Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often broken [video]

Re:Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often... by Spooky23 on Monday April 26, 2021 @08:04AM (#26941622)

The reporting is based on conversations with franchisees, who are a part of the equation here too.

McDonalds franchisees are always in a tug of war with the company over various issues, especially loss leader products like ice cream and the dollar menu. Thus, it mysteriously “breaks”.

In some markets, a cone is $0.29 — it’s a money loser that the franchisee doesn’t like and probably doesn’t drive traffic in many locations.

I’d look at the human element before declaring a major manufacturer of a simple product incompetent. They wouldn’t be consistently failing for their biggest customer over many years.

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Re:Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often... by rdedev on Monday April 26, 2021 @08:35AM (#26941831)

This seems to be an issue with only McD. According to the video other vendors like Wendy's don't have this problem.

Remember that McD the company has nothing to loose from failing ice cream machines. That loss is taken by the franchise owners

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Re:Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often... by gruez on Monday April 26, 2021 @08:56AM (#26942012)

>According to the video other vendors like Wendy's don't have this problem.

because their machines don't self-sanitize.

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Re:Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often... by 60secs on Monday April 26, 2021 @09:17AM (#26942197)

The video covers this. All franchises for all companies typically do this overnight.

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Re:Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often... by gruez on Monday April 26, 2021 @09:22AM (#26942240)

They all have to be cleaned nightly, but they're not all self-sanitizing. The woman at the wendy's drive-through said they "wash" the machines nightly, which suggests they take it a part and wash it rather than running a self-sanitizing cycle.

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Re:Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often... by jbm on Monday April 26, 2021 @07:19PM (#26949571)

Out of curiosity, is there a difference, work load aside, in the end result of the two processes?

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Re:Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often... by Spooky23 on Monday April 26, 2021 @01:32PM (#26945327)

Not necessarily. McDonalds owns many restaurants themselves as well.

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Re:Investigating why McDonald's ice cream machines are often... by hnbad on Monday April 26, 2021 @08:46AM (#26941930)

This is funny to me as the milkshakes are relatively expensive here in Germany yet the machines in some locations still seem to be perpetually broken. I'm not sure if the milkshake and ice cream machines are the same thing but if they're not I guess some franchisees just don't want to deal with the hassle of keeping them operable regardless of whether they're loss leaders or not.

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