McBroken map tracks which McDonald’s have working ice cream machines
McBroken might just be McBrilliant.
An online tracker that launched Thursday displays a map of the U.S. with green and red dots signifying the working status of ice cream machines at some 14,000 McDonald’s locations.
Rashiq Zahid, a 24-year-old from Germany, said he developed the map, called McBroken, to test the perception that the chain’s ice cream machines are often busted.
The bot probes the status of McDonald’s machinery by attempting to add digital orders for ice cream, checking for bounced requests that indicate dispensers are broken, Zahid said.
Zahid said he decided to develop the map for American locations because he figured there would be greater interest in the U.S.
“I started two weeks ago,” he told the Daily News on Saturday from Germany. “I thought it would have been a lot more complicated. Luckily there’s a lot of frameworks out there that basically take over the heavy lifting, like the rendering of the maps.”
According to McBroken data, about 8% of McDonald’s nationwide had broken ice cream machines on Saturday afternoon. In New York, around 15% were out of service, according to the data.
![Don't leave home without checking McBroken.](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/4inVn7ywM046jA1m7_u7ww--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyNDI7aD03MTY-/https://www.nydailynews.com/resizer/3-8qVqtWfzJ-2SLElfwkT_C3drM=/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/IWQ2NCHH7FBVTM3UJJWDVCS6TM.jpg)
David Tovar, a spokesperson for McDonald’s, wrote on Twitter that only a real “fan would go to these lengths to help customers get our delicious ice cream!"
“We know we have some opportunities to consistently satisfy even more customers with sweet treats and we will,” Tovar added in the tweet.