McDonald's ice cream machine excuse changed after I looked up the actual numbers

I've been hearing the 'ice cream machine is broken' line for years like everyone else. But last week I actually looked up the maintenance records they have to report to the FDA. Turns out the machines break down about 6 times per month on average per location. That's way more than I thought. The real kicker is that the repair process takes 3-4 hours each time because of how the machine is designed. I found this on a food industry blog that tracks this stuff using public data. So when they say it's broken it's probably true but also they could fix it faster if they wanted to. Has anyone else looked into how often their local spot actually has a working machine?

3 comments

3 Comments

matthewmiller3d ago

See I totally agree with you @garcia.jake because Ive seen the same thing at my local spot. The machine was running but the ice cream came out all watery and thin. The girl at the counter just shrugged and said machine was broken. But like the machine was literally on and making noise. So I think there's a big difference between a true breakdown where it wont dispense at all vs when the quality is bad and they just dont wanna deal with fixing it right then. Ive even asked a manager once and they admitted the cleaning process takes like 4 hours so if its close to closing time they just say its down to save the hassle. So yeah 6 times a month sounds about right but half of those are probably just them not wanting to do the cleanup work.

smith.elliot2d ago

Wait, @matthewmiller, isn't that just a fancy word for them being lazy? My buddy worked the night shift at one for a month and said they'd call it "down for maintenance" at 9pm just so they could start closing up early.

garcia.jake3d ago

Man, '6 times per month average' is wild to think about. That's basically every 5 days they're down for a few hours. But here's the thing I keep wondering about (and I've checked a couple local spots myself) - do they count things like 'we haven't cleaned it in 3 days so the soft serve is chunky' as a legitimate maintenance issue? Because I've seen some McDonald's where the machine is technically running but the ice cream comes out looking like watery cottage cheese. So when they say it's 'broken' are we talking about a real mechanical failure or just 'it's not worth the hassle to deal with right now'?