A lawsuit has been filed against the company which produces McFlurry machines, they have been issued a temporary restraining order.
McFlurries are notorious for being the most volatile item at McDonalds.
It’s not that there is a shortage of the delicious dessert, but every time you drive to Maccas at 2 am for a McFlurry you run the very real and very serious risk of a broken soft serve machine.
McFlurry machines are owned by the company ‘Taylor’. And it turns out these machines are always ‘broke’ because of capitalism.
The company has long had a monopoly over repairing the ever fragile machines, as only a Taylor certified technician can do so.
Recently, independent company Kytch created a device to keep McFlurry machines powering on.
The Kytch device is a diagnostic tool. It works by collecting data to identify simple, minor repairs which can be performed by employees.
According to a lawsuit filed by Kytch, McFlurry falsely claimed that Kytch devices could cause “serious human injury“, in an effort to remove Kytch as a competitor and maintain their monopoly.
Moreover, it was alleged that Taylor had acquired Kytch machines in order to seek “trade secret information” on how they function.
Taylor’s Chief Operating Officer admitted to the court that the company had sought a Kytch device:
“in order to evaluate and assess its potential technology-related impacts upon our Soft Serve Machine—such as whether the radio frequency of the Kytch device would interfere with our software signal, or whether the Kytch device would drain the power source of our software and/or cause it malfunction“.
Taylor denied, however, that they had intentions of learning Kytch’s trade secrets.
we have a joke about our soft serve machine but we’re worried it won’t work
— McDonald’s❄️ (@McDonalds) August 11, 2020
McDonald’s franchises are said to occasionally wait 2 weeks for a Taylor certified technician.
Consequently, employees in the past have learnt unsafe tricks on how to get faulty machines running again.
Namely, if strained franchises bypass sanitary measures of the machines to get them working again, they can become a serious breeding ground for germs and disease.
A 2005 report by the NBC recounted an incident in Ohio, US, where malfunctions in the soft serve machines caused them to become contaminated by staphylococcus, a group of bacteria that can cause potentially life-threatening infectious diseases.
Over 120 people became sick from the contamination.
“So many people became so ill, so quickly, the director of the local emergency room told me he at first thought there was some kind of bioterrorism incident in the town“, the report said.
I use to work at McDonald’s & say the ice cream machine was broke cuz I ain’t feel like making it. pic.twitter.com/U2YU1r0AJc
— Nzinga ✨ (@Starnubia_) August 8, 2017
In the 16 years since the report, safety and sanitary improvements have been made to the machines.
But the incident highlights the need for strict regulation of the machines’ maintenance.
Kytch claimed that Taylor had attempted to convince McDonald’s franchises to stop using Kytch machines by warning of false dangers.
At the same time, Kytch alleges, Taylor was working on their own diagnostic tool to replace the Kytch device.
The court has ordered Taylor to hand in all the Kytch machines they acquired, and issued the company a temporary restraining order against Kytch.
