Public Knowledge and iFixit want the right to repair commercial kitchen gear.

McDonald’s soft-serve ice cream machines are regularly broken, and it’s not just your perception. When repair vendor and advocate iFixit was filming a video about the topic, it checked tracking map McBroken and found that 34 percent of the machines in the state of New York were reported inoperable. As I write this, the nationwide number of broken machines is just above 14 percent.

To improve the nation’s semi-frozen milk fat infrastructure, iFixit has done two things. One, as first reported by 404 Media, is to join with interest group Public Knowledge to petition the Copyright Office for an exemption allowing people to fix commercial equipment, such as McDonald’s ice cream machines and other industrial kitchen equipment, without fear of reprisal under Section 1201 of the DMCA.

  • mo_ztt ✅@lemmy.worldEnglish
    64·
    2 years ago

    This dude on Youtube did an in-depth examination of the weird corporate reasons why the ice cream machines can’t be maintained properly. Sorry for the Youtube link, but I honestly couldn’t find a text story that went into the same type of analysis about it.

    Edit: Timestamped the link to skip some folderol at the beginning

    • e-ratic@kbin.social
      462·
      2 years ago

      Also, from someone who used to work at mcdonalds when I was in college - it’s not the fault of the employees that the shake machine is broken and getting pissy at someone earning minimum wage because you can’t have your mcflurry is peak entitlement and assholeism.

  • RosalieMorgan@kbin.social
    26·
    2 years ago

    There’s a comment at the end of the article explaining that the McDonald’s machines are somewhat unique in having a nightly pasteurization process that allows them to go two weeks between cleanings instead of requiring nightly cleaning like other machines.

    Listeria is a risk if ice cream machines are not properly maintained. Recent case linked to ice cream machines: https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/20/us/tacoma-milkshake-listeria-deaths/index.html

    Not that there are not clearly other issues at play. Just a couple important pieces of what’s going on that were not covered in the article itself.

    • roguetrick@kbin.social
      20·
      2 years ago

      And to be clear, they’re mostly down because the nightly boil of the ice cream mixture wasn’t completed due to overfilling the machine making it unable to reach the temp. The service company refuses to let the workers know that and the machine doesn’t volunteer that information.

    • snooggums@kbin.social
      441·
      2 years ago

      It really isn’t once you understand the basics.

      1. Some company got a contract with McDonald’s to do all their ice cream machines, probably through a personal connection. This contract included expensive maintenance.
      2. The company made a shit product, probably to save costs. It both doesn’t work well and is a pain to service.
      3. McDonald’s has decided that the lost revenue is not as big of a deal as getting out of that shitty contract with a shitty company that made a shitty product.

      That is all there is to it.

      • mo_ztt ✅@lemmy.worldEnglish
        40·
        2 years ago
        1. McDonalds and Taylor are fighting tooth and nail to prevent people from circumventing their weird agreement and maintaining their machines successfully, in a Kafkaesque indictment of the whole concept that competition in a free market will lead to a sensible world
      • _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        10·
        2 years ago

        I’ve watched the fascinating YouTube documentary on it but it still seems crazy that the company is fighting so hard to stay shitty and terrible. They’ve attacked people trying to help too, like wtf?

  • EyesEyesBaby@lemmy.worldEnglish
    91·
    2 years ago

    This must be US-only, I’ve never seen an ice cream machine out of service at McD’s in Europe.