iFixit wants to fix McDonald’s ice cream machines for good.

iFixit wants Congress to let it hack McDonald’s ice cream machines::McDonald’s ice cream machines are notorious for breaking all the time, so iFixit wants to help people repair them without the help of the manufacturer.

            • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              It actually doesn’t help or harm McDonald’s Corporate at all on this issue. That’s why they’ve been fine with the status quo. It would help McDonald’s franchisees quite a bit, so I suspect McDonald’s won’t send lobbyists to deal with what they view as a non-issue.

              Taylor, the manufacturer of the machines on the other hand stands to lose a significant percentage of the profits they currently make, and absolutely does have a dog in this fight. Thankfully they don’t have McDonald’s type funding, so it’s possible that we can win this one.

        • zpiritual@lemmy.caEnglish
          6·
          1 year ago

          A company like iFixit you mean? Both sides can play that game. I’ll grant you that McDonalds probably have more money to burn on bribes but still.

          • Deiv@lemmy.caEnglish
            6·
            1 year ago

            Based on a quick search, iFixit’s revenue is around 50m a year while McDonald’s is 24 billion. It’s not even comparable lol

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.mlEnglish
      17·
      1 year ago

      I can’t believe how much of an antitrust it is and it’s just somehow allowed.

      • Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.worldEnglish
        49·
        1 year ago

        TLDR: Mcdonalds and an ice cream machine company are up to some scummy shit to fuck over franchises and customers for more profits.

        TLDW: Mcdonalds and the company that makes almost all fast food ice cream machines, Taylor, have had a long time partnership.

        Through this partnership, Mcdonalds franchises are only allowed to buy a singular type of Taylor machine. All of Taylor’s machines that other chains use work just fine, but the ones Mcdonalds is forced to use through the partnership are basically designed to be shitty. They break all the time, and when it breaks down, the error code doesn’t even tell the employees what’s wrong, even if it’s something simple the employee could fix themselves. It forces the Mcdonalds franchises to get a repair technician from Taylor making them pay assloads of money on repair costs, and these repairs of Mcdonalds’ machines account for a massive amount of Taylor’s revenue.

        Mcdonalds corporate is hurt none in this process, only the franchises, so Mcdonalds Corporate and Taylor stay buddy buddy. Some other company made a third party addition for the Taylor machines that puts out proper error codes that allow employees to fix minor issues on the fly, Mcdonalds has banned their franchises from using these for “safety issues”.

        I would still suggest watching the video in your spare time though, it’s a really fascinating case study of how companies collude to fuck over customers and even their own lesser partners.

        Edit: Grammar, Formatting

        • Asafum@feddit.nlEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          I used to work for Taylors competition Electrofreeze as a refrigeration repair tech. if Taylor is anything like Electrofreeze it was (going back 7 years) $265 just for me to walk into the door. If you forgot to flip a switch and that’s all I had to do, $265 please.

          I imagine they make a lot of money off of that. Plus marking up parts… $600 compressor we would sell for $2000.

          I really enjoyed fixing things for people, I just hated having to hit them over the head with the service charge when they didn’t really need service :/

  • spectradawn77@lemmy.worldEnglish
    53·
    1 year ago

    If I remember correctly I saw a video explaining this. Same goes with the device. Apparently the company that makes the machines and McDonalds have some sort of agreement where McDonald’s gets the machine at a huge discount but they have to use that company for repairs and only them. Win win for both. Company also added script to stop the device from working. Something like that.

    Either way im at the point where I completely forget that McDonald’s has ice cream.

    Here’s the video: https://piped.video/SrDEtSlqJC4?si=F9x-GPjuXEaSk7zO

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    221·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    But now we may have some glimmer of Shamrock Shake-flavored hope: not only has iFixit performed a teardown of McDonald’s machines, but it’s also petitioning the government to let it create the parts required for people to fix them.

    As shown in a video posted to YouTube, iFixit purchased the same ice cream machine model used by McDonald’s and spent hours trying to get it up and running.

    The machine spit out numerous error codes that iFixit says “are nonsensical, counterintuitive, and seemingly random, even if you spent hours reading the manual.”

    Despite consisting of “easily replaceable parts,” such as three printed circuit boards, a motor and belt, and a heat exchanger, the ice cream machine can only be fixed by its manufacturer — Taylor — due to an agreement it has with McDonald’s.

    While a company called Kytch attempted to remedy this by creating a product to read ice cream machine error codes, iFixit says McDonald’s “sent a letter to all of the franchise owners” instructing them not to use the device.

    “We’d love to be able to make a device like Kytch that can read error codes on the ice cream machine we have, but we can’t because of copyright law,” Elizabeth Chamberlain, iFixit’s director of sustainability, says in the video.

    The original article contains 405 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 47%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • eusousuperior@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    1 year ago

    Is this a US only thing? I’ve travelled all over europe and americas and I always try to go to each country’s Mcdonalds to see if they have anything different. NEVER have I encountered a broken ice cream machine.

  • Selmafudd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    121·
    1 year ago

    Do they really break all the time or they just don’t fucking clean them when they should and they refuse to keep working

    • Confused_Emus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      1 year ago

      There’s a 4 hour heat cycle it has to go through as part of the cleaning. In addition, the machines are apparently very temperamental and throw errors a lot, but the error codes are (arguably intentionally) obscure so typical employees just aren’t going to know what’s wrong with it. Also machine servicing is done exclusively by the machine manufacturer, so if any work needs to be done to it they’ve gotta schedule a tech call-out.

      • hihellobyeoh@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        I have no clue about the McDonald’s ice cream machine but the one I used to have to use when I worked at Burger King could have various issues, for instance the most common reason it went down was it getting low on mix and someone not refilling it, if that would happen for about 30+ min it would freeze the thing solid and at that point you have to turn it off for hours, and you still probably have to tear it apart and run hot water through it which would make a huge mess just to get it in unfroze. Worst part is I was a closer, and if the people on the shift before me weren’t keeping up with it, I could come in to it being frozen… I hated that thing

  • 21Cabbage@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    I was under the impression that the maintenance was a pain in the ass and McDonald’s workers are payed less than the cost of living so therefore aren’t doing shit like that.

    • nous@programming.devEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      I think it is more malicious then that on the manufacturers part. It is more that when something goes wrong it just gives a cryptic error message and the workers have no clue what went wrong and so don’t know what to do to fix it or stop it from happening again. For instance, it seems one issue is that if you overfill the hopper and out it through a (4 hour long) cleaning cycle it will fail to reach the required temp and then refuse to work until it has gone through the cycle (for safety reasons). But all it spits out is a cryptic error message and the workers are clueless as to what is wrong. Then they need to call out a technician to diagnose and fix it at a fairly high hourly cost, even though it is something the works could solve if they know what was wrong (ie not filling up the hopper so much).

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4 goes into a deep dive of the problem. And note that the problem is only with McDonalds ones - other chain using the same basic machine don’t have the same issues. Likely due to some old partnership between the manufacturer and McDonald screwing over the franchise owners.