The machines are “broken” because they’re a pain to clean. (pure laziness)
or they already cleaned the machine while they were still open in order to get out of there right after closing time.
McDonald’s machines are always broken down because (1) the company went cheap and (2) the company only allows authorized vendors to repair them.
The store owners want to fix them, but aren’t allowed to by McDonald’s corporate.
No more difficult to clean than the ice cream machines at every other fast food place that always seem to work just fine.
The truth is, it’s a racket run by the company that makes the ice cream machines and those contracted to service them. The machines will shut off with a fault code that only contracted technicians can then reset. Often, it’s for something simple, maybe a component needs to be cleaned more thoroughly or something.
A start-up company created a hand-held computer that they were selling to franchises that allowed then to decipher and reset the fault codes and they wound up getting sued by McDonalds.