McDonald's ice cream machine hackers say they found 'smoking gun'

https://www.wired.com/story/kytch-taylor-mcdonalds-ice-cream-machine-smoking-gun/

204 229 3 years ago

abfan1127• 3 years ago

I still don't understand why McDonald's is accepting a 10-20% "broken" status as remotely acceptable. Especially when its clear its solvable.

meepmorp• 3 years ago

It's not really McDonalds the corporation's problem - they get paid all the same, probably with some definitely-not-kickbacks from the manufacturer.

krger3• 3 years ago

they get paid all the same

I haven't looked at a McDonalds franchise contract, but every QSR franchise contract I've seen requires the franchisee to pay the brand a percentage of each location's gross sales.

Broken ice cream machine = less gross sales. Less gross sales = less money going to the brand.

It's also not great for customer satisfaction.

hoten2• 3 years ago

Johnny Harris (journalist) covered this story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

xvector• 3 years ago

This might be one of the worst videos I've ever seen. 30 minutes of video for about two paragraphs worth of content. Mind-bogglingly poor information density, it's like the video was deliberately stretched to 30 minutes for no reason other than the fact that he could. Terrible journalism.

ChatGPT summary:

The video investigates why McDonald's ice cream machines are frequently broken. It reveals that the machines undergo a complex, four-hour cleaning cycle, often misinterpreted as a breakdown. Franchise owners are contractually obliged to use a specific machine model (C602) made by Taylor, which has a high failure rate. The malfunctioning machines, with cryptic error messages and user-unfriendly interfaces, necessitate expensive repairs by Taylor-authorized technicians. An entrepreneur developed an alternative device providing better feedback and reducing breakdowns, but McDonald's allegedly discouraged its use, favoring a less effective solution from a company related to Taylor.

Every day GPT-4 becomes more useful for wading through the swath of bullshit.

kube-system5• 3 years ago

I feel like the content in this video is surprising only to people who have no clue how these businesses work.

* A complicated machine that will hurt people if configured improperly can't have the operating parameters changed by the end user? Yeah, I'd do that too, the end users are literally children and unskilled workers, and the business is liable if they mess it up. What exactly does the author think that a food service worker is going to do in the service menu of these machines?

* Franchisees can't modify the equipment as they choose? Yeah, that's the way it works, it's not their decision to make.

* Business partners having to choose a product or service as a result of a contractual obligation? Welcome to B2B product sales. This happens everywhere.

smegger001• 3 years ago

because McDonalds corporate profits off of the deal with the manufacturer/servicer who in turn profits off of the McDonalds franchisees. The franchisees aren't given a choice of what machine and servicers they use as corporate dictates what model of machine they are allowed to use and who is allowed to perform service upon it. So Mcdonalds corporate doesn't care because they aren't the ones loosing money on sales or service fees as they don't run many of the restaurants fore them its a profit center.

gruez10• 3 years ago

because McDonalds corporate profits off of the deal with the manufacturer/servicer who in turn profits off of the McDonalds franchisees

Is there more on this? If they can dig up CEO's emails surely they can dig up the financial arrangements between them and mcdonalds?

Turing_Machine• 3 years ago

they aren't the ones loosing money

From what I'm seeing, besides the monthly rent (in most cases paid to McDonalds), and the required supply purchases, franchisees also have to kick 4% of sales up to corporate.

So corporate is indeed losing money when the machine isn't working (also, they're probably not going to be buying supplies for a broken machine, either).

uoaei• 3 years ago

Because it's never a moral question, it's always a financial one. And the finances shake out quasi-optimally for McDonald's the corporation.

detourdog• 3 years ago

My guess is that they weren't measuring ice cream machine uptime. They were using some other metric. The franchisee is really the one loses sales to a down machine. Corporate McDs is satisfied with the revenue share and doesn't realize more ice cream could be sold.

local_crmdgeon2• 3 years ago

Because they don’t give a shit, just like every incumbent.

It’s why institutions so quickly fall - no one gives a shit. Five Guys and Shake Shack do, and they’re eating McDonald’s lunch

huytersd• 3 years ago

What a joke. McDonald’s may not have the healthiest food but as a corporation they have things locked down. I’ve never seen a place run better at scale than McDonald’s inspite of the bottom of the barrel staff that’s available to them.

gruez10• 3 years ago

“Not sure if there is anything we can do to slow up the franchise community on the other solution,” FitzGerald wrote on October 17, 2020. “Not sure what communication from either McD or Midd can or will go out.”

That's the extent of the "smoking gun" that's in the article. Needless to say, I'm far from convinced it's a "smoking gun" given how short and probably cherry picked it is. Is there a full copy of the email somewhere? All the cases on courtlistener don't show any relevant documents.

VyseofArcadia• 3 years ago

You have to admit, there is a very "will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" ring to it.

mike_d3• 3 years ago

That is a really big deal coming from an executive. Leadership 101 is you never mention a business change or action in the same communication as a situation with a competitor. This guy clearly didn't do his yearly antitrust training.

gruez10• 3 years ago

Leadership 101 is you never mention a business change or action in the same communication as a situation with a competitor

Source?

skissane• 3 years ago

Leadership 101 is you never mention a business change or action in the same communication as a situation with a competitor. This guy clearly didn't do his yearly antitrust training

It depends on the nature of the change/action though?

“We are falling behind competitor X in features… that’s why I’m increasing the R&D budget by 10%, and tasking the head of engineering to close the gap” - where is the antitrust issue in that?

armada651• 3 years ago

That's because he uses "not sure" as weasel words, remove the weasel words and you end up with:

"Is there anything we can do to slow up the franchise community on the other solution? What communication from either McD or Midd can or will go out?"

That already sounds a lot more damning. And this is an executive, so if he's asking questions in an e-mail he's telling you to do something. So anyone working for him will interpret that as:

"We need to do something to slow up the franchise community on the other solution. Send out a communication from McD or Midd."

axus• 3 years ago

"All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have"

"There's nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you've recalculated."

chx• 3 years ago

A few years ago the company I was working for was going through some rapid growth and communication was not great. So when I needed access to a service after months of back and forth nothing happened so kicked the football up the chain and the director responsible wrote this to the relevant team:

my understanding is that he needs a higher level of access in Marketo to be able to accomplish this task. Do you know anything about this?

and presto! less than a day later I got access.

It's just how leaders talk.

TheCleric• 3 years ago

And a thing I've learned with a few executives doing stuff like this: what they say in person, call, etc. that's not being recorded is a lot more direct than what they say in an email that may get pulled in discovery for a lawsuit.

rasz• 3 years ago

This is the equivalent of Gates AARD email

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code

"You never sent me a response on the question of what things an app would do that would make it run with MS-DOS and not run with DR-DOS. Is there [sic] feature they have that might get in our way?"

Good enough for $280 million payout despite AARD code not even being deployed.

jconley• 3 years ago

It seems to me that this is the risk you take when you create an unofficial add-on to any product.

I've helped reverse engineer vehicle ECU's to reprogram the fuel injection, turbo pressure, and spark timing systems. But, we wouldn't have expected the manufacturer to do anything except officially discourage the use of the aftermarket tools. That is the name of the game with unofficial add-ons with access to sensitive control systems.

Disclaimer: I did work for a Middleby subsidiary at the time but I don't know anything that isn't public about this situation. We were all very separate companies.

toxik• 3 years ago

I somehow feel it is a very different thing with ice cream machines versus automotive applications.

gruez10• 3 years ago

Yes, you can probably harm an order of magnitude more people with a contaminated ice cream machine than with a defective vehicle.

gumby• 3 years ago

Sometimes the after market changes increase the incentive to buy the base product. I mean that basically is the computing industry from the 360 on.

dylan6042• 3 years ago

Funny that this is the opinion for this product, but mere mention of this concept for Beeper accessing Apple as an add-on product is thought of in a different manner. Because it's a physical product? Because it's not Apple?

krisoft• 3 years ago

Because people commenting on HN are not a hivemind. Some people think this some people think that and there is no guarantee or requirement that these independent thoughts from independent people are consistent.

mrpippy• 3 years ago

I guess the difference here is that there's 3 separate parties: McDonalds corporate, Taylor (makes the ice cream machines), and the franchisee. McDonalds requires the franchisee to buy a specific machine from Taylor (or a dramatically more $$ one from an Italian company IIRC), and places other requirements on the franchisee, but is it legal to interfere in the relationship between the franchisee and Taylor?

bumby13• 3 years ago

legal to interfere in the relationship between the franchisee and Taylor?

I think the term is "tortious interference" but it is notoriously very difficult to have upheld in court. You can obviously compete but you can't deliberately undermine a contract with a competitor. IANAL, but from my reading of the article, that would rely on how substantive the safety claims that McD made are in disincentivizing the use of the 3rd party equipment. (not to mention they party wasn't explicitly named in those safety communications)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference

jamestanderson• 3 years ago

But, we wouldn't have expected the manufacturer to do anything except officially discourage the use of the aftermarket tools.

I think the issue here is that McDonalds was discouraging the use of the tool, not Taylor (the manufacturer).

Dem_Boys9• 3 years ago

I worked at McDonalds for 4 years. 2 as a kitchen worker. 2 as a shift manager. I've personally cleaned these machines too many times to count.

I've never heard one person tell "the truth" about this (at least in my personal experience).

Our ice cream machine was often down too but not because it was broken. Because we were short staffed and making ice cream is a HUGE time sink for employees. The manager would just tell the employees "no more ice cream" and they all knew what's up. They'd be very happy that they could focus on food and McCafe and thus not disappoint customers too much due to slow service.

Folks don't quite understand that McDonald's is consistently short staffed and the workers are often doing the work of 2-3 people just to try to get you fast and hot food.

robertlagrant3• 3 years ago

the workers are often doing the work of 2-3 people

How is that possible?

alphameese2• 3 years ago

When I worked there during our lunch rush, we would have a person dedicated to every task, fries, coffee, orders, bagging. When it came to the dinner rush, we would have half the staff or less then our lunch rush. So in a sense it is the work of 2 to 3 people. Also during overnight we would have only one person in the front, and one in the back. Once Uber eats came on the scene our workload increased 3x or more, but no extra staff was added! :-)

Edit: that’s not even mentioning when we would be short staffed, due to people not showing up / calling in, which happened every other day it felt like, and the shift wouldn’t be replaced.

kube-system5• 3 years ago

What they mean is "the workers have 2-3x more work queued up than can be handled for satisfactory operations"

Quality of service will suffer.

Dem_Boys9• 3 years ago

I'll counter you. How do you find competent, reliable people that show up to work consistently and work hard for $9.00 an hour?

You're doing the work of your buddies who called in. Your buddies called in because they're 17 and they're dad made them get this job. They hate it! This happens every damn day.

poulsbohemian2• 3 years ago

Back in the early 2000s, I worked on a product that was the only profit center in a public company. While there were people who worked on overall technical architecture, it was only myself and one front end dev dedicated to the product. Other products that ran in the red had dozens of employees because they were the things that got touted to Wall Street, but we were the very boring thing that kept the company alive.

Back in high school I worked in fast food as a closer. One front end person, one backend person, one manager for dinner rush, late rush, clean up from the day both in the kitchen and the store, some basic prep for the next day (morning shift did main prep), and they kept pushing us to get our times down so that we could walk out the door as soon as the store closed rather than taking any time after closing for our cleanup, etc. Our labor cost per hour was likely around $17. The energy to run the ovens, refrigerators, etc was fairly consistent, while our labor cost for any extra time after closing was a variable cost that ate into their profit margin.

Doesn't matter what industry -- ask a doctor about their workload -- if management can squeeze labor costs, they will.

zaptrem• 3 years ago

What made it a time sink? How could it be made faster?

voisin3• 3 years ago

Yeah I wondered this too. Watching them work, it certainly doesn’t look like they take more time than most McCafe drinks or making burgers.

cbm-vic-20• 3 years ago

I've never worked at a McDonald's, but I have had to operate and maintain a soft-serve ice cream machine. I don't eat soft serve ice cream because I know how long it takes to clean these machines properly. I've seen what happens when they aren't. I don't trust that places like fast food joints that are understaffed, where the employees aren't motivated enough to do a thorough job, would take the time necessary to make sure those machines are clean.

Dem_Boys9• 3 years ago

It's a relative time sink and the toughest logistical challenge in the whole store for workers due to soft serve melting so fast.

You must make the ice cream last. The car has to be at the window (or customer at the counter) when you start. This is the only item in the store that must be prepared like this so you must always have a free person to do this. McDonalds does't provide the labor budget to have "free people" standing around to get your ice cream when you need it. Making ice cream almost always hurt another area of the store in a small way.

Also making a soft serve ice cream cone is much harder than you think. Took me ~2 months to get it down. Dont even get me started on dipped cones.

Fun fact: This is why your mcflurry doesnt have candy at the bottom. Workers hate ice cream! They dont blend it with the machine, they'll just hand blend it to be quick.

The fix would be to take the burden off the the employees. Automate it just like they did drinks. Or increase the labor allowance to have the staff to handle ice cream. They'll probably never do that though.

schneems2• 3 years ago

This question makes me think that you believe the problem is an efficiency that can be solved rather than an intentional choice.

Ive worked at several restaurants as a waiter and food prep staff. The businesses have very thin margins and most costs are fixed except for…labor.

When it’s lunch rush, it feels like every atom of your being is pressed to the limit. Then when that’s done your manager has to come around and start assigning random cleaning and other tasks so people aren’t just hanging around.

When they schedule, they want to just *barely* handle the busiest time or otherwise it’s an inefficiency in the system.

Also to mention, restaurant staff aren’t the most…stable workforce in the world. So even if they do schedule to have some buffer, people will quit and call in sick on a dime.

I know what op is talking about when they say they do the work of 2-3 people and I believe them. The system is designed to squeeze that extra bit out of everyone.

If there was a magic mystery inefficiency they found, that would translate to decreasing staffing per shift, not increased breathing room for the individual workers. (IMHO)

alphameese2• 3 years ago

In my experience the major time sinks happen when multiple McFlurrys were ordered. Mixing one takes about 15-30 seconds, and if too many are ordered at once the ice cream would start to come out slower.

When you’re backlogged with multiple people in line, multiple orders, and you’re a 1-3 person crew in the front, every second counts. Ice cream was the easiest thing to cut because of the stereotype that it was always broken so people didn’t question that it was “down”, and those precious seconds made my 17 year old life much easier.

a2tech• 3 years ago

Also staff not keeping the ice cream machine full or ignoring the warnings on the screen or...all the other things. As long as people followed all the rules the machines they were bullet proof.

Dem_Boys9• 3 years ago

Exactly! Our ice cream machines were well made and always worked as they should. They'd be down for a couple hours a month to clean but that's it.

The machine would flash and beep when the ice cream mix was low so we were always eager to shut it up.

jandrese• 3 years ago

The intersection of minimum wage part time jobs with no benefits and motivated contentious workers is unfortunately fairly small.

yterdy14• 3 years ago

Every retail/food service job is understaffed. You ask what people displaced by AI will do for a living? That. They'll do that. Because, actually, we do need people at PoS, if we're selling to other people. Hint hint as to why you should be supporting "unskilled" labor unions, high wages for those workers, and the destigmatizing of those types of jobs.

bumby13• 3 years ago

Displaced workers going into unskilled labor doesn't seem like an idealized "post-AI" situation. If anything, it might be something we should guard against. There's nothing wrong with honest work, but some would probably paint that scenario as dystopian, if you consider that many people think creative and autonomous work are important to human flourishing. If anything, I'd want AI to take over those rote jobs so people can focus on that type of creative work they tend to find more fulfilling.

gruez10• 3 years ago

Because, actually, we do need people at PoS, if we're selling to other people.

They haven't installed ordering machines[1] at your local mcdonalds yet?

[1] https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ihydn_7eemN...

kevin_thibedeau• 3 years ago

Reminds me of a short story from 30 years ago that centered around fast food workers who were micromanaged by an AI directing every daily activity.

legitster• 3 years ago

high wages for those workers

Part of the problem is that for some of these jobs, there is only so much money an employee is able to generate. And for some industries you can only get away with raising prices so much (fast food is relatively easy to raise prices).

I have friends in the grocery industry and they are so hard up for workers (even unionized/good-paying ones) and the margins are already so razor thin that they are looking at starting to close the store on certain days of the week.

So even in unskilled positions, you are going to need huge increases in labor productivity. Which means more customers per employee. So bigger fast food places, bigger stores, bigger farms, bigger hospitals, etc.

zlg_codes• 3 years ago

Not aimed at you, but the other commenters on your comment.

There is no such thing as unskilled labor. Put a fucking normie from the street into any of these 'unskilled' jobs and find out just how many skills are needed just to do something like customer service.

Looking down on those people is what will lead to another internal conflict. They'll be the ones you depend on when society goes to shit.

WalterBright17• 3 years ago

If McDonald's paid their workers like software engineers, they'd have to charge at least $50 a burger, assuming the sales volume stays the same. But if burgers were $50, the sales volume would drop to zero, and the business would collapse.

seanmcdirmid4• 3 years ago

I actually prefer fast food restaurants with ordering kiosks and not manned POSes. Just like self checkout, no need to wait in a long line.

JohnFen3• 3 years ago

You ask what people displaced by AI will do for a living? That. They'll do that.

And then the dystopia will be complete.

yencabulator3• 3 years ago

Because, actually, we do need people at PoS, if we're selling to other people.

I don't know about that. I used to order from a kiosk at a Burger King in 2007 and skip the line.. At a fast food joint, point of sale is likely the easiest job to replace with a machine. My guess for the hardest to replace is cleaning..

ngcc_hk• 3 years ago

Gradually not sure. Do we need people in pos. You already do your own order in kiosk and phone. No staff. Cut that. Sorry you cannot order thee we do it take your order.

The food arrived by order number as like today in slot.

Then the backend machine vision can enough …

Sorry …

I did think my Go playing is safe you know.

pengaru2• 3 years ago

One problem with your claims is this is pretty well documented as a uniquely McDonalds franchise problem at this point.

Competing fast-food franchises serve similar frozen dairy products, in a similar staffing environment, without their machines constantly being out of service.

This video covered the situation fairly well IIRC:

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

Dem_Boys9• 3 years ago

You may be right! Just my experience working there for 4 years at 6 different stores.

This happened all the time at every store I worked at.

BTW Our machine would legit break too. Maybe once a year it would be down for a day.

Zenst• 3 years ago

Had a stint myself and cleaned those Taylor shake machines, takes time as have to disassembler the entire chamber - lots of sharp blades and not many trusted to do it right. Let alone checking all the O-rings, which you often need spares and short of the one you need. Then inspections....so often find they would at least try to close the machine early to shorten the close, and often be down. Sometimes due to lack of milk for the machine and no they can't just pop down the local supermarket to get some - least not known that ever happen, nor risked as be job ending kinda things as cutting into that franchise supply grip.

jldugger• 3 years ago

It's kinda wild how a franchise built around a milkshake machine now cannot bother with milkshakes.

jjulius• 3 years ago

The company whose OG sign said "McDonald's Famous Hamburgers" the year they introduced "fast food" principles into their operations was actually built around shakes?

pinkmuffinere• 3 years ago

To be fair, Wikipedia says McDonald’s is now 80 (!!!) years old, I expect many foundational aspects of the business have changed since then. But it is wild to see particular aspects of the evolution. I wonder how much was anticipated/planned, and how much “just happened”

citizenpaul• 3 years ago

They did pretty much give up on the shakes not long after becoming a popular place. They were one of if not the first to switch from actual cow milk to chemical gelatin formulations.

So they really have always been struggling with the difficulties of quickly serving an ice cream product for their entire existence. That's a long time to have a thorn in your side and put up with it. 80 years according to the other comment.

bluescrn• 3 years ago

They're undrinkable since the switch to paper straws anyway.

Racing0461• 3 years ago

I don't think people would care if mcd says they are short staffed. I think people care due to mcd lying.

Dem_Boys9• 3 years ago

As a manager you can't tell the customers this. You'd lose your job if your store manager or any higher ups find out.

You lie to the customers and the workers cover for you (the shift manager) because they hate making ice cream.

seanmcdirmid4• 3 years ago

It also needs to be cleaned (daily when I was crew), and that often means taking it apart early to get ahead of closing, or putting it together late because you didn’t have enough time to get to it before breakfast ended, or maybe just don’t put it back together at all because the person that usually did it was gone that day.

derefr3• 3 years ago

This makes sense for daytime-rush "broken" ice cream machines; but almost all the reports I've seen about "broken" machines are about people coming into a dead store during the night-shift, when the employees would in theory have nothing better to do than make them an ice cream.

jvanderbot• 3 years ago

You underestimate the creativity and laziness of night shift food workers. Once a daytime manager says "no ice cream", how far away is a night shift worker from just repeating that mantra?

Source: Was one, did that for other things all the time.

" Sorry, we don't deliver to your area on Mondays "

Dem_Boys9• 3 years ago

Your right about this occuring mostly at night.

The store looks dead but do you know if the night crew is caught up on their closing responsibilities? Doing dishes, stocking nuggest sauces, cleaning the grill, disassembling the fry hopper, organizing the stock room, etc...

If the store closes with none of these done the manager will blow their labor budget due to taking 3 hours to close and the employees will be pissed.

Your rebuttal is a good one and your somewhat right. Grabbing you an ice cream cone when there's no customers likely isn't a big deal. The manager usually cuts the ice cream while being overwhelmed (Ahh! 7 ice cream cones and we have 10 cars behind them. No more ice cream!) and never tells employees to start offering it again. Offering ice cream again would piss off the employees and also slow down the manager who's trying to hit labor and drive through times

november84• 3 years ago

How long ago was this and have the machines changed over the years? Because this ice cream machine always broken seems like anew phenomenon compared to my tenure back around 97.

I was there for about a year IIRC, other than cleaning the machine "making ice cream" was dumping the premixed liquid into the top two compartments.

toyg• 3 years ago

I like antitrust cases like the next man, but this is weak sauce. They built a sharecropping add-on that was always going to live or die at the whim of Taysol and McDonald's, it was never going to last. Whether Taysol put it in writing or not, it doesn't really matter.

I guess their lawyers are having fun billing their hours, though.

projektfu• 3 years ago

It's funny to me that in the US, McDonald's has ice cream but doesn't really try to sell it, but in Brazil it seems to be their #1 product, and there are McDonald's stores that do not have burgers, just ice cream.

pjot• 3 years ago

In the Philippines McDonald’s sells spaghetti!

neilv• 3 years ago

Going only from the article, I'm skeptical of part of the argument:

It also countered in the complaint any claim that a Kytch device's remote connection to an ice cream machine could result in the machine turning on while a person's hand was inside—in fact, Taylor's own manual advises unplugging the machine before servicing it, and removing the door of the machine to access its rotating barrels automatically disables its motor.

I suspect someone who didn't design real-world systems might read this and think "Of course it's not a safety problem, because the machine is unplugged, Silly," or "No one can get hurt by the rotating barrels, because the motor is disabled when something-something."

Meanwhile, people who have designed systems are assuming, "Of course, sometimes the machine won't be unplugged when being maintained. That's one of the things we have to assume will go wrong. And text in a user manual doesn't seem a credible component of safety design here, implying always-perfect operator behavior of teenage fast food workers who are stressed and fatigued."

A lot of engineers' questions come to mind (e.g., about that interlock and other mechanisms and safety scenarios, and how the third-party add-on integrates), but this isn't my specialty, and I'm wondering what that UL certification covered.

I can totally believe that many companies will do all sorts of underhanded things, including colluding to smear a competitor, but I'd want a credible assessment by expert specialist engineers.

ivanjermakov• 3 years ago

Obligatory "The REAL Reason McDonalds Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4

Waterluvian• 3 years ago

Is this purely an American thing or am I just unusually lucky? I’ve never ever had a case where the machine was down in Canada.

throwaway2990• 3 years ago

Is broken ice cream machine an American thing because in 30 years I’ve never been into a McDonald’s in Asia/Pacific that had a broken machine. It’s always working.

senden9• 3 years ago

It seams so. I life in Europe and never had this problem in a McDonald's restaurant.

ac130kz• 3 years ago

McD's is making more money on their "authorized" repairs (those companies are also owned by them). That's it.

jeffrallen• 3 years ago

Monopolists gonna monopolize.

McDonald's ice cream machine hackers say they found 'smoking gun'

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