Kytch hacked McDonald's broken ice cream machines for franchisees — until a ban killed it

McDonald's soft-serve dispensers, built by its equipment partner Taylor, were notoriously fragile and often broken. Kytch, a three-person startup run by Jeremy O'Sullivan and Melissa Nelson, sold restaurant owners an internet-connected gadget that attached to the machine, essentially hacked into its internals, monitored its operations, and sent diagnostic data over the internet to an owner or manager to help keep it running. It became popular with McDonald's franchisees.

On November 2, 2020, McDonald's emailed thousands of restaurant owners around the world warning that the Kytch device 'allows complete access to all aspects of the equipment's controller and confidential data,' creates 'a potential very serious safety risk for the crew or technician,' could cause 'serious human injury,' and that McDonald's 'strongly recommends that you remove the Kytch device from all machines and discontinue use.' Kytch says its sales dried up practically overnight.

In its legal complaint Kytch noted its devices received certification from Underwriters Laboratory, that Taylor's own manual advises unplugging the machine before servicing it, and that removing the machine's door to access its rotating barrels automatically disables its motor.

In its lawsuit against Taylor for trade libel and tortious interference, Kytch unearthed an internal October 17, 2020 email from Timothy FitzGerald, CEO of Taylor parent Middleby: 'Not sure if there is anything we can do to slow up the franchise community on the other solution.' McDonald's ban followed two weeks later. The thread also included Middleby's then-COO floating an acquisition of Kytch instead. In December 2023 Kytch filed an unredacted motion for summary adjudication arguing the unsealed emails show the safety warning was engineered to protect Taylor from a potential competitor.

Don't wait for the maker's technician: tap the machine's internal signals, decode them remotely, and hand owners the failure data the manufacturer kept to itself.

The machine's controller was a black box to the people who owned it; Kytch made the failure visible so owners could keep the machine running instead of waiting on the manufacturer.

It worked around the incumbent rather than against him: no new machine, no retrofit — just an add-on reading the signals already inside the box.

The commercial threat came from the data access itself, which is exactly what the November 2020 email attacked: 'complete access to all aspects of the equipment's controller and confidential data.'

Kytch met the safety story on its own terms — UL certification, Taylor's own unplug-first manual, a door interlock that kills the motor — and the unsealed email undercut the stated motive.

When an incumbent controls the diagnostic layer of equipment you own, an add-on that translates hidden machine data into owner-readable alerts threatens it more than any rival machine.

Kytch's sales dried up practically overnight after the November 2020 email. Kytch sued Taylor for trade libel, tortious interference and other claims. By December 2023 its unredacted summary-adjudication motion rested on the unsealed October 2020 FitzGerald email — which, Kytch argues, contradicts FitzGerald's public line to The New York Times that 'we're not in business to put other companies out of business.' Kytch's cofounder Melissa Nelson likened the message to 'a mafia boss giving coded instructions to his team.'