iFixit tears down a McDonald's ice cream machine to see why it breaks down so much

[thewayne]

And they petition the Librarian of Congress to allow store franchisees to repair them.

The machines, made by Taylor, are plagued by breakdowns. And Taylor charges $350 PER FIFTEEN MINUTES TO FIX THEM. The machines are locked by DMCA, and franchise owners are locked by their McDonald's contracts to buy the Taylor machines, so they're screwed into paying absolutely outrageous repair fees to fix the damn things. It's estimated that an eighth of ALL McDonalds ice cream machines in the ENTIRE USA are broken at any time, and that Taylor makes 25% of their money from these service calls!

Every three years, the Librarian of Congress can make changes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, one of the significant changes in the previous batch was to allow people to repair their own game consoles. iFixit, along with the interest group Public Knowledge are petitioning the copyright office for an exemption to allow these things to be repaired by franchisees. A company has made a Raspberry Pi board that can diagnose what is wrong with the machine, so naturally Taylor is suing them for $900mill.

One thing that does make the machine somewhat special is it has a pasteurizer to process the milk product overnight. Seems like it would be a lot easier to use a simpler, more reliable, machine and buy pre-pasteurized ingredients for the machine and save a lot of bother up and down the line. The upshot that is commonly believed is that the C-Suite is probably receiving kickbacks from Taylor to keep the machines in place and let the franchise operators eat the cost. Everybody profits, except the restaurants and the tired parents driving around to multiple McD's trying to find a working ice cream machine.

Funny how no other fast food operator seems to have this problem.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/08/mcdonalds-ice-cream-machine-teardown-shows-error-codes-dmca-keep-it-broken/

Comments

[dewline]

I can't imagine why.

[silveradept]

The DMCA is more often than not used to ensure that nobody commits felony contempt of business model, and this is no exception. "There's software involved, it has DRM, therefore repairing the machines would be illegal under DMCA 1201." Never mind all of the customers who would like their ice cream without having to subsidize Taylor's service contracts and monopolistic behavior.

[thewayne]

They're also denying the franchisee of profit because the machine is (A) probably ridiculously expensive because of the pasteurizing unit, (B) not earning money because it breaks down on a regular basis, and (C) the money required to fix it takes away any possible profit the machine may earn, after the costs of the machine and supplies are factored in.

[silveradept]

Yep. It's bad business practice all around, but I'll bet that franchisees don't have the option of opting out of the ice cream operations, because that might make some McDonald's experiences different than others. That can't make the franchisees happy to have to keep wasting possible profit on the they can't fix and can't replace with something that will be profitable.

[thewayne]

Nope.  I don't know about McDonald's, but they're locked into their menu and equipment pretty tightly on either a national or regional basis.  It's interesting to see what other countries have on offer for familiar fast food joints, Korea is a particularly interesting place.  I'd kinda like to go there and do a fast food tour!

[disneydream06]

I think if I owned a McD's I would say screw it and just not sell ice cream. :o :o :o
Hugs, Jon