I read a long, drawn out drama about McDonald’s ice cream machines and why they’re always broken.
There was this guy who reverse engineered the firmware of the machines and was fixing the machines for individual franchisees. Taylor sued him out of business.
Ultimately, it came down to the machine’s four hour sterilization process which will fail if the machine’s internal temperature was off by even one degree, requiring another four hour cycle. If it failed twice, the machine shut down until Taylor maintenance people could come to access the firmware and reset the fault code (at big $$$.)
Exactly, Taylor was making more money off service than selling the machines. Dairy Queen has similar machines and they are up 24/7/365.
I read that 25% of Taylor’s revenue came from service calls on the ice cream machines they made for McDonalds. They made a different machine for another fast food joint that didn’t have that problem. Seems they were in bed with McDonalds.