Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New emails released in the McDonald’s ice cream machine lawsuit

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 151 posts

Re: New emails released in the McDonald’s ice cream machine lawsuit

#41

Post by toomuchtodo »

srj wrote: post #39
toomuchtodo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence up to this point strongly suggests Taylor and McDonald’s are interested in milking franchisees (who must source equipment from Taylor per their agreement with McDonald’s corporate), while Kytch actively demonstrated attempting to deliver a better engineered product to franchisees. This is important, as it demonstrates racketeering and anti competitive behavior on the part of Taylor and McDonald’s, and it…

One part of this I don't understand is why would McDonald's benefit from their franchises constantly needing their ice cream machines serviced.

“Kytch points to documents from the time of Taylor's acquisition by Middleby in 2018 that show the company receives close to 25 of its revenue—from all its customers, not just McDonald's—via repair contracts with Taylor distributors, which Kytch argues provides an incentive to maintain the machines' fragility.“

The missing piece is the kickback to McDonald’s, or a similar financial incentive from Taylor to maintain the status quo. I imagine that’d be a component of discovery or information requested by a federal regulator.

Re: New emails released in the McDonald’s ice cream machine lawsuit

#42

Post by jacquesm »

pigbearpig wrote: post #25

First off, Taylor probably is happy with having machines that need service and who knows why McDonald's wants broken machines. I see nothing wrong with Taylor wanting to improve their own remote monitoring UX. That's just how competition works. Kytch make a good app, and what is Taylor supposed to do, not improve theirs? That part of Kytch's argument is bull. Kytch can MITM and reverse engineer Taylor's machines, but…

Forcing your franchisees to do business with a company that you have a stake in for something that is considered a solved problem ('keeping things cold') is a fairly textbook anti-competitive move.

Re: New emails released in the McDonald’s ice cream machine lawsuit

#43

Post by jacquesm »

14 wrote: post #19

The wired article was extremely short not sure if I’m just not getting the full article? It seems from my perspective that Taylor and McDonald’s conspired to take money from the franchise owners. What a shame. Because all it does is incentives owners to cut corners like say serve cold fries so they don’t lose money. McDonald’s used to be great but somewhere lost the way. They used to be the affordable place anyone co…

> McDonald’s used to be great

When was this?

Re: New emails released in the McDonald’s ice cream machine lawsuit

#44

Post by jacquesm »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #33
14 wrote: post #19

The wired article was extremely short not sure if I’m just not getting the full article? It seems from my perspective that Taylor and McDonald’s conspired to take money from the franchise owners. What a shame. Because all it does is incentives owners to cut corners like say serve cold fries so they don’t lose money. McDonald’s used to be great but somewhere lost the way. They used to be the affordable place anyone co…

What I'm enjoying is their randomly changing offers post-lockdowns in my country, and how they don't communicate them at all. Their "gourmet" burgers are now only available from 10:30am to 10:30pm, even in 24 hour joints. Their "all day breakfast" they spent a lot of money advertising now ends at midday. This was notably not advertised. When I rocked up at 12:15pm looking for my regular Sunday McMuffin, and was infor…

That is an awesome movie, if a bit depressing. "I'm the bad guy?"

Re: New emails released in the McDonald’s ice cream machine lawsuit

#45

Post by jacquesm »

abdel_nasser wrote: post #20

how disgusting. it makes me think that vertical integration is great for countries where the losing party of a lawsuit doesnt face any form of disincentive like paying the legal expenses of the winning party. if you are a company that tries to sell a product like this ice-cream mod then you will be sued but its better to have your own burger joint and fill it with your own inventions. they say that the company was br…

> "i sometimes think of what a better mcdonalds would look like."

Gone.

Re: New emails released in the McDonald’s ice cream machine lawsuit

#46

Post by phaedryx »

pigbearpig wrote: post #25

First off, Taylor probably is happy with having machines that need service and who knows why McDonald's wants broken machines. I see nothing wrong with Taylor wanting to improve their own remote monitoring UX. That's just how competition works. Kytch make a good app, and what is Taylor supposed to do, not improve theirs? That part of Kytch's argument is bull. Kytch can MITM and reverse engineer Taylor's machines, but…

I thought this video had some compelling arguments about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

Re: New emails released in the McDonald’s ice cream machine lawsuit

#47

Post by FranksTV »

srj wrote: post #39
toomuchtodo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence up to this point strongly suggests Taylor and McDonald’s are interested in milking franchisees (who must source equipment from Taylor per their agreement with McDonald’s corporate), while Kytch actively demonstrated attempting to deliver a better engineered product to franchisees. This is important, as it demonstrates racketeering and anti competitive behavior on the part of Taylor and McDonald’s, and it…

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.

Re: New emails released in the McDonald’s ice cream machine lawsuit

#48

Post by 10u152 »

ehsankia wrote: post #38
PeterisP wrote: post #27

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…

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…

1. - As an ex employee - it’s a little bit more complicated than that. The machines have strict daily/weekly protocols for cleaning/maintenance and when they’re not met they “break” and need to have a tech reset them. It’s obviously due to the manufacturer not wanting to be liable for anything from a food poisoning standpoint. I don’t think they have a lower MTBF for “real” failures than competitors.

Re: New emails released in the McDonald’s ice cream machine lawsuit

#49

Post by progre »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #33
14 wrote: post #19

The wired article was extremely short not sure if I’m just not getting the full article? It seems from my perspective that Taylor and McDonald’s conspired to take money from the franchise owners. What a shame. Because all it does is incentives owners to cut corners like say serve cold fries so they don’t lose money. McDonald’s used to be great but somewhere lost the way. They used to be the affordable place anyone co…

What I'm enjoying is their randomly changing offers post-lockdowns in my country, and how they don't communicate them at all. Their "gourmet" burgers are now only available from 10:30am to 10:30pm, even in 24 hour joints. Their "all day breakfast" they spent a lot of money advertising now ends at midday. This was notably not advertised. When I rocked up at 12:15pm looking for my regular Sunday McMuffin, and was infor…

Must have watched that move close to 30 times. I wish my kids will someday watch it, they will have a Keyser Soze moment when they realize how much of our daily coversation is made up of quotes from Falling Down.

Re: New emails released in the McDonald’s ice cream machine lawsuit

#50

Post by PeterisP »

ehsankia wrote: post #38
PeterisP wrote: post #27

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…

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 make it problematic, it's common for some of the suppliers to be wholly owned a subsidiary of the mother company, and it's common for these suppliers to be not very good but as the shared money-maker for the franchise scheme.

There's no fundamental difference between McDonalds franchise contract saying that franchises must use only this ice cream machine and the same contract saying that franchises must make BigMacs only according to this exact recipe. If the franchise operator thinks that the BigMac recipe sucks, they don't get to change it or demand a fix - if McDonalds thinks that's good enough, they can take it or leave it and stop being a McDonalds franchise. The same is regarding McDonalds ice cream process; it may legitimately suck, but it's part of the package deal. If McDonalds wants to buy from Taylor and not from Kytch, that's their choice, effectively McDonalds (and not the franchise operator) is the customer here; and if they are a lousy customer, there are other customers to fight for - IIRC McDonalds bought 25% of Taylor machines, so there are many others out there.

And #3 is not a bad or even a neutral thing - reverse engineering other products is great, please everyone do more of it! Good features should be copied and adopted across the whole market (both in hardware and in software), that's the exact kind of competition that benefits the community; and that's a manifestation of the hacker spirit that should be celebrated, not get shamed about. While legal restrictions such as the excessive patent regime and the excessive length of copyright often prevents people from doing that, in cases where it is not prohibited, this is a good thing to do.

Post reply on HN