Why McDonald's Ice Cream Machines Are Always Broken and How To Fix Them 

This was a great way to get an ice-cream machine for the office, and write it off as a business expense... "Jeff, that's your third soft serve today!" "I need to test this machine thoroughly! I'm just doing my job!"

I honestly thought this was a joke video, but I’m impressed with the steps y’all are taking re right to repair! Keep it up!!

You’re forgetting the part where Taylor acquired the Kytch device, reverse engineered it and started offering a paid service not as good as the Kytch while suing Kytch out of existence

As a McDonalds employee in Australia I’ve personally never seen our ice cream machine break or require repairs outside of the time from 2-6am where it is in heat treatment. It seems like this is a uniquely American problem which might indicate malicious tampering of the machines by Taylor that make the machines break down more often. Edit: before this video I didn’t even know about the error codes on these machines as I’ve never seen one, and I’ve worked at McDonald’s for ~3 years

I worked for Mcdonalds for many years and was the main person in charge of our icecream machine and McCafé coffee/smoothie maintenance, was trained by Taylor to do the cleaning and maintenance and would often do all repairs I was able to do on it to prevent a call to Taylor. Couple of things to point out you're absolutely correct a lot of the downtime has to do with the heat cycle or if it wasn't cleaned. However, a lot of the stores that I would go to (my stores franchisee had many stores and would cycle me around to others stores to do said maintenance) tended to have older machines as well as shake and ice cream combos machines. And 4 hours was how long it took UNINTERRUPTED to clean it. often times I would be pulled from my cleaning to help with a rush or to hand out breaks for other employees. this added to the time it took. often times i would go in at 3am before the heatcycle, clean it, to bypass that days hea Part of the consequence of having both of those combined is that if one side broke often it would affect the other one. So if the hake machine side got overheated or overworked the whole machine would lock down. Also the cleaning point you brought up while extremely valid that it takes about four hours, this cleaning maintenance was only done once every two weeks. In fact McDonald's has/had an agreement with Taylor dating back since the beginning which states that they have exclusive rights to not have to clean their machines as frequently. So if you were in another restaurant with a taylor machine you would have to do this cleaning cycle every week. how gross the shake machine gets after 2 weeks is the reason I will never eat softserve ice-cream to this day unless its within 3 days of its cleaning. What this video doesn't show is what that machine looks like after one or two weeks. The nightly heating cycle would cause the shake mix to bake/build up onto the parts. It's this viscous goop that builds up over time and hardens even if done correctly. because the heat cycle gets so hot, its very much like if you boiled milk and that white gum like build up on the bottom of the pan. And we know that build up in mechanical devices can cause them to fail. This machine also doesn't show the pump apparatus that would be used to pump shake mix into the main cylinder under pressure. A lot of Taylor machines have these and they're a critical fail point. They're metal on the outside but their insides are made out of a hard plastic with gaskets that tend to get chewed up as they are moving and dont get relubbed until the by weakly cleaning. Which while are simple enough to replace might not be something your average McDonald's employee would know to look for and a franchisee for example might call Taylor to effectively replace a rubber gasket the size of a rubber band that's causing the whole thing to break. I cant think of any thing else but if you have any questions feel free to ask and ill do my best to answer.

I used to work for Baskin Robbin’s and had to learn to clean our soft serve machine, I have no doubt this company is designing these machines to break at some point based off how much they charge McDonald’s for repairs. Not one working for BR did I ever have a broken soft serve machine, not one time. Nor have i ever been to a BR that has had a broken soft serve machine, same with Dairy Queen, this is too much of a coincidence and i sense a law suit on the horizon

I worked at McDonalds for 5 years in the 80s so I know a lot has changed. That being said, we were only 24 hours on weekends so one if the nightly tasks was to completely strip down the ice cream and shake machines and clean them. For an experienced person this took about 30-40 minutes to do both. We still had to clean them on weekends and from turning it off to stripping it all down, cleaning it and reassembly was maybe 2.5-3 hours including defrost. Under that routine maintenance (which at least at the store I worked at was sstrictly followed) I don't recall a single repair call-out. The worst issue was that the ice cream machine hit capacity and we had to stop serving it for 30 minutes or so. Those machines were probably 10 years old when I started working there and still worked perfectly when I left. I think this is a good example where adding technology does not make things better

I remember the design difference the Taylor made ice cream machine had for McDonalds, vs other fast food restaurants like Wendy's, was to be able to re-pasteurize the milk that was already in there. So if there was left over milk from the previous day, it will get pasteurized again so it's made safe. While the machines at restaurants like Wendy's, you'd just throw out the milk. Another reason that McDonalds is ok with Taylor being the only company to call when something is not working with their machines, is that McDonalds is also a share holder in the company. McDonalds makes money from this business relationship being a share holder in Taylor when it comes to getting dividend payments from Taylor. This kind of monopoly shouldn't be allowed.

As someone who's worked at McDonalds in the UK, the ice-cream machine is actually almost never broken. The employees tell you that it is because they/the shift before haven't cleaned the machine, or (as said in the video) it's on a heat cycle.

Context: McDonalds is NOT a restaurateur, their primary business is land and rent from that land. Conveniently, most McDonalds are FRANCHISE locations and McDonalds the corporation doesnt care if a franchise has problems with the REQUIRED equipment. McDonalds and Taylor have had a LONG relationship because these machines working or not makes one of the two money at the EXPENSE of the people who run the franchise. This is why it is important to pass Right to Repair. This particular relationship Taylor has with Mc Donalds is racketeering and it should be stopped.

From the UK, where this issue isn't as bad as in the US. The McDonald's / Taylor Repair racket is a well known problem for years, glad ur taking up this fight.

I think this type of video needs to go viral to show ppl how right to repair is essential for everyday professionals and not only nerds who tinker their electronic devices. It highlights how anti repair designs are just a money grab by usually already wealthy corporations.

"I want an ice cream. Let me just hop over the counter, battle the McDonald's employees, dodge two Apple pies, fix the machine, and grab an Oreo McFlurry before the drive-through worker starts beating me with a cashier."

I was the technician for Showbiz Pizza Time Theatre for 6 years, we had an older (non electronic) version of these machines, ice cream (soft serve, technically ice milk) was ready to dispense about 30 minutes after turning the machine on. These machines while precision were very simple and the only time ours was "down" was when employees at night would drop the mixer drum (spun inside the freezing chamber) and they would bend it, it was a tight tolerance and if bent it was expensive to replace. In my 6 years there we never once called Taylor to come fix the machine and it was in service 99% of the time (probably closer to 99.5%). The only 2 reasons it was ever out was the reason I mentioned and when management forgot to purchase enough 'mix' for the machine. I have watched the whole thing about the new machines for a few years now and I think that Taylor should be massively sued by McDonalds and I have no idea why such a large user like that would put up with these issues unless they get a kickback from Taylor on each repair (to franchises). Taylor could fix and prevent these issues with just a firmware update if they wanted to.

As someone whose family runs a farm, I appreciate your work. Many issues on tractors and combines can only be fixed, or even diagnosed, with a specific laptop from the dealer, needing expensive service. And although we have a way around some of them, i agree that most farmers are not hackers.

This is awesome, I hope this gets some of the lay people out there to understand how these sorts of laws really affect them, like when they can't get ice cream at a McD's. These sorts of bad laws, particularly the DMCA are abused non-stop now, usually protecting shady business practices to begin with, exactly like Taylor and John Deere using these exclusive contracts to service and repair their devices. When its obvious the product is flawed and requires external intervention due to a lack of support by the original manufacturer, there is no reason alternative repairs should not be allowed under any laws!

It is also a problem mostly located in the US. German McDonalds doesnt have problems that frequently

Flatt Head screws = automatic 4-point reduction in the repairability score 😂

This is why I love iFixIt. These large corporations screwing every part of society needs to be stopped.

This is a brilliant way of answering a genuine question that all sorts of people have had whilst spreading awareness about right to repair!

It is criminal that only 1 million subs are here, you people are the absolute greatest! We love you!

This felt so random when I saw it but so cool that you guys are calling this genuine problem out and doing something about it!

Another thing worth mentioning, many McDonald's executives own shares in Taylor, so the profits they make from service go directly into their pockets, disincentivizing cheaper repair.

I’m so sad that ifixit took their own life this evening and jumped out a window, totally not pushed, such a tragic loss

This is uniquely a US problem, as I've never heard anyone talking about or seen a "broken" icecream machine here in Europe. It actually really confused me when I heard about it, as it was never a problem in my frame of reference.

I live in Europe for whole my life, almost 40 year. I never heard about problem with broken icecream machines in McDonald's here.

This was the best video about ice cream ice ever seen. Seriously love the work and advocacy you guys do. It's inspiring and honestly great publicity! I hope the changes you are asking if Congress go through, especially for making a repair exception

You guys are such an amazing company, keep up the amazing work. FULLY support you guys doing this... needs to happen..

I think this is a uniquely the US issue. I don't remember ever seeing McDonald's ice cream machine down here in Pakistan.

Meanwhile in Europe, the ice cream machines are almost never broken.

I just recently bought a repair kit from you guys. I am so happy I did that. What an excellent company. Keep doing what you're doing

FULLY support you guys doing this... needs to happen.

You guys are such an amazing company, keep up the amazing work

employee: ey boss can we get an ice cream machine for work? boss: only if you can make it reflect our business vision employee: hold my iFixit screwdriver!

I worked at McDonald's in the 80's, and the soft serve machine failure for the most part, was always due to overheating, due to massive quantities being served during peak summer hours. We did cones and sundaes, but the heat exchanger could only take so much, and changing a liquid to a semi-solid takes quite a bit of cooling to do. Everyday, we were taught to disassemble the parts that touch the soft serve, mixer, agitator, auger assembly, and run sanitzer solution through them to prevent bacteria. So, for the most part, they aren't really broken, they are just taxed to the extent where heat buildup is too much, and it literally needs to cool down.

I am so excited for this!!!❤ Thank you! Finally we get to fix/modify the thing we OWN! Good luck and I can’t wait 😁

The fact that these machines overheat seems like a design flaw - on the part of both Taylor (for not providing adequate cooling, a user-friendly interface and/or not communicating the cooling requirements to McD corporate designers) AND McD corporate in their kitchen design for not understanding how to locate these machines to provide adequate cooling and for not demanding that the machines be easier to use and repair. If I were a franchisee having to pay the service bills, I'd consider sending the machine back and take ice cream off my menu.

This sent chills down my spine. I wish you the best of luck on your mission to mend dmca laws. I will continue to support your company as well.

I worked during McD's during college years i actually managed the store and had to order parts/repairs. Our machine was often not broken but out of use. This was because at the end of the night (about 2hs before closing) we would put the machine into a cleaning cycle. In the morning when we fired the machine up it took a while to get down to temp. (around 4hs, we opened at 6am it was ready around 10:30am after we checked it was all good and got around to stocking it) This is the bulk of the time the machine is not working anyway, most people assume or get told its "not working". There are times where the machine does go bad but these in my experience were not that common. Usually we would have to lodge a job on the system for repair and someone came out within 24hs, maybe it would be fixed, maybe a part was ordered and it was up and running in a week. This repair time though was standard for all stuff really. Other stores who use these machines and are 24/h often don't have the issues because they run the cleaning cycle/start during early hours of the night (so less people complain or notice), or after they close and before they open.

Aside from the DMCA, Taylor has a deal with McDonald's that prohibits franchise owners from fixing their machines. Kytch devices on a McDonald's machine will get their franchise pulled. Meanwhile, Taylor got hold of a Kytch device and shortly afterward came out with their own version ... which might help some, but it'll probably also be lucrative for Taylor.

Making the world a better place one repair guide at a time

Shout out to anyone asking for an icecream at 3 or 4 am lol! 😎😎

Y’all are amazing for doing this kind of work!

Absolutely excellent! Thank you for fighting for us ❤

Whoever pitched this idea to get the company an ice cream machine is a smart man/woman

One thing that wasn't covered here is how the machines will often go into a lockout state that requires an "authorized service technician" to repair them. I worked at Burger King 20 years ago, and while our machines were usually quite resilient, they would still sometimes fail. The most common reason they would fail is that someone would overfill the hopper, which prevented the heat exchanger from keeping the mix at the correct temperature. However, when this happened, the machine would give an opaque error code and would lock out the machine, requiring a technician to repair it. Getting in a technician would sometimes takes weeks. It's easy to see how this could be unintentional. After all, it is important that the machine keeps the product cool, and if it can't, that's a sign that something is wrong. Failing to keep it cool makes the product potentially unsafe to serve. So the safe thing to do is to lock it out, right? But the issue is how it all comes together. The machine doesn't realize the hopper is overfull or that the machine is overworked - it just says "I'm failing to keep it cold" and shuts down as if it were broken. The user is not made aware of this or given an opportunity to rectify it - they can't even power cycle it do a full cleaning cycle to try again. The technicians sometimes informed people of the cause and the management sometimes passed along the message, but when the people working at 3AM are kids who come and go every few months, that kind of knowledge is lost. If someone isn't aware and gets the machine into this state, it takes the whole thing offline for at least days if not weeks. And this is where the issue lies. There are many ways Taylor could fix this. The machine could have more sensors and be more intelligent so that it can tell the difference between being overworked and having an outright failure. The manual and error codes could be clearer so that it were easier to teach new people how to use it correctly and how to avoid the issue. The software could be written specifically to handle this use case, providing a way for operators to go through a full cleaning cycle and get back to a safe and working state instead of going into a full lock-out that requires a technician. But at the end of the day, Taylor hasn't done anything like this in the past 20 years. The still issues still exist with all machines. The same common and avoidable failure modes and overbearing lockouts leave operators with no choice but to pay a ransom to Taylor to service their machine. It's clear that Taylor has no interest in making this any easier. Not only do they not fix the underlying issue, but they also do everything in their power to keep others from fixing it for them. Their insistence on "authorized service technicians", the closely guarded secret that is the service manual they provide to these technicians, and the efforts they have made to sue and shutdown anyone who would shed light on how to fix and maintain these machines for themselves. This is exactly what right to repair is all about. When you buy a machine, it's yours, and a company shouldn't be able to hold you to ransom for daily maintenance and operations. Taylor goes out of their way to not only withhold the necessary information from you, but they also use the law as a weapon against anyone who would try to help.

Incredibly insightful video. Thank you for your efforts. 💚

The heroes we didn’t expect but needed. Maybe soon we’ll all get to enjoy some McDonald’s ice cream and give a cheers with ice cream cones

Business scam at its finest. 😅

it's called putting computers on a machine that doesn't need computers. they are designed to fail and be non repairable unless you spend the money to get a tech out to fix it. I am an HVAC tech and I see it in everything heating and air-conditioning, they put tons of sensors and computers in machines that really don't need it and it turns an easy repair and a $20 part into a very difficult repair and a $500 part that is IF you can find it. they want stuff to fail just past the warranty so you have to buy another one and they make the parts so expensive it's almost cheaper to buy a new one

Huge iFixit fan!! Awesome piece demystifying the importance of the DMCA for an ordinary commercially available piece of equipment at Micky Dees!!

absolute power, corrupts absolutely. taylors' guaranteed contract with mcdo is so cushy for them, that their shoddy design and even vague error codes are just an extra expense passed on to the franchise owners.

Johnny Harris made a video about this about 2 years back that is basically my Bible for the McDonald’s ice cream machine issue. I’ve shared that video dozens of times when this conversation comes up on social media (I’m THAT “right to repair nut” in my immediate circle of influence 😅)

Amazing to see this is happening. Best of luck. 💗

You guys are awesome!! Keep it up❤️

uh oh. they used on screen corrections rather than re-recording. watch out for a gamers nexus exposé 😱

I worked for half a year in a different burger fast food chain restaurant. We had this exact ice cream machine, and surprisingly we never had any problems with it. It was surprisingly the most reliable machine we had there. I'm not saying that McDonalds has a different model with a slightly different code, that makes it break down more, just a fun anecdote.

This is the content we want. I bet this will become one of your most viewed video.

I applaud your efforts.

Another incentive for McDonalds to have Taylor techs do the repairs, is because one of the biggest shareholders of both companies is the same investment firm, so having Taylor getting all that money from the repairs helps their bottom line.

ah yes the ice cream machine is overheating

Fantastic work!

Good work! Keep it up!

wish you the best on the exception and process to get industrial equipment, but also thank you for everything you guys do to help R2R.

I've never gone to Maccas in Australia and had their soft serve being down

just awesome!

The fact that an entire website, dedicated for listening all working and broken ice-cream machines, called mcbroken exists made my day

I learned about the technician contract about a year ago and I was not happy about it whatsoever, glad there’s work being put into right to repair

I actually bought one of these from an auction at a local mc donald's which closed down. I've been using it every summer for three years now and it still works. Sometimes it will give me an error message or two but usually it just continues it's cycle. Cleaning is a pain though and I can see how that may cause additional downtime.

Fantastic! Good job guys.

Absolute madlads. Love you guys. I'll be buying your tools until I'm dead if you keep this stuff up.

Having worked in Disneyland Paris McDonald's, I've never had to deny someone ice cream, even at 1 in the morning. Our ice machine was down for more than a month though. And one night all our tills went out of service at the same time the parks were closing.

No way there are THAT many flathead screws in a piece of equipment made after 1950. That’s insane. Other than the ones that were also hex nuts, it’s another FU to everybody working on the machine.

Was a Wendy's manager for a number of years. I can't ever recall a time the Frosty machine was broken. We kept it filled and that was it.

interesting to be able to see the fabled machine up close. it's worth noting that Johnny Harris did a thorough and in-depth piece of reporting on this a few years ago which is essential viewing.

I thought this was an April fools video, but this was actually an amazing video showing why right to repair is so important! Keep up the great fight! You guys are doing awesome

If I was McDonald's I would pull out of the contract or change the supplier. It's embarrassing.

Great Job iFixit! We should be able to fix the equipment we buy

iFixit are the heros we need

I've never haved that problem, I go to McDonalds about once a month.

okay this seems a problem in US only. I have travelled most of Europe and never faced this issue, also in India and Japan, I have never faced it. I mostly go to McDs only for the IceCreams 😁

Wohoo, awesome!! Thanks for What you are doing!

Great video and I hope you guys win the case!

I do never buy ice cream (or any other food) at McDonalds. But I did enjoy the video. Please make more about industrial equipment.

Here in Scotland its a big issue. They are frequently broken and can be for weeks at a time. The branches don't seem to give a Monkeys and just give out excuses. I was aware of this issue, I can't believe it's still going on, McDonalds are taking us for mugs!

This was informative!

Glad you made this 👍

What I don't get is that none of my local ice cream places ever have the problems the Taylor machines have at McDonalds

I worked at Chickfila as a manager and our machines were rarely down if cleaned properly every night. I don't know what brand it was but it was very similar to this Taylor version. It didn't take long in comparison to start up, as there was no 4 hour heat cycle. Cleaning and setting up daily took like 30 minutes at most, while taking food orders. Crazy to think about how I got paid $11.50/hr as a manager and never had the machine broken and Taylor charges $300/hr or more because they have a Mcdonalds monopoly.

I subscribed because of this video. Way to go guys!!

Love this content. More please

in russia i haven't nad any problems with getting ice cream in mcdonalds, but pretty often in burger king there were no ice or ice cream

I had a McDonald’s employee by my parents’ house tell me that they only run it during certain hours of the day, like usually it’s either noon to 7pm 3pm-9pm, or noon to 9pm during the summer. They just know when they get the largest chunk of people asking for ice cream They do the same thing with their shakes, if I go there after 10pm it’s almost a guarantee they have turned the shake machine off for the night

All I know is, the ice cream machines at literally every other fast food franchise do not have this problem.

ifixit fighting the good fight. thank you!

Yes. My randomly bought mcdonalds ice cream machine located in my basement needs this video. I just need to find the ice cream recipe on the dark web and I could be the ice cream king of my neighbourhood 🤴🏻

If you get a DMCA exemption for McD ice cream machines, it wouldn't surprise me if your team received free ice cream for life from McD franchisees. Well played!

Excellent video!

Vendors do this by design. This is extremely prevalent in medical industry where vendors lock devices and applications down, force a support contract so all you can do i call them for support, even though you purchased the software and have the staff on hand to support it, you still have to purchase support contract from the vendor to get repairs done. Usually they hide behind "FDA regulations" to force this.

Go on. Be honest. You just wanted ice cream on tap in the office, didn't you?