The battle – over who can service McDonald’s soft serve equipment – has been locked in a classic trench standoff for years. But the McAllies recently gained a win over the Taylor Axis of Stubbornness, allowing McD’s to fix its own ice cream machines…
A typical Taylor soft-serve ice cream machine…
It’s become a thing of legend. That McDonald’s ice cream machines are ‘always out of order’. As usual, the use of the superlative ‘always’ is a mark of the legend’s almost mythical place in the Universal McBelief System. The truth is, some machines are often out of order for extended periods of time because franchisees and store operators can’t afford to get them fixed…
Double-edged spatula
Those who follow the cold war between the Taylor restaurant equipment Empire and the Fast Food Rebels, over who has the ‘right’ to service the chain’s troubled soft-serve machines, can celebrate at least a small victory….
Open to interpretation?
TODAY.com reports that, “On Oct. 25, the United States Copyright Office granted a copyright exemp-tion that gives restaurants like McDonald’s the ‘right to repair’ broken [ice cream] machines by cir-cumventing digital locks that prevent them from being [worked on] by anyone other than [the] manufacturer.”
It’s been a long fight. And in spite of winning a key battle, the war may not be over yet.
The history
This conflict goes back 70 years, to the beginnings of McDonld’s as a franchised chain. The guy who made McD’s the powerhouse it is today, Ray Kroc, agreed – in a handshake deal with the Taylor resto machine people – that Taylor could retain sole right to open up and fix the soft serve machines Kroc mandated were to go into every McD’s location.
That was because Taylor had a copyright on aspects of its machines and the process by which they operate. And they retain it to this day.
As a result, only Taylor-certified technicians can fix the machines when they break down. In fact.the company builds a digital lock into each of its machines to keep others out.
Fast-forward to the 1980s
That’s when the issues involving soft serve machines started to become serious. As McD’s and other Taylor-system users started promoting their soft-serve-based menu items more heavily the machines started breaking down more frequently.
One early diagnosis concluded that performing factory-mandated regular maintenance on the ma-chines was among the most-hated ‘cleanup’ jobs among McD’s employees. And skipped cleanings only contributed to the machines breaking down more often.
When they did break down, several other factors came into play. McD’s couldn’t call other techs to fix them. That would breach the contract with Taylor and maybe even void the warranties on the 5-figure devices.
Add to that the reality that there were relatively few Taylor-certified techs on the landscape. That meant not only did machine users have to pay Taylor’s $300 per hour service fee – plus parts and labour. They also had to pay for travel to and from the user’s site. Which was sometimes hours from the nearest tech.
As a result… The machines often sat ‘out of order’ for long periods of time.
Now things have changed
Or have they?
This past July, the official McStats claimed that the chain’s ice cream machines were up and running 95 percent of the time, on average, across the chain. Legions of fans across the social media universe begged to diagree. At least, that was their perception.
Since 2020, consumers have been able to check whether the soft serve at their local McLocation is currently in service. A third-party has created ‘McBroken’ which provides a map showing the situation in real time. I checked, just moments ago, and there were a heck of a lot of red spots on the map. McBroken reported that almost 15 percent of all soft serve machines across the US and Canada were out of serve. The hardest-hit jurisdiction was New York State, where one out of every three soft serve squirters were down.
But there’s always a catch
While it’s now legal for third parties to fix the machines, it’s not legal for them to buy digital ‘lock-picks’ that would allow them access. And Taylor isn’t selling or otherwise giving third parties access to it’s own digital ‘keys’.
My take
Like car dealers, who rely on ongoing service department revenues to generate the lion’s share of their revenues, Taylor sold users their machines but retained the sole right to service them.
The copyright law easement has removed that block. But there is still a hitch in the system pre-venting third parties from taking advantage of the copyright exemption…
And Taylor says the overall situation has not changed materially, from it’s point of view.
What next?
~ Maggie J.