This App Shows You Which McDonald's Have Working Ice Cream Machines
Will the McDonald's ice cream machine be working today or won't it? This truly is the question of our times. We know now, thanks to Reddit threads and social media doing its due diligence, the real reason McDonald's ice cream machines always seem to be broken is because they're not — they just take four hours and an 11-step process to clean. This rigmarole is often what's actually preventing McDonald's employees from serving up your hot fudge sundae. Unless you've hit your Mickey D's just after the employees completed that epic cleaning process, then in that case, they may tell you the machine is broken because they just don't feel like dirtying it on your behalf. We get it — that cleaning process sounds like a total nightmare.
For their part, McDonald's has invested in software that may help prevent so much downtime for the ice cream machines. But as it stands, the ability to have our McFlurry needs met on a consistent basis still remains somewhat of a pipe dream. Thankfully, 24-year-old Rashiq Zahid, a tech-savvy soft serve fan (who clearly has his priorities in order), developed an app to save us from the heartbreak of unfulfilled McDonald's ice cream dreams. According to The Verge, Zahid's McBroken app reveals, with a touch of a button, all of the McDonald's restaurants in the U.S., accompanied by a red or a green dot to indicate whether their ice cream machine is working or not. To ensure the app's info is accurate, Zahid went straight to the source.
The McBroken app is based on McDonald's own data
Rather than utilizing crowd-sourced information as another McDonald's-obsessed tech whiz has already done, Zahid tapped directly into McDonald's mobile app to obtain nearly up-to-the-minute statuses of every location's ice cream machine. Within the McDonald's mobile app, whenever an order for an ice cream item is created at a location whose machine is not working, the McDonald's app automatically marks the item as unavailable.
Zahid reverse-engineered that process and made a bot that attempts to create an order for a McSundae from every McDonald's location on the map, every 30 minutes. If the McSundae is unavailable due to a broken ice cream machine, the bot automatically adds a red dot to the location in the McBroken app. Otherwise, the bot adds a green dot to the map indicating the ice cream machine is alive and well. The app is constantly updating itself, giving users a somewhat-live view of where to source their soft serve. And don't worry, Zahid clarified on Twitter that the McSundae orders aren't actually executed so no ice cream goes to waste. So, the only question now is, does it work?
The McBroken app got McDonald's attention
Technology is only helpful when it actually works, right? The McBroken app, which Zahid told The Verge he just made for fun, has gotten a lot of attention on Twitter already — and so far, so good. Twitter user @McD_Truth, a self-proclaimed McDonald's insider, even verified in a tweet that the app is indeed legit. Not only does McBroken seem to work effectively, but it might also be forcing some change from the higher-ups at the golden arches.
David Tovar, the Vice President of U.S. Communications & Government Relations for McDonald's, tweeted in response to Zahid's app, "Only a true @McDonalds fan would go to these lengths to help customers get our delicious ice cream! So, thanks! We know we have some opportunities to consistently satisfy even more customers with sweet treats and we will." At long last, it seems the end of unfulfilled McDonald's ice cream dreams might actually be in sight, folks. This truly is activism at its finest.