People often joke about how often the ice cream machine is broken in a McDonald’s. It’s gotten so often that it’s become a saying or even a recurring joke of sorts, but how accurate is that saying really? Is the issue so common a problem, or has it been so widely used that it’s turned into its own joke?
There are a multitude of reasons why an ice cream machine may break down, as according to Food&Wine, “All of McDonald’s soft-serve machines are made by one company, Taylor. And thanks to Taylor Company’s copyright on the machines, if one breaks, only Taylor is authorized to come fix it. In fact, it’s illegal for a McDonald’s location to try and fix it themselves or call a local handyman to take care of it for them.”
Due to this restriction, it’s highly difficult for the machines themselves to be fixed, so rather than the frequency of the breakdowns occurring, it’s the inability to get it fixed. A former employee on Reddit also went on to say that “some employees really don’t like wiping down the blender after each use when it’s busy. Also, the soft serve machines themselves are a bit finicky. Any failure condition that would put them consistently out of safe operating range usually results in the machine being entirely locked out and heavy repair of refrigeration equipment is far outside the typical skillet of employees in a restaurant. If something’s actually broken that needs repair, the downtime will be extensive.”
There has been an entire website called “McBroken,” that is entirely dedicated to charting which McDonald’s locations have a broken ice cream machine and as of writing this, the current percentage of McDonald’s locations with a broken machine is 9.19%.
