Comment The franchisees don't want the machines to work (Score 1) 80
The franchisees don't want the machines to work. The daily clean-up time (and believe me... when dealing with dairy you want it to be VERY clean) takes a long time. They lose money unless they are selling TONS of servings. Nobody could possibly sell enough ice cream to break even.
Let's suppose it is going to take 1 person-hours each day to clean the machine and you make 10 cents profit per serving. Assuming labor cost of $10/hour (these numbers are all fiction). You're going to have to sell 100 servings just to break even. That would mean a TON of advertising and promotion to drive that kind of sales volume. Doing those promotions cost even more money, which requires more sales to make up for.
It is much more profitable to leave the machine broken and have that 1 hour of labor doing something that they know makes money... like grilling burgers.
Of course... this is an excellent opportunity for iFixit and others to advocate for the changes they want. McDonald's can't publicly admit they don't want the machines fixed. It gets good PR for iFixit and friends.