[chankstein38]

Aren't most of their ice cream products like <$5? I recall the cones are only like $1. My guess would be that, if there is some kind of arrangement between McD's and Taylor, it's probably way more profitable than the losses they'd see from 10-13% of their ice cream machines being down per month.

[almostnormal]

Isn't the cost of the ingredients some $0.2 (I have no idea, just estimating by the taste), so that machine is printing money when working?

It's surprising they cannot build a machine that does not break that easily.

[kube-system]

I wouldn't be so sure. Milk, cream, and sugar are relatively expensive ingredients, and labor is very expensive.

[bluGill]

Milk/cream is not cheap. It takes a lot of energy to freeze that mixture as well. Most people don't try to measure this, but the ice in your soda probably costs more than the rest of the sugar water (in bulk/wholesale as restaurants buy soda, if you pay retails prices things are different)