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We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

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Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#291

Post by BoorishBears »

talldayo wrote: post #273
BoorishBears wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're going to stop selling ice cream period as a company. If it was important to their bottom line McDonalds would have done something as a collective rather than having individuals enter this fight for back-channel repair options. At some point they'll probably have their main contracts expire and stop dealing with the mess altogether.

God damn. Antitrust comes up and HN insists that businesses are just going to pull out of the EU any day now. McDonalds is forced to start fixing their ice cream machines and now you want to tell us that they'll refuse to serve ice cream out of petty anger. Do we just assume every business is run by the zombie of Steve Jobs? I genuinely have no idea where this libertarian extremist sentiment is coming from.

You're reading way too deep into this, good luck with all that.

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#292

Post by dmix »

selimthegrim wrote: post #256
Dilettante_ wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The USA is not a nation-state, it is just a state, nor is Canada. That throws up the question in my mind: What makes a people into a nation? How uniform do they have to be?

Quebec has entered the chat.

They do love to do that :)

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#293

Post by dmix »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #281
mattmaroon wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not what Occam’s razor would suggest at all. That’s a silly conspiracy theory that’s easily verified as false if you know anything about the ice cream industry or just bother to Google who makes the machines. Occam’s razor might suggest that their competitors use a different machine entirely (I really don’t know but Wikipedia’s page on Taylor only mentions McDonald’s). McDonald’s corporate making a bad decisio…

McDonald’s corporate making a bad decision about a machine seems a whole lot simpler than some convoluted conspiracy theory, doesn’t it? That excuse wears thin after 10+ years.

Accountants at these places evaluate the cost of replacing all the machines with a new vendor while still paying out the old contract vs internet comments

I’m sure they’ve done the math somewhere, and possibly determined this is more of a meme than an IRL business liability

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#294

Post by jessriedel »

mcdow wrote: post #35
jessriedel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the last sentence. If the machines are frequently broken, that damages the Macdonald's brand in the consumer's eyes. And if the franchisee's are paying unnecessary costs, making a Macdonald's franchise less lucrative for the owner-operator, that will lead to fewer franchises renewals and new franchises in the future.

Been a while since I first watched the video. I would imagine the ice cream machines are a relatively small part of the McDonald's business. As evidenced by the fact that McDonalds ice cream has been an issue for quite a while. I would imagine franchises of a similar caliber to McD's also exploit their owner-operators on a similar scale because they can, we just don't necessarily hear about it because McDonalds is th…

That's not an explanation. You could say that about a thousand things in McDonald's business. They are all a relatively small part, but in fact McDonald's has an army of people optimizing them all, and they are overall very successful.

Why do you think they would be able to abuse any of the operators? There are dozens and dozens of fast food franchises in the US, all in cut-throat competition. You may have heard of McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Subway, KFC, Chick-fil-A, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Dunkin’, Sonic Drive-In, Popeyes, Little Caesars, Arby’s, Chipotle, Dairy Queen, Jack in the Box, Hardee’s, Panda Express, Jimmy John’s, Five Guys, Wingstop, Culver’s, Zaxby’s, Raising Cane’s, Whataburger, Bojangles, Shake Shack, El Pollo Loco, Firehouse Subs, Jersey Mike’s, Del Taco, Checkers, Rally’s, Church’s Chicken, Moe’s Southwest Grill, Qdoba, Captain D’s, Freddy’s, Tim Hortons, Smoothie King, Blaze Pizza, Baskin-Robbins, White Castle, Portillo’s, Noodles & Company, Schlotzsky’s, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Auntie Anne’s, Marco’s Pizza, Boston Market, Smashburger, Fuddruckers, WingStreet, Krystal, Papa Murphy’s, Hungry Howie’s, The Habit Burger Grill, Jamba, Nathan’s Famous, Steak ’n Shake, Waffle House, Big Boy, Pizza Ranch, Cook Out.

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#295

Post by jeromegv »

8note wrote: post #137
subarctic wrote: post #41

> Meanwhile, Canada is in the final stages of considering legislation that would fix the Canadian version of the DMCA, a bill called C-244 that is in its third reading in the Senate and expected to move before the end of the month. If Canada legalized circumventing technological protection measures for the purposes of repair, we might just have to head north to find the tools we need to do repairs. That's good news,…

The government of Canada is really missing out by not selling this bill as a reason to keep them in power

Less than 1% of the population would understand this bill. What concerns people on the day to day is quite different and that’s what the government is talking about (housing, immigration, policing, health care, dental care, pharmacies etc).

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#296

Post by downut »

dangus wrote: post #284
downut wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've made homemade ice cream dozens of times over 50 years... and the way I think about the delicious result is that it's like... soft serve ice cream. I think I prefer the texture of "scooped hard ice scream" but homemade with just cream, eggs, sugar, and whatever for the flavorings is just an outstanding tasty thing to eat. I've never tasted industrial soft serve, maybe something else is going on? Thinking back we…

The home ice cream market is perhaps far more developed than you realize. You can make a harder scooped ice cream style with compressor-equipped machines from brands like Whynter. You can make soft serve, milkshakes, concretes, and gelato with the Ninja CREAMi. I've heard it even does a decent job of making a knockoff of what you get out of a Pacojet [1] at Michelin-starred restaurants. And of course there are a numb…

I think I spent a dollar, maybe two, at the flea market, on our second hand mechanical ice cream maker. The social benefits of having the various kids, always including the guests', working it, trading off until the beautiful result happened, makes me intensely glad we weren't being judged by having some of these oh so awesome technological miracles expected.

Yeah, I don't envy your knowledge or experience.

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#297

Post by mattmaroon »

dmix wrote: post #293
CamperBob2 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McDonald’s corporate making a bad decision about a machine seems a whole lot simpler than some convoluted conspiracy theory, doesn’t it? That excuse wears thin after 10+ years.

Accountants at these places evaluate the cost of replacing all the machines with a new vendor while still paying out the old contract vs internet comments I’m sure they’ve done the math somewhere, and possibly determined this is more of a meme than an IRL business liability

It should be noted that even though McDonald’s began allowing franchisees to use another brand years ago, most still do not.

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#298

Post by WBrentWilliams »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #168
SoftTalker wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, though it was not complicated. Just took a person about 45 minutes. That was to do the milkshake and the soft serve machine. Did it many, many times when I worked there.

Can I ask why it takes / took 45 minutes? That feels like a lot to clean one machine. Was that all 'active' time or was there a 'put things in the dishwasher / autoclave and let it sterilize for X minutes?' Were there a lot of separate parts to wash? Now I'm curious :)

The machine from 30+ years ago that I regularly took apart and put back together had about 35 user-cleanable parts for the milkshake side and 12 for the ice cream side. The worst part of the ordeal was removing the rubber o-rings They went on easily enough, but removing took quite a bit of patience. The whole process took about 30 minutes, start-to-finish, including soaking the washed parts in bleach -- no dishwasher as the blades used to cut the frozen ice cream base from the inside of the machine would dull and ding causing damage to the machine.

The new machines came in long after I moved on to other jobs. In ideal situations, they re-pasteurize the mix overnight, leading to a drop in 1-2 person-hours of labor.

Re: We can now fix McDonald's ice cream machines

#299

Post by talldayo »

BoorishBears wrote: post #291
talldayo wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God damn. Antitrust comes up and HN insists that businesses are just going to pull out of the EU any day now. McDonalds is forced to start fixing their ice cream machines and now you want to tell us that they'll refuse to serve ice cream out of petty anger. Do we just assume every business is run by the zombie of Steve Jobs? I genuinely have no idea where this libertarian extremist sentiment is coming from.

You're reading way too deep into this, good luck with all that.

No, I think you're reading too far into this and trying to present a nonsense scare-story to make this seem like a net-zero accomplishment.

Here's a question for you economics geniuses out there; if McDonalds wasn't interested in serving ice cream to customers then why did they buy machines for thousands of franchises to do that exact thing?

And even if you're correct - the secondhand customers of the machines McDonalds would sell would directly benefit from having parts made available. Selling their machines after the repair process is made cheap is an incoherent line of logic that only tracks if you want people to fear over-regulation.

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