Operating a franchise eliminates nearly all your individual rights. You’re paying for the privilege of selling a preconfigured product based upon its legal owner’s contractual guidelines.

If you open McJavchz’s burgers and get your own frostee machine then you’ll have that option. But if you are living in the McD world then you’ve signed that away.

Softserve machines can be quite dangerous to consumers. Combine a nearly an ideal growth medium with lots of little nooks and crannies for stuff to sit around indefinitely and it’s easy to start serving something that’s deadly.

Which isn’t really a defense of current practices, but I can definitely see how things broke down. McDonalds corporate might actually prefer it’s franchises to be stuck with such a poor deal simply to minimize risks.

Look you have a point, of course a bad DIY operation could be dangerous, but that's not what I'm referring to, or Right to repair it's.

Imagine if your house, could only be repaired (electric, plumbing, etc) by one corporation that is friends with the real state agency that sold you the house. Yes, electric DIY it's a bad idea, but you want the option to hire another trained / certified professional to do the job, maybe because price, quality, speed or reliability. Monopolies have the tendency to end bad for the user.

Their PR of the "one and only" company to do "safe" repairs, and that 3rd party are dangerous it's a lie. Other fast food restaurants are proof of this, they use the same machines, but can hire other companies to repair them, so they have much less downtime.

Edit: Fixed typos

Electric DIY is not categorically “a bad idea” and particularly should not (IMO) be argued so in a pro right-to-repair argument.

I would say it's a bad idea depending on the job.

Replacing an old plug for a new one with USB, sure why not DIYit. Messing around with the breaker panel to add an electric car charger or an HVAC connection, my recommendation would be to hire a professional.

The main issue with AC electricity it's how easy is to learn the basics, and get overconfident because you got something working fast (sadly here I can talk about myself). But not knowing things like the NEC Code makes a difference, and that's when you want a technician or get into the rabbit hole of learning this deeply.

Simple details as ignoring the color code, not using the right AWG for the job, can easily cause a fire, or a hidden dangerous electric shock for future maintenance, making the installation a ticking bomb.

Again, the right to repair should not be confused with "anyone can do repairs", but having the choice of hiring a 3rd party professional to do the job (or do it yourself if you have the training) outside of the original vendor.

Much the same way that someone shouldn't do plumbing, roofing, or repair their brakes if they're not capable to do so, I agree that people who are incapable ought not be doing electrical work. There's no disagreement there.

Rossmanm mentioned that in the focus groups he ran people tended to believe that a manufacturer was more competent at repairs by default, even without evidence, but it's worth saying:

Show me any actual data that people being able to see human readable error codes would result in more injuries.

Even if that were somehow the case, demonstrate that the status quo would be less dangerous than putting the company in a position where it had more of an incentive to make ALL repairs safer. If a repair process is hazardous enough to make the machines barely safe enough to use if maintained by authorized repairmen, than that status quo discourages the company from making the repair process safer in general.

The correct thing to do would be to say that they need cleaning not that they’re broken.

Much like the right to repair the problem here is that the manufacturer is lying, it’s just that the lie is slightly different.

What if the machine does say it needs cleaning?

If "it needs cleaning" is hidden behind an error code that is pay-to-decipher over the phone, it clearly doesn't.

Still there should not be just one company who is able to service machines like these. Your company should be able to hire whatever company they see fit to repair such a thing and the manufacturer should be able to provide the information (plans etc) necessary to do so.

If you repair a car you can go to most mechanics, not just to the manufacturer. Everything else is monopolism

So in that example, either the authorized maintenance employs gods instead of normal people or the consumers are missing both eyes and possibly half the brain.

Because it doesn't take a genius to understand cleaning needs to be thorough, and the authorized cleaner isn't employing the best and brightest with CEO level salaries.

> When I saw the Harris video, I could only facepalm when I hear the "if any 3rd party (no matter the credentials) touch the machine, it can be dangerous for the consumer"... it's an ice cream machine for god sake, not a nuclear plant reactor core.

Well, an uninitiated third party might do something like open the gate to the cage of rats that's factory installed in each McFlurry machine, or flip the "Inject Asbestos Pellets In Ice Cream Mix" toggle to yes.

Just pointing out this is a Johnny Harris, who put out a video [1]. I was wondering what the vice president has to do with McDonalds icecream machines.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

I keep feeling like mcdonald’s just doesn’t need federal help to defend itself against a supplier.

You're not following the plot here. Most McDonalds are franchises. The franchisee must pay for McDonalds authorized repair resources to repair machines they're mandated to operate. In other words the people that have to pay for the repairs don't have a choice in the matter.

So naturally they neglect it; 'sorry, the machine is down now.'

McDonalds makes more off the ice cream ingredients than fixing the machine. That argument doesn’t make sense.

The whole franchise model is having franchisees but ice cream mix or whatever. They won’t buy the mix if the machine is down.

I think it’s just hard to clean and people don’t like doing it. And everyone is short staffed. Googling cryptic codes is easy. Cleaning the machine is hard.

> McDonalds makes more off the ice cream ingredients than fixing the machine. That argument doesn’t make sense.

McDonald's doesn't make more off the ingredients of a day's sales of ice cream as it does off a service call, probably by a couple orders of magnitude. I'm not sure why you think it would.

It would be most profitable for McDonald's if the machine went down every single day. The problem with that is the franchises would stop selling ice cream, not that they'd have to trade $25 of ice cream ingredient profit for the profit off a high priced service call that you can respond to with a low-paid, minimally trained tech with a computer that just decodes a mundane error that can be fixed in seconds. A tech can probably do 15 of those a day.

I’m not sure how productive it is to argue with fake numbers but the base revenue off an appliance service call is maybe $125-250 (based on commercial utility service experience). That’s the revenue, so I’m not sure what the profit would be to McDs corporate but maybe $10-25.

Given that a location can sell hundreds or thousands of ice creams in a day. I would expect the margin to be higher on their supply cut than the service call cut so it seems more profitable to sell ice cream than even if there was a service visit every single day.

I’m surprised at the “can’t do arithmetic” takes on HN with things as simple as this. Like somehow there’s a conspiracy to rent seek a less profitable product (ice cream machine service) over McDonald’s main purpose (sell fast food).

It’s funny to imagine people thinking that there’s some conspiracy my mcd’s to make less money. But I think it’s just a misunderstanding of how franchising works.

The brand reputation cost is difficult to measure, though.

If the ice cream machine is always broken, customers may come to expect a low standard of service and quality.

You also have the people who skip McDonald's entirely because one member of their party wants ice cream.

Probably by a couple of orders of magnitude? So say they sell 1000 mcflurries in a day at $1 each for $1000. A couple of orders of magnitude would mean a service cost of $100,000 or am I missing something. Even if they only sold 100 which seems like absurdly low, then it would suggest a service cost of $10k.

They definitely don't sell 1,000 McFlurries a day. Assuming they fulfill one order every 30 seconds, and McFlurries are reasonably purchased between noon and midnight (never heard of a breakfast McFlurry). That's 1,440 orders per day. McFlurries are not going to have a 70% attach rate.

I live in South East Asia where there's fewer McDonalds restaurants, but they're much larger and higher volume than I've seen elsewhere (Europe, most of US and Australia). The ice cream machines often sit at the front of the restaurant (since many restaurants are located in malls). Many people pass by and buy ice cream only. But you can still order them with your regular menu from inside the restaurant. They sell a LOT of ice cream here.

Cones appear to sell more than McFlurries here.

Yeah, but then you have a family that orders 4

If any location is getting to 1,000 McFlurries then all I have to say is... America.

Assuming spherical customers in a vacuum...

McDonalds serves around 68 million customers per day (https://findanyanswer.com/how-many-customers-does-mcdonalds-...)

in around 39 000 restaurants (https://www.statista.com/statistics/219454/mcdonalds-restaur...)

Of those restaurants, around 9% have broken ice cream machines (https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/psychology/documents/c...), meaning there are around 61.88 million customers who had the opportunity to order a McFlurry.

I wasn't able to find good data on what percentage of customers order a McFlurry, but the linked article says they make 60% of dessert sales. I'm going to make a wild guess at this point that 50% of customers order a dessert of some description.

That means about 34 million people ordered a dessert, about 20 million McFlurries and 10 million other desserts.

Of those people, 3 million were not able to order a McFlurry because the machine was broken, so let's remove those 3 million from the total.

31 million people, 20 million McFlurries.

Assumption then would be that on average, around 1/3 of customers will order a McFlurry in a random restaurant (50% x 66%).

68 million customers across 39 000 restaurants is around 1 700 customers per restaurant per day, of which around 570 will order a McFlurry.

A regular McFlurry costs $2.39 (https://www.fastfoodmenuprices.com/mcdonalds-prices/), so a restaurant takes around $1 350 from selling McFlurries.

Taylor have a helpful calculator on their website (https://taylornewengland.com/sales/soft-serve-ice-cream-prof...), with likely optimistic estimates and don't show any wastage, but we're ballparking anyway. They say that food cost + napkin + cone comes to around $0.29, meaning daily profit from ice cream would be around $1 200.

Conclusion, it's pretty unlikely the difference is on the 'orders of magnitude' scale.

As a side note, given that the cost of a new machine is around $18 000 (https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-...), after 15 days of the machine being out of order, the cost in lost sales is as much as buying a new machine (lower by whatever the Taylor callout fee is).

Given that 9% of 365 is around 33 (more than double the cost of a new machine), it seems that the more cost-effective solution would probably be to have a second, standby machine, from which McFlurries could be served while waiting for the callout.

As a consumer, the fact that McDonald's requires the manufacturer or authorized personnel to repair machinery is the main reason I even go there. And by there I mean whichever one I'm near.

Oh sure the mcflurry machine might suck. But I nearly never get a bad coke, bad coffee, undercooked food or crappy fries. It's always the same no matter where or when I go.

I'm willing to pay a little extra knowing I'm not wasting time or money stopping by.

This I think is what McDonald's is trying to protect.

I am not trying to be snarky but I could see it coming across that way... How have we kept humanity fed for most of human history without the corporations to keep us safe?

Are you serious? Before health codes and competent companies the quality of food was shockingly bad all over the place, and there are still so many issues. People think covid is bad have very little idea how dangerous basic life used to be, and in no small way was this caused in part by food safety.

It really wasn't that bad, but people were way more self-reliant.

Uh..Look up food quality in antiquity.

Food born illnesses (e.coli, salmonella, norovirus) have ravaged societies for hundreds of years.

only very recently in the west have we been able to say "this food sucks" because of our opinion of the taste, look. It used to be "I will eat this food that sucks" because even though it tasted sour that's all there was.

Yeah? I still fucking eat moldy and off tasting food because I had little when I was young.

I balk at people throwing bread in the trash, that was near sacrilegious lol.

Anyway, people lived. There was struggle, yes. Perhaps it was better than the meaningless waste of life millions have today.

If our two gut biomes where examined by the same gastroenterologist, they might say mine is more bacterially mono-cultured and yours is more cultured. Who's to say that's bad?

An experiment that isn't reasonable: Go to a Gastroenterologist, tell them you regularly or have no issue eating molded food/expired, and see if you carry the same heath insurance provider within a week.

You would balk at the realization that those eating habits you mentioned aren't thought of as "healthy" by those analyzing healthy eating habits and adjusting insurance rates off of it.

All of human history has been much more dangerous in general than the current time, and dangerous food has always been one of the risks, at levels we would currently find shocking and unacceptable. The tradeoff is that starvation and malnutrition have also been serious concerns for all of human history, too. Your grocery store, full of safe and abundant food, is the historical exception, not the norm.

For example, as recently as a century or two ago, milk routinely killed people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_sickness

The problems the UK dealt with in the 1800s sound horrifying. https://edu.rsc.org/feature/the-fight-against-food-adulterat...

And adulturated food in general was a serious problem in the US, in times still within living memory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_history_of_food_regula...

In some ways, it still is. A lot of people advocate avoiding processed food entirely, as a way to dodge these sorts of bullets.

You know the original meaning of the word "sophisticated"?

You know the "slug in the bottle" case?

Historically, people were not well protected, and traders took advantage of this. We survived because we're tough enough to ride out most food poisoning, but some childhood mortality probably comes down to this, as would some other shorter lifespan on the tables of mortality.

So yes, for most of human history we didn't have either corporations or laws about food hygiene. Except I think you'll find some of the earliest laws are in fact, about food hygene: market regulation was about markets in the literal, tables of goods in the square sense. The right to run a market came with the requirement to run it properly for the common good. Burghers prohibited butchers from dumping waste meat.

I think our wires have been crossed. My issue isn't that food safety hasn't been an issue for humanity, it is the idea that corporations are the party that have lead the charge for stricter food safery standards (other than CYA) and that we should defer to them.

If the FDA wants to audit kytch to ensure their software and hardware is compliant, by all means. I am however not going to trust mcdonalds or taylor to do that.

Corporations didn’t lead the charge but they have a higher chance of better compliance because of their size and age. There are of course superb independent restaurants but there are also terrible ones, a corporate parent provides a decent signal that a minimum of safety policies will be followed. A finicky machine that breaks all the time because exact procedure isn’t followed sucks for uptime but is great for safety. Preferably the ergonomics of the thing would be redesigned for robustness but it seems incentives aren’t aligned properly.

What are you talking about corporations leading the charge? They couldn't care less until the publication of "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. He talked about how they would do whatever was necessary to make spoiled food saleable. If that meant adding talc or bleaching it then so be it. If that meant turning hot dogs into the most amazing use of waste they would.

In fact I would argue it is against corporations best interest in ancient time to ensure food safety, because it would increase waste

I think you might be reading a sarcastic comment as if it's serious.

I think what happened is that “My issue” was read incorrectly to mean “my point is” when it really means “my problem with”

Well for me it's not about safety, but quality. I know my drink isn't going to taste funny or my food taste off. Part of that is stringent and high quality repair and calibration.

There's a reason I go to McDonald's more than, say, burger King, KFC, or wendy's for my junk food fix.

That isn't mcdonald's or taylor's argument though, they are spinning this as safety issue to scare people into believing someone sorting out their horrible engineering is going to lead to food borne illness.

With 420,000 deaths per year?

https://www.who.int/activities/estimating-the-burden-of-food...

Non snarky: survival probability was a lot lower for most of human history.

> Oh sure the mcflurry machine might suck. But I nearly never get a bad coke, bad coffee, undercooked food or crappy fries. It's always the same no matter where or when I go.

I haven't done fast food in awhile because it's terrible, but this is a far cry from my experiences.

I've had undercooked chicken nuggets that were slimey, coffee that had sat in the pot so long it became sludge, and almost half of the time get flat coke or a different beverage than I ordered (diet instead of zero, or with strong hints of orange).

These aren't one-off experiences, but easily a quarter to a third of my past visits. To several stores.

McDonald's has shit quality control in every dimension. It's astonishing to me that they produced the breakout success that was Chipotle. Or that they maintain their present market cap.

McDonalds corporate has a cozy relationship with the various equipment suppliers that includes a cut of sales to their franchisees. Due to this relationship they have essentially turned a blind eye to the behaviour of the company that supplies the ice cream machines.

The suspicion is that McDs also profits from this. It's the franchisees that are hurt.

Yeah, here the main person affected it's the restaurant owner that rents the McD franchise. They are affected with downtime in one of their products, and can only hire 1 company to do the repairs, the one authorized by McD.

I believe something like 93% of McDonald'ses are franchised.

We cant let our guard down. its not a nuclear plant reactor core yet, but the moment we let our guard down creates an opening for the Soviets to drop a rod of Uranium-235 into the ice cream machine and then who's laughing? not mcdonalds customers that's for sure.

I highly doubt any major corporate franchise is going to risk repairing any of their own industrial machines or have a 3rd party do it, without a warranty.

Taylor already said McDonalds franchises are free to fix the machines themselves but it breaks the warranty. This is usually for a good reason.

This isn't even a question of repair. Mostly what they need is a tool that gives them human readable error messages so they can correct whatever minor issue that they'd be told to correct with a service call.

As others mention most of the problems seem to be tank is too full or not full enough to complete a heating cycle. Most consumer grade machines would just display that directly or at least list the error code in the manual, the McDonalds machines don't.

> it's an ice cream machine for god sake, not a nuclear plant reactor core.

You sure? Do we know what a McFlurry is made of?