"We have our top scientists working on the ice cream machine, it's a very complicated machine, no body really knows how it works. Adam works flipping burgers but we were talking about the machine earlier and he knows so much about it, he's a big genius, but they don't know how to fix it yet."
Watch this documentary and you'll find out the reason behind why the machines are always broken.
Short answer: The same company that makes the ice cream machines for mcdonalds also makes the machines for Wendy's, Burger King, In n Out, and several others.
McDonalds ice cream machines are broken because the company that manufactures the machines specifically make 1/3 of the annual profit just fixing McDonalds ice cream machines. Other company's machine run around a 99.9996% failure rate or 3 in a million don't work while McDonalds has a failure rate of about 15% of all machines not working worldwide.
McDonalds KNOWINGLY allows this ice cream machine that constantly break to be used in their stores and won't allow the franchise owners to use other machines.
McDonalds is capitalizing on their own franchise owners and price gouges them just so an ice cream machine company can make a few more dollars. The ice cream machine company has been around as long as McDonalds has so they work together but it's still messed up EVERYONE is effected by this dumbassary just so a single company can make a couple more bucks.
I had a friend that worked at McDonalds. She said the machines arent actually always down all the time. She said they are a bitch to clean, and have to be cleaned daily, often when they are super busy. So its easier to just say its broken.
Ice cream machine repairman said it "breaks" automatically if you're NOT cleaning it every day.
They had that poor dude out almost every week for the same damn problem. Dude was frustrated and tired of explaining to the GM what they needed to do to fix it: clean the machine daily.
That is literally the excuse that's given to GMs just so the GMs can think it's their employees fault and/or lazy when in reality they are cleaning it. But if a small problem occurs during the cleaning cycle their is zero information to tell the employee what went wrong in the process.
The machines interface are purposely designed poorly to make sure the employee doesn't know where the problem occured within the process. So they try their best to clean the machine daily, and they do, but after running the cleaning process over and over it just says to clean again which leads to calling "the guy".
This is absolute bullshit. I worked at a McDonald's for over two years and our machine was only down during service hours if it didnt get its heat cycle ran overnight, or for the first few hours of a day, biweekly when it needed to be taken apart and cleaned.
Firstly, it's not even cleaning the machine that's needed to be done daily. It's just a heat cycle that kills any bacteria that might of grown in the mix during use. Generally speaking, the mix is kept just above water freezing Temps, from about 36 - 40 degrees during operation.
The heat cycle, usually ran at night, requires no more input than ensuring a required amount of mix be in the machine and then pressing a few buttons. The process takes a few hours to complete, around 4 or 5 and is very, very simple.
If the heat cycle fails due to not having enough mix in the machine, which is the only reason I've ever seen it fail in my two years at different locations, then all that has to be done is to put mix in it and then restart the heat cycle. It'll take another 4 to 5 hours, but thats just how long it takes. It's not some scam.
Actually cleaning the machine though is a different story. It's required to be done at least once every two weeks. Been to places that do it once a week though. The whole machine is turned off, emptied, taken apart and completely cleaned, then refilled and turned back on. The machine has to cool back down to the previously mentioned temp which takes probably two hours on top of the lengthy cleaning process which I'd say takes at least 2 - 4 hours if you are thorough.
Outside of those two processes, I've never had the machine at the location I worked at or any of the other locations I've temporarily worked at breakdown for no reason. It is entirely the fault of the staff at these locations for not cleaning them properly and not filling them properly so heat cycles don't fail. And just so we are clear, the machine might not tell you what is wrong on the display, but it sure as hell comes with a manual that tells you how to fix the issues and McDonald's stores keep all equipment manuals in the office in a binder where every manager is trained to find them and use them. Again, it really is a failure on part of the staff.
That being said, a lot of locations are 24 hours. I assume that these locations run their heat cycles near the same time as non 24 hour locations and this leads to many people just telling customers the machines are down, which people take to mean broken when in reality it means being cleaned. The least heavy hours of operation are the prime time to run their cycles, and that tends to overlap with the time most munchies driven individuals crave ice cream.
It's crazy that they make them so complex. Wouldn't a (gasp) non-digital in any way plain old fashioned stainless steel industrial soft-serve machines with a lever, like they used to have at buffet style diners? Those things took a ton of abuse, kid after kid rankin' on the handle, and they seemed to always be on.
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u/Snoo-3715 28d ago
"We have our top scientists working on the ice cream machine, it's a very complicated machine, no body really knows how it works. Adam works flipping burgers but we were talking about the machine earlier and he knows so much about it, he's a big genius, but they don't know how to fix it yet."