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Mar 2 • 11 tweets • 3 min read

McDonald’s is known for its notoriously broken ice cream machines. But for years, the tiny startup Kytch worked to invent and sell a device designed to fix that problem—only to watch the fast food Goliath crush their business. wired.trib.al/xCwMUWP 1/11

Recently, Kytch filed a long-expected legal complaint against McDonald's, accusing the company of false advertising and tortious interference in its contracts with customers and asking for no less than $900 million in damages. 2/11

The two-person startup's new claims against McDonald's focus on emails the fast food giant sent to every franchisee in November 2020, instructing them to pull Kytch devices out of their ice cream machines immediately. 3/11

The emails didn't just result in McDonald's ice cream machines remaining broken around the world. They also kneecapped Kytch's fast-growing sales just as the startup was taking off. 4/11

"They've tarnished our name. They scared off our customers and ruined our business. They were anti-competitive. They lied about a product that they said would be released," Kytch cofounder Melissa Nelson says. 5/11

McDonald's used those emails to promote a new ice cream machine, built by its longtime appliance manufacturing partner Taylor, that would offer similar features to Kytch. 6/11

Last May, Kytch filed a lawsuit against Taylor and its distributor TFG for theft of trade secrets, arguing that Taylor worked with TFG and one franchise owner to stealthily obtain a Kytch device, reverse-engineer it, and attempt to copy its features. 7/11

The 800 pages of internal Taylor emails and presentations that Kytch has so far obtained in discovery show that it was McDonald's, not Taylor, that at many points led the effort to study and develop a response to Kytch in 2020. 8/11

It remains unclear why McDonald’s was so eager to hamstring the startup working to solve its McFlurry fiasco. Whatever the fast food giant’s reasoning may be, Kytch hopes to find out the answer. wired.trib.al/xCwMUWP 9/11

Find out how it all began: wired.trib.al/ij9SBul 10/11

Get your first year of WIRED for just $5 and get unlimited access to our longform features, buying guides, and tech news wired.trib.al/9E2tJFL 11/11

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