McDonald's Is Making a Drastic Change to Their Ice Cream Machines—Here's Why

Kenn Bivins

Wed, October 30, 2024 at 8:30 PM UTC

2 min read

All the Fast-Food Restaurants Open on Thanksgiving 2024 — McDonald's

Wendy’s and McDonald’s engaged in a marketing war over ice cream machines, with Wendy’s trolling McDonald’s by adding their locations to a map indicating whether their ice cream machines were working or not.
Wendy’s took the trolling to the next level by deploying Frosty Fix trucks to McDonald’s locations to promote their $1 Frosty deal, leading to a dramatic marketing showdown between the two fast-food giants.
The Federal Government intervened in the beef between Wendy’s and McDonald’s by granting an exemption that allows third-party vendors to fix commercial food prep equipment, including McDonald’s ice cream machines, in an effort to make repairs quicker and more affordable.

If you haven't been following the beef (pun intended) between Wendy's and McDonald's , allow me a moment to catch you up to speed. What started as a casual joke about how Mickey D's is famously known to never have working ice cream machines ballooned into an all out marketing war when Wendy's teamed up with the developer of mcbroken.com to troll their fellow fast-food joint.

The website maps out all the nearest McDonald's locations and displays them on an interactive map indicating whether their ice cream machine is working or not. Seems innocuous enough—that is until Wendy's added all of their neighboring locations to the map so you can choose to grab a Wendy's Frosty instead.

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The trolling didn't stop there, though. Wendy's literally pulled up on McDonald's and deployed Frosty Fix trucks to their competitor's front door in an ingenious effort to promote their $1 Frosty deal. Talk about ice cold. While it looks that the drama between the two burger joints has subsided, it appears that the Federal Government is stepping in to settle the beef once and for all.

No longer will we have to hear the dreaded "Our ice cream machine is down," thanks to a new exemption granted by the U.S. Copyright office that will allow third party vendors to fix commercial food prep equipment.

Previously, McDonald's ice cream machines could only be fixed by their manufacturer due to copyright laws in place regarding the chain's proprietary equipment. This created financial problems and bottlenecks for operators of the Golden Arches due to a backlog of repair cases and hefty charges of up to $300 per 15 minutes just for someone to come out and fix them. Not to mention, some restaurants stand to lose up to $625 in daily sales due to the soft serve machines being down. That works out to almost $4,375 per week!

The goal of the new exemption is to make repairs quicker and more affordable, and as an added bonus, that means more McFlurries for us in the long run. Now if only they could get them to bring back the two for $1 apple pies , then we'd really be in business.

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