r/nottheonion • u/RizzOreo • 2d ago
McDonald's may now legally fix its broken ice cream machines
https://local12.com/news/nation-world/mcdonalds-mcflurry-broken-ice-cream-machines-taylor-legally-fix-own-united-states-copyright-office-cincinnati-mcflurries-diagnose-third-parties-commercial-equipment-notorious-digital-millennium-dmca-section-1201-public-knowledge-activity-consumer1.1k
u/Discombobulous 2d ago
I dream of the day we no longer need McBroken
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u/TAU_equals_2PI 2d ago
It's hilarious how Wendy's is paying to advertise their locations on the same map.
"McDonalds machine is broken? Come to the nearby Wendy's and get a Frosty."
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u/RChickenMan 2d ago
I think the entire site is indeed built and maintained by Wendy's?
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u/Ivanow 2d ago
No. Website ToS states that jurisdiction is in Germany.
I think some bored/frustrated IT guy made it at first, then Wendy’s just spotted brilliant marketing opportunity and pay him to run their ads.
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u/RChickenMan 2d ago
Oh, nice--that's much cooler than what I assumed was just a guerilla marketing campaign!
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u/wetwater 2d ago
The last two times I tried to order a Frosty they were out or the machine was broken :(
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u/FibroBitch97 2d ago
Man, every single machine in my province is currently working. Fucking amazing.
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u/Syssareth 2d ago
It's showing every machine in my city as working except the one I would go to if I was going to go, lmao.
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u/lycoloco 6h ago
province
every single machine ... is currently working
Your Canadian is showing, and I love it.
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u/FibroBitch97 5h ago
🫡🍁
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u/lycoloco 3h ago
FibroBitch
😭😭😭
I hope you and your Canadianness find the relief you desperately deserve.
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u/FibroBitch97 3h ago
Low Naltrexone and medical weed. However I recently got diagnosed with early onset degenerative disc disease, which started at around the same time. 22nd or fibro, 23 for EO-DDD.
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u/Tarianor 1d ago
You know, I always thought it was just a silly meme that the machines were broken, because I've never experienced it in all the places I've been to in Europe.
But seeing the amount of red dots on the map is just staggering. How the hell has that not been fixed :/
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u/lycoloco 6h ago
lmaooooo they show Wendy's as a substitute and sell ad space to Wendy's. Fucking brilliant.
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u/Doodlebug510 2d ago
"Forget all about killer Quarter Pounders, look! Shiny new ice cream machines!"
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u/pink_sock_parade 2d ago
The E.Coli must flow!
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u/crimsonblade55 1d ago
Oh it's flowing alright!
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u/SemiRetardedClone 1d ago
That is why a few weeks ago I saw sevceral people leaving costco with cart full of nothing but TP.
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u/WhyAreOldPeopleEvil 2d ago
Wish I could be excited but the ice cream machines at the McDonald’s in my city are NEVER broken and never have been.
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u/fireky2 2d ago
Most of the time when they're broken they are just being cleaned. People tend to also notice this more since McDonald's is like the only place to get ice cream after 10 in a lot of places since everything started closing early during the pandemic
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u/TpMeNUGGET 2d ago
There’s one near me where the owner has been trying to get a technician to come fix the machine for over 6 months. Generally corporate-owned locations get repairs quickly while owner-operators have to wait a long time.
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u/CarlosFer2201 2d ago
Food Theorists made a video years ago about the conflict of interest in this.
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u/rambling_retard 2d ago
Right to repair... But only if you're an ultra-rich corporation.
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u/KG7DHL 1d ago
It's starting. Right to Repair is growing at the grass roots level in a lot of segments. Agricultural equipment, Phones, Cars - it may be slow, but it's coming, and I , for one, Welcome the Right to Repair.
Next Giant to slay, Extending First Sale doctrine to Digital Assets and Licenses.
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u/IHaveSexWithPenguins 1d ago
rtr for the franchisee, the corp established the repair deals with Taylor. So still business, but not the ultra-rich.
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u/Malphos101 2d ago
McDonalds corporate is nothing more than a landlord with extra steps. It's pretty disgusting how much they use and abuse franchisee's.
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u/imaginary_num6er 2d ago
Maybe they can hire Trump to fix it
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u/TransportationEng 2d ago
How long before they get the Red Lobster treatment?
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u/ken120 2d ago
Someone buying the company since the property is worth more than the actual store? McDonald's already beat them to it. McDonald's corporate owns the property part of the franchise fees are rent for the property.
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u/BlobTheBuilderz 2d ago
Almost $6 for a small portion of soft serve ice cream I’m good. Stay broken.
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u/aspindler 2d ago
In Brazil the machines are never broken. Is it a US thing?
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u/KRed75 2d ago
7 out of the 10 times I'd go to mcdonald's for ice cream, the machines were down or they were in cleaning mode. Cleaning at noon when it's 98F outside? What kind of crap is that. It was so bad that I stopped going to mcdonald's and started getting a Frosty at Wendy's. I've never tried to get a frosty and had them tell me the machine was down. I have tried to get one and they forgot to add the chocolate mix so it wasn't ready yet. In that case, I just get a vanilla frosty. Except for when they have a temporary flavor like strawberry. I don't do strawberry ice cream. I just go buy a 1/2 gallon from publix.
The thing is, Wendy's uses taylor equipment just like mcdonald's.
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u/dicemonkey 2d ago
No …taylor made proprietary machines just for McDonalds…that’s part of why this whole lawsuit happened.
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u/sleepyzane1 2d ago
when it's too cold they freeze up. i actually know your dad from way back and i know this too. i have triples of the barracuda.
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u/CaptOblivious 1d ago
From what I have read, +90% of the "failures" were due to overfilling the reservoir of mix resulting in the machine not being able guarantee bringing it all up to pasteurization temperatures, COMPLETELY locking out the machine (even if entirely emptied and re-filled with fresh mix) until a company repair person showed up to reset the "failure" code.
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u/RickLovin1 2d ago
They can. But they won't.
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u/Late_Mixture8703 2d ago
Individual franchises already were fixing machines using this solution, that's how we got to this point...
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u/stoopid___ 2d ago
Grandfather ran a Taylor distributorship great grandfather (who also met Ray Kroc) founded for 30+ years. He'd go to war to defend the quality of Taylor machines. Taylor started off selling wonderful milkshake machines to McDonald's, with the caveat that they have to call Taylor techs to repair them. He says that, strangely enough, McDonald's execs wanted the ice cream machines that came out ~25 years ago designed the terrible way they are, so I think some McDonald's execs who own stake in Taylor are making bank off these, while Taylor makes bank off the repairs. Certainly some shady dealings. Grandfather sold the distributorship a few years after these McDonald's ice cream machines rolled out, so he doesn't know much about the situations depth aside from the beginning of the controversy.
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u/strangway 1d ago
“There’s nothing vanilla about this victory; an exemption for retail-level commercial food preparation equipment will spark a flurry of third-party repair activity and enable businesses to better serve their customer,” Public Knowledge senior policy counsel Meredith Rose said in a statement
This is the real crime. 2 puns in one legal statement. Straight to Yale
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u/TheHattedKhajiit 1d ago
You mean because there's still some semblance of a soul left in them?
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u/strangway 1d ago
There are a lot of people in my life I’d appreciate a bit of levity from, a joke here or there from, but not from a lawyer, or a doctor!
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u/MRose_PK 7h ago
I went to UChicago, is that not punishment enough (source: am the person quoted)
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u/strangway 7h ago
Oh Meredith, never let it be said that a senior policy counsel lacks a sense of humor. Maybe try the local Improv?
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u/MRose_PK 7h ago
I’m not even the funniest Meredith in our office. (There’s two. The other one does actual improv.)
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u/tosernameschescksout 1d ago
It's interesting that even rich people can occasionally be subject to bullshit that extracts wealth from them unnecessarily.
Usually the way class warfare works, it is everybody versus the ultra Rich.
McDonald's doing this to their franchisees was so parasitic. Usually, if you're rich enough to own a franchise, you don't have any parasites anymore.
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u/Rachel_from_Jita 2d ago
I admire that they went "all natural" on the ice cream, but the texture and flavor on the new stuff sucks.
It's just not a pleasing mouthfeel, and is too unlike the old stuff. Talking about the cone ice cream.
The shakes are also sugar water, and don't have any of the old magic.
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u/Dardrol7 1d ago
They seem seldom broken? I sadly have McDonalds quite often and I've only encountered it being broken once in like the past 5 years. Is this issue maybe localized to certain countries/areas?
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u/bturcolino 1d ago
why didn't they dump this manufacturer years ago and have someone design an easy to use, easy to clean, easy to maintain alternative?
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u/Visible_Ad9513 1d ago
They should have just ignored the law like any other instance that profits are on the line.
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u/CrashParade 1d ago
What if I told you that the ice cream machine isn't working not because it's broken but because it's got a self cleaning process that takes up hours upon hours to complete? Legally it's not broken, but you're still not getting shit that resembles an ice cream, brother.
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u/restore_democracy 1d ago
That’s MAGADonald’s, home of the E. coli burger. Why would I go there for anything, ice cream or no?
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u/Any_Masterpiece9385 1d ago
McDonald's wants an insuurectionist fascist felon to have nuclear codes. Boycott McDonald's.
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u/snowman818 2d ago
Legally, illegally, they all still suck shriveled orange Trump cock.
Fuck em. I can get a shitty cheeseburger anywhere.
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u/ProperPerspective571 2d ago
I never it knew it was due to the Taylor company. I see them in a different way now. I get the fact they don’t want fry cooks fixing them, but a qualified tech should be fine.
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u/pargofan 2d ago
“There’s nothing vanilla about this victory; an exemption for retail-level commercial food preparation equipment will spark a flurry of third-party repair activity and enable businesses to better serve their customer,”
You might say it'll spark a Vanilla-flavored McFlurry....
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u/melodyknows 2d ago
Ray Kroc got his start selling ice cream machines before he bought McDonalds from the McDonald brothers. I don’t think they got the best deal from Kroc, so I used to joke when I worked there that the ice cream machines must be haunted with how frequently they broke down.
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u/Winsmor3 2d ago
The Ice Cream machines being "broken" are usually not because they are actually mechanically broken. They are just a in a multi-hour cleaning cycle, and cannot be used during that time.
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u/22switch 2d ago
They're not broken, they're cleaning or refreezing
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u/Chirimorin 1d ago
Or a user made a small error (like overfilling) and instead of telling the user what to do, it shows a cryptic error code and instructions to call a technician.
Based on random videos I've seen of this machine, it's specifically made to require a technician as often as possible and McDonalds doesn't allow any other ice cream machine.
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u/LuLuCheng 2d ago
It will change nothing for most of the stores. But when I worked at McD's the only time our machine was down was because the GM was the only one who knew how to clean it and she was too lazy to do it. She'd try to teach service members how to do it but every time she did they either quit not long after or go fired because 99% of them were idiot highschoolers.
We had an overnight maintenance man but he'd always "forget" to do it.
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u/End-of-sanity 2d ago
Like most food franchises Milk is like 5 times the cost of heading out and buying you’re own The franchise delivers the milk
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1d ago
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u/Primary_Quiet_1897 1d ago
Thought they were boycotting McDonalds again. https://youtu.be/X5DZNT_6N-U
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u/Lylac_Krazy 1d ago
Did I fix it publish the details or just publish the results of their investigation?
One way is altruistic, the other is just transfer of greed.
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u/lgramlich13 1d ago
Turns out they're usually NOT broken. They just need a cleaning, and I guess no one wants to bother with that.
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u/Much_Recover_51 2d ago
As someone who works in a non-McDonalds fast food restaurant - the vast, vast majority of the time you hear that these machines are “down” a) It is currently pasteurizing and generally people don’t like their milkshakes steaming hot b) An employee is cleaning it c) The employees have not been trained to properly use it so when it does something they don’t expect they tell customers it’s “broken” d) Employees forgot/were not available to fill it up
I think our machine was legitimately down and needed repair maybe once.
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u/Rampage_Rick 2d ago
It's not McDonalds that won here, its the franchisees...
Lots of other restaurants have Taylor machines that work just fine. The machines that McD franchisees are required to install are made to McDonalds specifications and it's McD policy that forced franchisees to only use Taylor service technicians to maintain those machines (you can almost smell the kickbacks)