Odd that Dairy Queen never seems to have the same issues that McDonalds has.
The machines at Dairy Queen are (mostly) not Taylor machines. They also don't have the pasturization function, they must be cleaned and sanitized manually.
Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
71–80 of 162 posts
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#72I've been following this story for a while. When people say the soft serve machine is "broken", they really mean "unavailable to serve ice cream to customers". That could mean something as innocuous as performing a pasteurization cycle during the day (because it failed to run at night for some reason, perhaps the machine's clock is set wrong). It could also mean there is a physical problem with some part of the machi…
It also needs to be said that similar machines provided by Taylor to McDonalds' competitors do not have anywhere close to the amount of downtime that McDonalds' machines have. There's also ample evidence that software updates to Taylor's McDonalds machines have made the error codes more cryptic and the machines more unreliable over time. I think there's a pretty strong legal case to be made that these machines are de…
>There's also ample evidence that software updates to Taylor's McDonalds machines have made the error codes more cryptic and the machines more unreliable over time.
Source?
>It also needs to be said that similar machines provided by Taylor to McDonalds' competitors do not have anywhere close to the amount of downtime that McDonalds' machines have
>I think there's a pretty strong legal case to be made that these machines are deliberately designed to break down in order to drive repair service revenue for both Taylor and McDonalds at the expense of franchisees.
AFAIK mcdonalds machine are also self-cleaning, which makes them more complicated and prone to failure. There's also advantages though (ie. you don't have to rely on a minimum wage worker to adequately clean the machine to prevent food poisoning), so absent some sort of evidence showing intent, it's at least plausible that there isn't some sort of conspiracy to drive up repair costs.
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#73I've been following this story for a while. When people say the soft serve machine is "broken", they really mean "unavailable to serve ice cream to customers". That could mean something as innocuous as performing a pasteurization cycle during the day (because it failed to run at night for some reason, perhaps the machine's clock is set wrong). It could also mean there is a physical problem with some part of the machi…
I've commented on this previously as I worked as a jack of all trades for a McDonald's franchisee for years. The machines tanks and shaving cores must be disassembled and cleaned every two weeks. They have a very intelligent series of sensors and internal mechanisms that make it impossible to defeat or cheat. This is not a low skilled job. I'd say it would be easier to change your cars oil than complete this. There's…
> This is not a low skilled job. I'd say it would be easier to change your cars oil than complete this. There's multiple gaskets and seals which need to be rotated quarterly in a tune up kit. While we were hiring at minimum wage the shake machine trained people were making 15$. I can only imagine what they're making now.
Genuine question: Mom-and-pop shops used to somehow keep their frozen yogurt machines running with part-time teenager labor. What does this particular machine do that makes it so complicated?
Is it complicated merely for the sake of "job security" on behalf of the ice cream machine vendor?
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've commented on this previously as I worked as a jack of all trades for a McDonald's franchisee for years. The machines tanks and shaving cores must be disassembled and cleaned every two weeks. They have a very intelligent series of sensors and internal mechanisms that make it impossible to defeat or cheat. This is not a low skilled job. I'd say it would be easier to change your cars oil than complete this. There's…
Why are these machines so complicated? I thought you just need a few ingredients to make ice cream?
It's a pretty clunky machine and anything in the machinery making or dispensing the ice cream needs to be cleaned thoroughly for food safety reasons.
A lot of people would find the disassembly and correct reassembly difficult. And there are huge incentives to just not do it.
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#75I am actually on McDonalds’ side in this. Many of the startups have made a lot of their money by arbitraging regulation and safety (see Uber , AirBnB, Tesla self driving). McDonalds is a company that literally serves billions of people. If there is any food borne illness, it can literally kill people and it will be front page news all over. As such, McDonalds keeps a very tight lid on what franchisees are allowed to…
I think the core of the problem was less food safety failures and more "user error" reasons. Then instead of saying "there is to much milk in the hopper remove some, and restart", or providing an error code lookup they just flash "error call your technician".
This device just told the user what was actually wrong with the machine so they could choose to correct it, or call the technician to actually repair it. I don't think there was any indication that the franchises were tearing the machines apart to replace broken parts.
Simply providing a please manually discard product, clean and restart machine due to pasteurization failure code and procedure would have probably avoided the whole fiasco.
Which from the sounds of it, is basically what the "improved" machines do, they aren't improved in any way except to report the failures to the user, and provide appropriate user level remedies.
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#76So in other words, friends of the McDonald Corporations majority owners (Taylor) saw a chance to steal a companies IP and use it for themselves to better their own products and McDonalds helped them do it.
Sounds like business as usually.
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The machines frequently require technicians to come out and work on them, to the tune of several hundred dollars per hour, which the franchisee must pay. They are not permitted to get a less tempermental machine or use independent technicians. It's a cost problem.
You would think that the McDonalds franchise owners would push back on McDonalds corporate about this issue. They would rightly be complaining that they are losing revenue because the Taylor ice cream machine has low reliability. Even one service call per month is a significant cost to a low-margin business like a quick-serve restaurant. It is quite possible there is some hinky corporate politics and such within McDo…
McDonald's exerts extremely extremely tight control over its franchisees by corporate standards. Every single thing about a McDonald's is meticulously specified and regulated by corporate, from the equipment installations to the number of pickle slices that go on a burger and the soap that goes into the bathroom.
Franchisees in general don't wear the pants in this relationship. If McD corporate says you use this machine, tough shit, you use that machine. I'm sure the feelings of franchisees are broadly speaking "taken into consideration" but it's not like there's a union here, the dynamic here is that franchisees will shut their mouths and go make some money for daddy.
It's a weird arms-length model that has run into some trouble before, particularly surrounding labor law, as McD corporate has some very detailed expectations on how franchisees will hire, fire, pay, and operate their employees.
Anyway basically if McDonald's says "you will take those things out of our machine" yeah, franchisees are absolutely going to hop to it. tbh if McDonald's were smart they'd just have done it without the "ackshually this thing will steal your girlfriend, poison your customers, and kill your dog" defamation, because if they'd simply said "we're terminating our business relationship with Kytch, have it removed in the next 2 weeks" franchisees absolutely would have done it anyway. Now they are fighting a lawsuit about it because they just had to get a dig in.
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
THis "theory" doesn't make any sense. It's the Franchisee who doesn't get the sales AND pays the huge cost for an official repair rep to come out and basically restart the cleaning cycle. This doesn't jive with crushing an upstart DQ; they're only really competitors in that they both sell "fast food". Ice cream @ a McD is a loss-leader (soft serve) or minor line item (McFlurrys) while it is the core product of DQ, de…
> Ice cream @ a McD is a loss-leader (soft serve) or minor line item (McFlurrys) while it is the core product of DQ, despite their hot food offerrings. IMO this is actually the point being made. There's no need to run a loss leader if the competition doesn't exist.
1. if it's a loss leader that they don't want to continue, why not just... stop offering it? After all, you see "participating restaurant" disclaimers everywhere. Why can't a particular franchise just choose not to participate if it's not in DQ territory?
2. Regardless of whether it's a loss leader, I doubt the marginal cost of the ice cream is more than the $1 or whatever the discounted price is. They paid for the expensive ice cream machine and the counter space. They might as well use it.
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#79Odd that Dairy Queen never seems to have the same issues that McDonalds has.
from the sounds of the rest of the discussion - ice cream is a core enough part of DQ's business that they just have a normal machine that does it, where McDonald's uses a whiz-bang machine that can freeze the ice cream on-demand. So the McDonald's machine never has waste if they don't sell ice cream all night, but it also is a maintenance nightmare.
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a kickback exists, that makes sense. But wouldn't the kickback have to be quite high to be worth the risk that McDonalds is opening themselves up to? I haven't looked at the Taylor financials, but the service contracts are supposedly 25% of their business, so a kickback is some % of that... but I'm having trouble seeing how it is worth the risk to McDonalds. Which is why I think it has more to do with competition,…
It depends on how the kickback is routed. General franchisee revenue goes in a big bucket allocated across the entire corporation. A specific kickback might be going into one guy's pocket... If that one guy has sufficient political clout within the corporation, it could cause the present situation.
> A specific kickback might be going into one guy's pocket
That's also super illegal, eg. https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-netflix-executiv...