Open Post: Hosted By McDonald’s Getting Sued Over Their Perpetually-Broken Ice Cream Machines

If you’ve ever gone to McDonald’s to order ice cream, there’s a good chance you’ve heard, “The ice cream machine is up and working today!“. And that’s because the ice cream machines at McDonald’s are notorious for being out of service. McDonald’s reputation for broken ice cream machines has gotten so bad, that two years ago, a website called McBroken.com was created, to track all the working and not-working ice cream machines at various McDonald’s locations. The Federal Trade Commission eventually got involved to see what the hell was McUp with those busted machines. And now, a tech company that thinks it could have solved the ice cream machine conundrum is suing McDonald’s for $900 million.

According to Food & Wine, a tech company called Kytch sued a company called Taylor last summer. Taylor makes the ice cream machines supplied to McDonald’s. They alleged that Taylor attempted to acquire a device called Kytch Solutions, a diagnostic device that attaches to a commercial ice cream machine and monitors how it’s working. For example, it uses cloud technology to determine what part of the machine needs maintenance or supplies. Kytch believed the Kytch Solutions device could easily fix McDonald’s reputation as being the number one place for soft serve disappointment.

In the lawsuit, Kytch accuses Taylor of trying to acquire the Kytch Solutions device, just so they could reverse-engineer the technology and make their own for McDonald’s. Now Kytch is suing McDonald’s for at least $900 million for “tarnishing their name, scaring off customers, and ruining their business.” McDonald’s has responded to the lawsuit, and calls it “meritless.” via Food & Wine:

In both its lawsuit against Taylor and in its suit against McDonald’s, Kytch’s founders allege that the two companies spread “false information” about the Kytch Solution. “Together they fabricated bogus ‘safety’ claims to mislead Kytch’s customers into believing that safety testing determined that the Kytch Solution would cause ‘serious human injury’ to users – claims that are, and that McDonald’s and Taylor both knew at the time to be, demonstrably false,” Kytch’s attorneys wrote in their most recent legal filing.

Essentially, Kytch is accusing McDonald’s of playing dirty. To be fair, anyone who has ever climbed into a McDonald’s tube slide or ball pit knows McDonald’s is no stranger to the concept of playing dirty.

Pic: Instagram