McDonald’s Sued for $900 Million by Fixers of Ice Cream Machines

Kytch Inc., a tech startup that developed a solution to McDonald’s frequently broken ice cream machines, filed a $900 million lawsuit accusing the fast-food giant and its ice cream machine manufacturer of pushing it out of the marketplace.  The company developed a solution that allows clients to monitor and control soft-serve machines remotely.

This new creation recovers data from the machine, display it on an interface, and adjusts settings to prevent outages before the machine can detect an error. Kytch thereby reduces downtime and minimizes repair appointments.  Kytch claims McDonald’s and Taylor, the ice cream manufacturer, have spent 20 years trying to develop their own solution for broken machines.

Their method, called “Open Kitchen,” only lets users monitor the machine in a limited fashion and not fix it, allowing Taylor to benefit from its “lucrative” repair business. But the lawsuit states the product never actually launched, and McDonald’s tabled the proposal at the end of 2019.The tech startup said the project remained dormant until February 2020, when an article from Business Insider highlighted issues with Taylor’s machines and described Kytch as a viable alternative.

The National Owners Association, the largest organization of independent McDonald’s operators, endorsed Kytch as its national conference.  The alleged false accusations caused “instant and monumental damage,” Kytch claims.The complaint seeks to vindicate the company, curb  anti-competitive conduct, recover compensatory and punitive damages, and of course, fix  broken soft-serve machines. McDonald’s broken ice cream machines have become a long-running joke throughout social media. Even the company’s own communications team has tweeted about the problem.