A 24-year-old engineer created a website that tells you if your McDonald's has a working ice-cream machine
- 'McBroken' aims to fix a common problem for McDonald's customers: arriving to find the ice-cream machine is broken.
- The website works in real time to tell users if an ice cream machine is up and running or not.
- McDonalds seems to be on board with the site, with the fast-food giant's VP tweeting, "Only a true @McDonalds fan would go to these lengths to help customers get our delicious ice cream."
There are many things that are synonymous with McDonald's, but a broken ice-cream machine is often near the top of the list.
Seeking a solution, a software engineer set out to save customers from disappointment in their pursuit of a cold treat from the fast-food chain.
McBroken, a website created by 24-year-old Rashiq Zahid, according to The Verge, aims to tell potential customers in real time if an ice-cream machine is working at a particular McDonald's or not. Each location is indicated with a colored dot. Locations with a green dot should have ice cream, while red-dot locations are reported to have an out-of-order machine.
In order to figure out if a location needs a red or green dot, Zahid created a bot that tries to order a McSundae every 30 minutes— if the bot succeeds, the website will say the machine is working.
The inspiration came from a fruitless trip Zahid took to a Berlin McDonald's earlier this year, where he was unable to get a McFlurry, because there was no way to tell if the ice-cream machine was up and running.
"I was like, there must be something that can be done about this," Zahid said in an interview with The Verge.
The most likely reason the soft-serve machine is often down is due to the heat cleaning cycle the machines must go through every night in order to prevent bacteria growth. Before the cleaning process even begins, the McDonald's machine has to be disassembled through an 11-step process, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Within 20 minutes of its launch, McBroken had over 10,000 visitors, leading the site to crash, Zahid said. The software engineer said he intended for the project to be a joke, so he was surprised by the instant interest.
While Zahid lives in Germany, he knew the next place for the website to lauch was the US, "which is basically the capital of McDonalds'." Now, Americans can browse McBroken as well.
McDonalds seems to be on board with the site, with the fast food giant's VP tweeting; "Only a true @McDonalds fan would go to these lengths to help customers get our delicious ice cream."
Zahid isn't the first person to attempt to fix this issue. In 2017, Raina McLeod created Ice Check, an app that relied on users to update the app and say if an ice cream machine was "on" or "off."
McDonald's franchise owners are also making moves to combat the frequent issue. On October 8, a McDonald's franchisee owner and leader for the National Supply Leadership Council (NSLC) equipment team announced an initiative focusing specifically on shake machine reliability.
You can take the McBroken website for a spin by clicking here.