A fix for McDonald’s soft-serve machines?

You have no problem buying burgers at McDonald’s. But the ice cream? This is another story, as discovered by correspondent David Pogue after leaving a franchise. “I’m sorry,” they told him, “we don’t really have any ice cream at the moment.”

Broken McDonald’s ice cream machines have become a national brand. Last week, 19% of them went down in San Diego and 28% in New York City. This is according to McBroken.com, a website designed to track machines in real time.

McDonald’s says rumors about its breakdowns are highly exaggerated, but even they have mocked the problem. In 2020, the company tweeted:

For decades, Taylor, based in Illinois, has been the exclusive supplier of serving machines and smoothies for McDonald’s. Jeremy O’Sullivan became acquainted with these machines in 2011, when he and his partner, Melissa Nelson, founded a line of frozen yogurt kiosks. They call Taylor’s machines picky and over-engineered.

O’Sullivan showed Pogue a typical error message on a drive like McDonald’s soft service machine: “‘R BRL> 41F after SL’? Just tell me what BRL means!”

Now, just because a machine is broken doesn’t mean it’s really broken. It may just be going through its mandatory, four-hour, daily pasteurization sequence. “Every step of this process has to be done and executed in a certain amount of time, or everything fails and has to be restarted,” O’Sullivan said.

Pogue asked, “I’ll come in the morning and tell you, what?”

“Heat cycle fails”.

O’Sullivan even claims that the fragile design is intentional, so Taylor can charge for the repair costs. He said, “A McDonald’s employee is supposed to pick up the phone, call a Taylor technician,” Hey, please get out. We really want to pay Taylor $ 500 more for repairs. “

Well, that may not be especially true. Taylor declined an interview in front of the camera, but said in an email, “Taylor doesn’t make any money from maintaining his machines. All repairs to Taylor’s machines are run by a network of independent dealers.”

Although this is not entirely true, either. Taylor charges these technicians for training costs and about 25% of the company’s revenue comes from the sale of spare parts.

So to help with the situation, O’Sullivan and Nelson invented Kytch, a small computer that plugs into the front panel of the soft service machine. “It deciphers very complicated messages that maybe your typical employee doesn’t understand,” Nelson said.

“That would say, ‘HPR> 41 SL,’ what would Kytch’s message say is more useful than that?”

“Perhaps something as simple as, ‘This hopper has warmed up because you left the lid off,'” O’Sullivan replied.

The Kytch device also offers remote control. If the machine shuts down while the owner is at home, Kytch informs them and allows them to restart the machine using their phone.

The founders say the Kytch add-on was a hit with McDonald’s owners, and even received approval from the head of the franchise owners’ team, who said at a 2020 meeting: ” I really think this device can reduce the complexity of your restaurants … and help drive cash flow while keeping your machines running. “

But without Kytch’s knowledge, Taylor had been developing his own similar device and was studying Kytch to mimic its features. A Taylor executive emailed, “So how can we do the same thing Kytch is doing?”

Then, in late 2020, McDonald’s sent an email to the owners of the 13,000 franchises. According to O’Sullivan, “They said, ‘Don’t use Kytch.’

“He essentially said that Kytch could cause serious human harm,” Nelson added.

“How would this happen?” Pogue asked.

“Well, you can’t,” O’Sullivan replied.

The note said Kytch’s remote control function could cause the machine to start running while someone was cleaning or maintaining it, endangering employees’ fingers.

But maybe that’s not exactly true either. said Nelson. “All these dangerous parts inside the machine? When you take the door out, Kytch can’t work. Nothing can happen.”

“The only danger Kytch posed was never Taylor’s end result,” O’Sullivan said.

After McDonald’s note, the business ran out and Kytch closed. The founders are now suing Taylor and McDonald’s for millions of dollars.

“Reverse engineering is not illegal; it’s a dirty pool, but it’s not illegal,” Pogue said.

O’Sullivan said, “There are a lot of things here that are super illegal. You can’t say something is dangerous when it’s not.”

Nelson added: “So these are mostly fake ads, which interfere with our business expectations.”

McDonald’s also declined an interview, but said in an email that the Kytch device is unauthorized equipment that Kytch never sent to McDonald’s for security testing. McDonald’s calls the lawsuit “unpublished”; and Taylor says it “has been based on false allegations.”

But until the lawsuits are finalized, Taylor has put her own device on ice.

So for now, we can all expect more moments on social media with crashed machines.

O’Sullivan said, “You know, I think there’s an illusion that you just have to work really hard and build a great mouse trap. naive enough to think, “My God, they’ll love our solution.” That’s not the case! “

For more information:

• McBroken.com
• McDonalds
• Kytch
• Taylor Company

Story produced by Dustin Stephens. Editor: Mike Levine.

See also:

• The FTC is investigating why McDonald’s McFlurry ice cream machines are often broken
• The real “founder” (“Sunday Morning”)
• McDonald’s employees accuse fast food chain of abuse and harassment in the workplace (“Sunday Morning”)

In:
• McDonalds