Johnny Harris did an excellent job investigating this issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4 the tl;dw is pretty much: Same people own both McDonalds and the only company who has...
the tl;dw is pretty much: Same people own both McDonalds and the only company who has permission to fix the machine. They have zero incentive to allow franchisees to hack the machines or fix it themselves. They get paid better from the fixes than the income from the ice cream.
I watched his video and I don't think he said the same people own both McDonalds and Taylor, he just said they have had a long relationship going back decades and that their HQ are pretty close to...
I watched his video and I don't think he said the same people own both McDonalds and Taylor, he just said they have had a long relationship going back decades and that their HQ are pretty close to each other. At least that's what I heard in the video anyhow.
He did a pretty good job covering a lot of elements of this, but he didn't address a couple things in there. One thing he mentioned is that the costs of these faulty machines isn't borne by McDonald's corporate, but rather by franchisee owners, so there's no incentive for them to change the franchise rules, but it feels kind of an inadequate answer because that only says they lack a strong incentive to fix it, not what their incentive is to stick with it. Absent any strong incentive to stick with Taylor, even a mild incentive to change their approved ice cream machine model would in theory be enough, such as franchisees complaining, bad PR on the McDonald's brand, people who are hesitant to start a McDonald's franchise after hearing the stories, loss of revenue from selling ice cream. I don't know for sure, but I assume that McDonald's corporate gets some cut of revenues, so having a lot of downtime would be a loss of revenue for them.
Presumably the answer is that McDonald's gets a kickback from Taylor, or that there is actually mutual ownership between the companies, but I don't think either explanation was actually mentioned in his video unfortunately.
The other thing it doesn't mention in his video and perhaps it doesn't matter that much but what sparked my curiosity is, the franchise agreement with McDonald's says you have to buy this approved ice cream machine and only this one. The Taylor warranty says you can't have anyone else service the machine because it will void your warranty. But does the franchise agreement state that you need the machine to be warranty covered? What good is the warranty if you are paying so much in service costs? The response from McDonald's corporate about the Kytch device wasn't seemingly threatening that franchisees would be cut off, it said they'd lose their warranty. Makes me wonder, why the fuck even care about a warranty? Only thing I can think of is presumably Taylor might refuse to sell a franchisee another McDonald's corporate approved ice cream machine if they're voiding warranties, at which point a franchisee would be unable to meet the agreement they signed with corporate once a machine is not serviceable anymore (provided there was anyone else outside of Taylor capable of servicing them). Seemingly there has to be some reason though, otherwise you'd think there'd be some former Taylor service tech or something that would dip out and start their own business, tell franchise owners they could fix their machines for a fraction of the cost, the McDonalds franchise owners could use the kytch device to fix the simple stuff on their own, and who gives a fuck about a warranty at that point.
Johnny Harris did an excellent job investigating this issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4
the tl;dw is pretty much: Same people own both McDonalds and the only company who has permission to fix the machine. They have zero incentive to allow franchisees to hack the machines or fix it themselves. They get paid better from the fixes than the income from the ice cream.
I watched his video and I don't think he said the same people own both McDonalds and Taylor, he just said they have had a long relationship going back decades and that their HQ are pretty close to each other. At least that's what I heard in the video anyhow.
He did a pretty good job covering a lot of elements of this, but he didn't address a couple things in there. One thing he mentioned is that the costs of these faulty machines isn't borne by McDonald's corporate, but rather by franchisee owners, so there's no incentive for them to change the franchise rules, but it feels kind of an inadequate answer because that only says they lack a strong incentive to fix it, not what their incentive is to stick with it. Absent any strong incentive to stick with Taylor, even a mild incentive to change their approved ice cream machine model would in theory be enough, such as franchisees complaining, bad PR on the McDonald's brand, people who are hesitant to start a McDonald's franchise after hearing the stories, loss of revenue from selling ice cream. I don't know for sure, but I assume that McDonald's corporate gets some cut of revenues, so having a lot of downtime would be a loss of revenue for them.
Presumably the answer is that McDonald's gets a kickback from Taylor, or that there is actually mutual ownership between the companies, but I don't think either explanation was actually mentioned in his video unfortunately.
The other thing it doesn't mention in his video and perhaps it doesn't matter that much but what sparked my curiosity is, the franchise agreement with McDonald's says you have to buy this approved ice cream machine and only this one. The Taylor warranty says you can't have anyone else service the machine because it will void your warranty. But does the franchise agreement state that you need the machine to be warranty covered? What good is the warranty if you are paying so much in service costs? The response from McDonald's corporate about the Kytch device wasn't seemingly threatening that franchisees would be cut off, it said they'd lose their warranty. Makes me wonder, why the fuck even care about a warranty? Only thing I can think of is presumably Taylor might refuse to sell a franchisee another McDonald's corporate approved ice cream machine if they're voiding warranties, at which point a franchisee would be unable to meet the agreement they signed with corporate once a machine is not serviceable anymore (provided there was anyone else outside of Taylor capable of servicing them). Seemingly there has to be some reason though, otherwise you'd think there'd be some former Taylor service tech or something that would dip out and start their own business, tell franchise owners they could fix their machines for a fraction of the cost, the McDonalds franchise owners could use the kytch device to fix the simple stuff on their own, and who gives a fuck about a warranty at that point.
Ugh, every time something like this comes up I get reminded about the stupid exemption rule of the DMCA. It really should be the other way around.