Battle for the Sundae
Hot dispute over ice cream: McDonald’s is being sued for 800 million euros for broken McFlurry machines
The broken ice machines at McDonald’s have long been a running gag online
©John Phillips/ / Picture Alliance
Because the ice machines at McDonald’s are constantly broken, many customers have suspected a conspiracy for a long time. But behind the scenes there is a completely different conflict going on. And that could now be very expensive for the fast food chain.
“Unfortunately, the machine broke down” – fans of McDonald’s ice cream hear this sentence more often than they would like, especially in the USA. The small company Kytch wanted to fix at least some of the problems with the machines. But McDonald’s put a spoke in the wheel. The company is now being sued for it.
Kytch filed a lawsuit against the fast-food giant on Tuesday. The allegations weigh heavily. McDonald’s slandered them, deterred its branch operators with false information about the start-up and thus cost it its main business. That is why they are demanding high damages: the company, which consists of only two people, is demanding 900 million dollars, around 810 million euros.
Fast help for operators
The argument has been brewing for a long time. Since 2019, Kytch has offered a small box to help McDonald’s employees with their ice machine headaches. They are not only very often broken in the imagination of the customers: According to “McBroken”, a website that collects machine failures, between 10 and 20 percent of the machines are regularly not in operation, in hotspots it can sometimes be 30 percent or more be. This always costs time and money.
A big factor in the failed machines is that manufacturer Taylor in the US reserves the right to repair them if they fail. Even reading out the errors is done with a special tool, so even with minor problems, the branch operators often have to wait for the technician.
This is exactly where the device, also called Kytch after the manufacturer, comes into play. Kytch founders Jeremy O’Sullivan and Melissa Nelson found a way to use a small device to self-trigger the bugs thrown out by the machine. Many of the problems that arise – some of the machines are already on strike because too many or too few ingredients have been filled in – can be remedied by the employees of the branches themselves thanks to the device. The feedback was correspondingly positive: He “easily saves thousands of dollars every month,” a Kytch-using branch operator said to “Wired”.
Hot argument about the ice cream
However, this was a thorn in the side of the manufacturer. In a separate case, Kytch accuses Tailor of trying to spy on the company’s business secrets and copying the box’s function in a new machine. In the course of the proceedings, however, new details about McDonald’s role in the dispute have now come to light. And that led to the second lawsuit.
E-mails that became public during the process show that it was probably the fast food company itself that had the box banned from the branches. You would let the guarantee expire, and there was also a risk of “serious injuries” to the employees, the group said. According to internal emails, even those responsible for Taylor were surprised at how much McDonald’s pushed the group to develop an access like Kytch for its machines.
Remote maintenance as a supposed danger
For the founders, the actions of the fast food giant are defamation. “They have besmirched our name, alienated our customers and destroyed our business”; Nelson told Wired. “They knew perfectly well that Kytch is safe and will not cause any problems. It is not dangerous, as they claim, and so we are now suing.”
McDonald’s sees the danger of the device in the possibility of switching on the machines remotely via the Kytch device. If an employee is working in it, his life could be at risk, according to the group. Kytch disagrees. The manufacturer is unable to switch on the machine during maintenance, and the engine is automatically deactivated when the front flaps are opened. Your device wouldn’t change that either. In addition, the device would have been independently tested and confirmed to be safe. And McDonald’s is aware of that.
business model at risk
For the Kytch founders, however, it is about more than just being banned from the McDonald’s branches. The group had contacted its competitors such as Coca-Cola and Burger King – and warned against the device there as well. They also see their business model at risk: they only saw Kytch as an entry point into a whole range of smart kitchen appliances. But because the core business has now collapsed, the plans for the future cannot be implemented. The high sum claimed can also be explained by this line of argument: the founders demand as much money as they believe their company could have earned.
The question of why McDonald’s acted with such verve against the small company is still open. Even the Kytch founders cannot explain why the group is taking such massive action against a device that ultimately saves the branches money and time. While Taylor’s fight against Kytch is understandable — the manufacturer says it earns nearly a quarter of its revenue from repair services on its machines — that’s not the case with McDonald’s. Perhaps the process can shed some light.
Incidentally, fans of the ice cream machines shouldn’t get excited too soon. At least some of the failures can also be explained by the fact that the ice machines have to go through a long, very complex cleaning process every day. Because you have to start all over again after each abort, some employees prefer to claim the machine is broken than to start all over again. Even Kytch cannot fix this problem.
Source: Wired, McBroken, Kytch
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