Angela B. Tech 08.30.2023 00:Aug AM EDT

iFixit Wants the Right to Repair McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines

Getting a soft-serve at McDonald's has never been a sure thing. There is an ongoing belief that the fast food chain's ice cream machine is always broken, while others think that employees just want to avoid the grueling process of cleaning it. In truth, they're actually broken, and someone is stepping up to fix them.

iFixit's Solution to Ice Cream Problem

You'd think that the fast food giant would find a way to make their ice cream machines function properly to provide better service, but it looks like they don't have much of a choice in the matter. As it turns out, the rights to repair the machines are actually exclusive.

Taylor, the manufacturing company of the ice cream machines, has the sole right to repair them based on a contract it made with McDonald's. That means that the fast food chain can't just hire someone else to do it, which could be the reason why it takes longer for the machine to be fixed.

iFixit is trying to get the DMCA to remove the copyright that makes it illegal to tinker with the commercial gear. Both the how-to website and non-profit interest group Public Knowledge already submitted a petition to bypass the digital security measures on Taylor's machines.

Policy Counsel of the non-profit, Kathleen Burke says that "in principle, copyright should not prevent anyone from repairing a device they own regardless of whether that device is consumer or commercial," as mentioned in Ars Technica.

She added that the fact that the principle is not already "embedded permanently into law demonstrates that our copyright system is as McBroken as the average McDonald's ice cream machine."

Upon checking the McBroken tracking map, around 34% of the machines in New York state were inoperable. In the entire US, more than 14% are out of order, all of which have to wait for the manufacturer to repair it.

iFixit attempted to open the machine in order to examine what makes it run the way it does. Shahram Mokhtari, the one disassembling the machine, said that the machine had "error after error" during its four-hour warm-up cycle, which made the process longer.

McDonald's Needs to Fix It

The phenomenon has been going on for so long that a lot of people are already familiar with the reference. The machines have been broken so many times that there is a dedicated website that indicates which locations have machines that are out of order.

Customers in the UK, the US, and Germany could check the McBroken.com website to see which stores can serve them ice cream. Even Wendy's took a shot at McDonald's saying that "things that should be fresh are frozen, and the things that should be frozen are out of order."

McDonald's itself recognized its shortcomings as it joked about the situation, as seen in All Recipes. In a tweet, McDonald's said: "We have a joke about our soft serve machine but we're worried it won't work," which doesn't make it any better.