why ice cream machine always broken

If you've ever been bamboozled by a McDonald's ice cream machine being broken, raise your hand. Us too. Nobody wants to go to Mickey D's craving a tasty milkshake, cone, or McFlurry, try to order one, and hear "sorry, our machine is down."

McDonald's ice cream machines are broken so often that it's become one of the internet's long-standing memes. The problem is so widely known that there's literally a website, called mcbroken.com, dedicated to telling customers across the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany if the ice cream machines are working at their store.

Not only have customers been calling out McDonald's on social media for years, but competitors like Wendy's get in on the action too. In 2021, the McDonald's account tweeted "if u were the person who ran the McDonald's account for a day, what would u tweet," to which the Wendy's account responded, "where the things that should be fresh are frozen, and the things that should be frozen are out of order."

Even McDonald's has roasted itself for the machines constantly being down. In 2020, the brand tweeted "we have a joke about our soft serve machine but we're worried it won't work."