My McDonald's is now ruined.
My local McDonald's (one of the 3 in Brandon, a suburb of Tampa, FL) had been ruined.
Don't get me wrong, the service is great they still haven't gotten a single detail of my order wrong in over 15 years, but the biggest brag I had about this McDonald's is gone.
This location was built by Casper's Company, the franchise that opened the very first McDonald's in FL, in my opinion one of the best franchises ever, an opinion I have maintained when after working for them and being fired for completely BS reasons.
Over the years it's changed hands a few times, including having been owned by another franchisee, Sunshine, Inc.
This location has had its ups and downs, but the one thing that's remained unchanged is that it kept it's original Taylor Ice Cream and Shake machine from the 1990's. That thing never broke down. I could show up at any hour of any day and know that I could get my soft serve fix. That is until last night.
Last night I just had to have an Oreo McFlurry. But the ice cream machine was down. This hasn't happened to this location in at least the 15 years since I bought my house and this became my local McDonald's.
I pulled out of the drive-thru and went to another location.
Today, I'm grabbing breakfast on my way home from taking my son to school and on the Drive-thru window I see a sticker proudly announcing that this location is now run by McOpCo, which is McDonald's Corporate.
I spoke to a friend who is still on the managent team at that location and apparently they took the location from Casper's Co on the grounds that Casper's Co. refused to transition to the newer horribly unreliable Taylor ice-cream and shake machines.
That it had happened about 2 months ago, but they just now changed the stickers, and last night was the 35th time the ice-cream machine has failed in those 2-ish months. I just haven't really been in the mood for soft serve during that time.