BIZARRE. This is why McDonald’s soft-serve machines are always broken
McDonald’s soft-serve machines are almost always broken. Of the more than 13,000 McDonald’s locations in the United States alone, there are so many complaints about the soft-serve machines that a website has even been dedicated to them. But take one look at mcbroken.com, which shows the McDonald’s locations dealing with broken soft-serve machines, and you’ll see that things aren’t any better outside the US. Almost all of England is glowing red! But the reason these soft-serve machines have so many defects is BIZARRE.
We previously wrote an article about why you might never want to eat soft serve again. You can probably guess: the machines aren’t cleaned properly, bacteria, etc. But life is often not rational, and the craving for ice cream is strong. We, too, enjoy a creamy swirl of ice cream in a crispy cone.
But when that craving hits, you often end up disappointed at McDonald’s. The thing is broken yet again. And it turns out there’s a very remarkable reason for that…
McDonald’s Taylor C602
All of McDonald’s soft-serve machines are the same: the Taylor C602. As a McDonald’s franchisee, you don’t get to choose another soft-serve machine. Just imagine… the reputation of this device is terrible, but you have to install it. And that comes with an expensive service contract with the manufacturer. If the machine breaks down—which happens almost constantly and all over the world—the only thing left for you as a McDonald’s franchise operator is to have it repaired by the manufacturer itself.
A lucrative business, because the manufacturer owes a quarter of its profits to it (!)—Taylor earns 170 million dollars a year from maintaining and repairing soft-serve machines!—and McDonald’s takes a nice share of the proceeds too.
Ka-ching!
And here is where the truth comes out. Those broken McDonald’s soft-serve machines are simply a rock-solid profit model. The various faults that bring dozens of soft-serve machines at McDonald’s to a standstill every day also turn out to be easy to fix. For example, startup Kytch developed a revolutionary, handy little device that can ‘look’ inside a Taylor machine and report what is wrong in plain language. This allows franchisees to fix it themselves using their own phones. Cheap, without expensive repairs, and useful too: it means franchise operators can make money selling soft serve. It was an instant success among franchisees.
Until McDonald’s banned its franchisees from using Kytch. Because, you guessed it, that meant losing a sizeable portion of its revenue.
What a scoop!
So McDonald’s sent an email to all its franchisees. All warranties would be void if they repaired their machines with the help of Kytch, and worse: they could be putting themselves in serious danger by trying to fix the machines themselves—it could even lead to ‘serious bodily injury’. Nonsense and defamation, according to Kytch. And…—oh, juicy!—Taylor repeatedly tried to crack Kytch’s device code in order to replicate the software.
In the same email, which Kytch called defamatory, McDonald’s recommended a new ice cream machine from its long-term partner Taylor to solve problems that Kytch’s device also solves.
Kytch therefore filed a lawsuit against Taylor for stealing trade secrets, and also filed a lawsuit against McDonald’s. In it, they are seeking 900 million dollars in damages: ‘They tarnished our name. They scared away our customers and ruined our business. They are anti-competitive,’ says Melissa Nelson, co-founder of Kytch.
Still in the mood for a McDonald’s ice cream?
Want to watch this bizarre story in a video? Ian Carroll has made a catchy video that, with the help of official documents, shows just how rotten this whole business is. After watching it, you won’t want a McDonald’s soft serve anymore, even if the machine finally works, right?
The McDonalds ice cream machine conspiracy theory ain’t just a theory anymore…
— Ian Carroll (@Cancelcloco) January 26, 2024
FEBO soft serve
No, I’ll just cycle to FEBO when I’m craving a soft serve, because as FavorFlav’s Lauretta always says: FEBO’s soft serve is the best in the world. Otherwise, we can simply make ice cream ourselves, using Ninja’s Creami Ice Cream Maker, for example.
Also read:
- This is the most expensive ice cream in the world
- Eating ice cream makes you smarter
- The tastiest ice creams in Amsterdam
Sources: de Volkskrant, Wired, Mashable
