By admin 
What are the odds you’ll be able to get an ice cream cone at a South Carolina McDonald’s?
Read more Road linking major Columbia thoroughfares targeted for repair after years of inaction
It’s become something of a stereotype that soft serve just isn’t on the menu. It’s such a thing that a few years ago Wendy’s mocked McDonald’s in a marketing campaign called “Frosty Fix.”
The sport-betting analytics company The Action Network had some fun with the long-suffering McDonald’s ice cream machines and actually studied their status in 492 cities in all 50 states and the District of Columbia for six years.
Then came up with whether it’s a safe bet or long shot you might get your ice cream.
They found across the nation, the ice cream machines were reported down about 10.4% of the time.
“Cleveland, Tennessee is the broken-machine capital of America, with implied odds of a downed machine of 46.9%, nearly a coin flip on whether you’re getting ice cream at all,” the network said.
Second was Albany, Georgia (42.4%) and third Gulfport, Mississippi (39.7%).
Go to Ashland, Kentucky, and chances are you’re going to get ice cream — down 2.1% of the time. It had the best odds in the country.
Mississippi is the worst state overall (34.0% implied odds of a broken machine), followed by Oklahoma (32.4%) and Alaska (30.5%).
Minnesota (11.5%) and Wisconsin (12.7%) have the best statewide odds in the country.
But what about South Carolina?
SC ice cream chances
You can actually check individual cities on the Sports Action website.
South Carolina’s odds are not a lot better than Alaska, coming in at 28.2% chance of the machine being down.
Read more ‘Like out of a movie.’ Eric Bieniemy neighbor describes police response to shooting
But Sumter is the outlier. It made the list of most reliable with a down percentage of 4.2% across six locations. It scored 481 of 492 cities surveyed.
Rock Hill was deemed the worst in the state with 31.9%, but Columbia wasn’t far behind with 29.7% downtime. Lexington was 26.3%
Greenville was 12.2%, Spartanburg 11.6% and Myrtle Beach 12.3%
What’s the deal with the ice cream machines?
The problem has been that all of McDonald’s machines are made by Taylor Company, which had a copyright on the machines. That meant only Taylor-authorized repair people could fix them.
But the U.S. Copyright office did away with the rule and so things should be looking up.
Except one thing, the way they are cleaned, which in itself is a good thing to be sure. Cleaning is done each day over 4 hours, an automated heat-cleaning cycle that cleans and sanitizes.
Mistakes during the cycle or when putting it back together locks it up.
Repairman needed.
There’s also a website called McBroken, started in 2020, that purports to tell in real time whether a machine is working. On Monday it showed five of 22 Columbia area McDonald’s without working soft serve machines.
On X, the owner of McBroken Rashiq Zahid said, “I reverse engineered McDonald’s internal api and I’m currently placing an order worth $18,752 every minute at every McDonald’s in the US to figure out which locations have a broken ice cream machine.”
McDonald’s took it in stride.
David Tovar, McDonald’s vice president of U.S. communications and government relations, tweeted: “Only a true @McDonalds fan would go to these lengths to help customers get our delicious ice cream! So, thanks!”
Read more Public health improvements stall amid Trump’s DEI crackdown