The McFlurry is a Beloved but Elusive McDonald's Fast-Food Icon

Americans have much to thank Canada for inventing. There’s insulin, for example, and the pacemaker. A trio of Canadian filmmakers developed the IMAX format in 1967, and a Nova Scotian inventor named Samuel McKeen gave us the odometer. Then there’s a pioneer named Ron McClellan, who told Canada’s CTV in 2015: “I never expected that my creation would circle the globe.” That globe-trotting creation was the McFlurry. In 1995, McClellan, a McDonald’s franchisee in the New Brunswick town of Bathurst threw some candy into a cup of vanilla soft serve, whipped it up and—voila!—a new dessert was born. “Bathurst has given a lot to McDonald’s guests around the world,” McDonald’s Canada CEO John Betts said on the occasion of the item’s 20th birthday—and he wasn’t kidding. McFlurry shakes are now served in 99 countries and include regional varieties like Japan’s matcha McFlurry and the bubblegum squash McFlurry in New Zealand. While a McDonald's spokesperson told Adweek that the McFlurry's mission is "sweetening moments big and small for our customers," there’s another reason it’s on the menu, according to Saint Joseph's University professor of food marketing John Stanton. “McDonald's has a number of products, which I call veto products: [items] that are in the line not so much because they make profit, but because if they don't have it, it gives people a reason not to go to McDonald's.” But if you’ve been reading the news, you know that going to McDonald’s is no guarantee of scoring a McFlurry. That’s because a curiously high number of McDonald’s dairy machines—pricey appliances that make shakes, soft serve and McFlurries—are out of order. The problem is so widespread that it’s given rise to full-fledged internet-based conspiracy theories. Well, good news: The Illuminati is not restricting your access to the McFlurry. The truth is far duller, if no less problematic. To make McFlurries, McDonald’s franchisees depend on some 13,000 soft serve machines made by Taylor Commercial. The $18,000 units are notoriously complex, and during the four-hour pasteurization procedure that must be performed daily, they tend to malfunction. And since McDonald’s corporate restricts service calls to authorized Taylor servicemen, it all translates to this: Until the repair guy shows up, no McFlurry for you. McDonald’s has acknowledged the problem, telling Adweek it's got a number of solutions in the works. Last year, the chain's Twitter account even deadpanned: “We have a joke about our soft serve machine but we’re worried it won’t work.” However, franchisees that depend on frozen treats to pad their profit margins don’t quite see the humor, nor do industry experts. “This has been a problem for way too long for any of the parties involved to allow it to continue,” The New England Consulting Group CEO Gary Stibel told Adweek. Veteran restaurant industry consultant John Gordon added that McDonald’s corporate—which has said it’s working on the problem—could end the whole mess by replacing all the machines with a corporate buy. “You get the old machine out; you get the improved machine in,” he said. “And boom—it’s done.” Tinkering in the kitchen McClellan may have secured his place in the annals of McDonald’s history, but he’s only one of many. For all the culinary aplomb of the R&D department, the fact is that many of the golden arches’ most popular menu items originated with franchisees. It began in 1962 with Cincinnati operator Lou Groen, who needed a beef replacement to serve his largely Catholic customers on Fridays. The result: the Filet-O-Fish. A Pittsburgh-area franchisee contributed the Big Mac in 1967. The Egg McMuffin was the work of Santa Barbara franchisee Herb Peterson in 1972. And in 1989, when franchisee Nelly Quijano cooked up something familiar for his Latinx customers in Houston, the breakfast burrito was born. Stir crazy With a regular size coming in at 286 grams (roughly a 12-ounce cup), the McFlurry (1) has changed little since a franchisee from McDonald's Canadian system (2) invented it 26 years ago. When consumers started grumbling about McDonald's out-of-service soft serve machines, software engineer Rashiq Zahid created McBroken to track them in real time (3). McDonald's corporate has acknowledged the problem in a tweet last year (4), though the McFlurry's popularity remains undiminished. This limited-time caramel brownie McFlurry (5) appeared in May.

Perspective

Beloved but Elusive, McDonald's McFlurry Is a Fast-Food Icon

The treat-laden frozen dessert is in 99 countries—too bad it's so hard to get one

Robert Klara

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Robert Klara