Map Shows Which Tampa Area McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines Are Down
With temperatures again this week in the mid 90s, this is good timing. If the Tampa Bay summer heat is causing a craving for a McFlurry or ice cream cone at McDonald’s, there’s a website that will let you know which of their Florida restaurants are NOT serving ice cream.
All Recipes says that when ice cream is unavailable it’s often because the machines are being cleaned. They say the ice cream machine that many McDonald’s restaurants use is the Taylor C602. It has a self-cleaning feature to make sure the ice cream you’re eating is safe. The problem they say is that self-cleaning process can take 4 HOURS and it is done every day. Crews often run the process at night so there’s no downtime during busy daytime hours.
This ice cream status website determines your general location when you first log in. This morning when I tried the site, a map popped up of the Tampa Bay region from Spring Hill to Sarasota and over to Lakeland. A large majority McDonald’s locations on the map had a green dot indicating ice cream operations are at 100%. But the map did show several red dots in Largo, St. Pete, Tampa, Land O’ Lakes, and Holiday.
Along the right side of the website appears nationwide statistics on McDonald’s ice cream machines. Turns out, at least according to their data, New York restaurants have the most machines down at 32.65% right now. Nationally they say 12.9% of the machines are not operating this morning.
I can’t verify how accurate the map is. I’m guessing they get the status updates from the McDonald’s mobile app, which does let you know if your favorite menu item is unavailable. So I would probably use the McDonald’s app for the most reliable info on the ice cream machines. Accurate or not, you’ve got to hand it to the creators of mcbroken.com for the idea. When you’re craving that hot fudge sundae or McFlurry, this can save you some time by making sure your closest McD’s machines are up and running. [Sources: McBroken, All Recipes]
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