area, why operate the machine? Why operate the grill or fryer? To sell food and make money. Instead of selling someone a meal for $7 McDonalds can sell them a meal + a mcflurry for $10. Why wouldn't they want to do this? It doesn't make any sense that a bunch of franchise owners are all in together on some kind of ice cream conspiracy. Surely the truth is less interesting, it's most lik…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read the article and DQ wasn't mentioned. What are you getting at?
parents point is that operating the machines regularly is of no interest to mcdonalds (likely bad margins) and its only interested in ensuring other niche fast food restos dont start to take up market share instead. ie: if i want icecream i can get it at macdonalds, instead if DQ, unless the machines are broken. if DQ gains significant market share they "fix" the machines and DQ loses its market share. not saying thi…
I cant think of anything more definitionally anti-competitive than keeping mcflurry machines available so you can crush any DQ that pops up in your vicinity by fixing it ("oh whoops... it was unplugged!"), and then also crushing a business that aims to solve your problem to help serve customers better. Let's get the FTC on this, afaik it's illegal to advertise a product you have no intention of actually serving. eg:…
DQ is Dairy Queen. For anyone else that is confused.
I'm also thinking about how McDonald's anticompetitive behavior may have an unintended anti-obesity effect.
Again, I'm thinking how awesome the snicker blizzard is.
I cant think of anything more definitionally anti-competitive than keeping mcflurry machines available so you can crush any DQ that pops up in your vicinity by fixing it ("oh whoops... it was unplugged!"), and then also crushing a business that aims to solve your problem to help serve customers better. Let's get the FTC on this, afaik it's illegal to advertise a product you have no intention of actually serving. eg:…
I don’t understand your opening sentence. Why would they keep it unplugged?