Is Your McDonald’s Ice Cream Machine Always Broken? McBroken Will Tell You

Frustrated by those broken ice cream machines at McDonald’s (MCD)? Now there’s help! A little-known site called McBroken is actually tracking which McDonald’s locations have a broken or working ice cream machine.

The developer of the website, 24-year-old software engineer Rashiq Zahid, was also frustrated by the broken ice cream machines that seem to be plaguing McDonald’s locations and decided to do something about it, The Verge reported.

So, Zahid created a site map that displays every McDonald’s restaurant in the U.S. and determines with a green dot if the ice cream machine is working and uses a red dot to show if it is broken.

Zahid first created the McBroken site in July, after trying to order a McSundae at a Berlin, Germany, McDonald’s restaurant with no avail because the ice cream machine was down, The Verge said.

“I was like, there must be something that can be done about this,” Zahid told the news outlet.

To create McBroken, Zahid developed a bot that would check on the status of McDonald’s ice cream machines through its ordering app, The Verge said. With some trial and error, an API was used to add a McSundae to the McDonald’s app at every U.S. McDonald’s location every 30 minutes, but if the bot can’t add the McSundae to the order, it then knows that the ice cream machine is down at that location and creates a red dot on the map to notify consumers, according to The Verge.

Within the first 20 minutes of launching McBroken, the site received 10,000 visitors on a server that cost $5 a month, causing the site to crash, which Zahid was able to troubleshoot and told The Verge it now “works perfect.”

“I just made it for fun,” Zahid continued. “But people were like ‘Wow, this is the best thing I’ve seen this entire week.’”

McDonald’s Vice President of U.S. Communications David Tovar seems to be in favor of the site as he posted on Twitter, “Only a true @McDonalds fan would go to these lengths to help customers get our delicious ice cream! For now, keep an eye on McBroken to prevent McDonald’s from breaking your heart.”

At the time of writing, 10.02% of McDonald’s ice cream machines in the U.S. were broken, according to the McBroken site.

Shares of McDonald’s were trading at $229.24 as of 10:24 a.m. EDT, up 9 cents or 0.04%.

The McDonald’s sign is seen outside its store at the Times Square in New York Photo: Reuters