Imagine after a long day, you head to the McDonald’s drive thru for a pick-me-up. You make it to the order screen, you see the picture-perfect ice cream cone on the menu, and order a vanilla cone. Yet, instead of enjoying a sweet frozen treat, you hear the dreaded four words: “Our machine is broken”.
Heard this before?
This is an ongoing mystery surrounding the McDonald’s ice cream machine. Many customers report that the machine seems to always be broken. To help solve this mystery, 24-year-old Rashiq Zahid, a self taught programmer, built a 2,000 line code to get one step closer in solving this great mystery.
Zahid had spent a few weekends during the summer in Berlin, Germany developing Mcbroken.com, after he had tried to order some ice cream and was told the machine was broken.
When the machine is down at the location you’re at, the McDonald’s app will automatically remove the ice cream order from the cart. Zahid’s website takes this information and places a red dot to indicate the machine is unavailable at that particular location.
After this website had been published, it had gained a large amount of traffic. More than 740,000 views had accumulated. David Trovar, who is the vice president of US communications and government relations for Mcdonalds, even came to visit the website. “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,” said Trovar in a tweet about mcbbroken.com.
There may still be a mystery around the real reason why the machine is always broken. Whether it is from machines having to be cleaned or actually being broken, with Zahid’s new website mcbroken.com, we are able to easily find a location that can serve us our beloved ice cream.