Wendy’s drops Frosty prices to $1

Wendy’s says customers can get a small Frosty dessert for just $1 through the end of the month. It’s the latest in a growing series of price wars between fast-food companies to win back and win back customers.

To promote the special, Wendy’s partnered with McBroken.com, a website that tracks if the ice cream machine is broken at a nearby McDonald’s. In addition to a large banner at the top of the online tool promoting the $1 offer, the McDonald’s location map now includes Wendy’s stores (which are signed with the company logo rather than the dots used to show MicDonald’s).

As of Thursday morning, nearly 15 percent of the ice cream machines tracked by McBroken were not operational.

Defective machines have been a long-standing problem for McDonald’s. In 2017, the company announced plans to replace its existing machines, which have also been the subject of customer complaints about non-functionality. They were said to have fewer parts, the ability to dispense more flavors, and require shorter offline cleaning times. The fact that McBroken is a popular website casts doubt on some of these claims.

The move to frozen desserts is just the latest twist in this year’s land grab among fast-food companies. Virtually every fast-food chain has rolled out value meals in recent months to win over customers upset by claims of “McFlation,” which followed reports of roughly $8 chicken sandwiches and $18 Big Macs . McDonald’s CEO Joe Erlinger addressed this earlier this summer, issuing a public letter to counter what he called “viral social posts and bad reports that McDonald’s raised prices significantly above inflation rates.”