And yet restaurant operators are allowed to open close their refrigerators and freezers at will, not subject to third party refrigerator maintenance company monopoly.

...because they're not part of a franchise. Part of being a franchisee is that you're accepting the standards/regulations of the franchisor in exchange for use of their brand. I think it's very reasonable if mcdonalds had some sort of regulation like "all soda fountains must be disassembled and cleaned every 24 hours", and enforced that through hardware interlocks.

Exactly, it's what they're selling (consistency and management).

What I don't agree with is the proprietary lock out. Franchise owners should be able to replace the pump header with generic options.

Should they also be allowed to swap out their cola products with generic brands? RC Cola instead of Coca Cola won't hurt anybody (much safer than tampering with a dairy machine!), but franchisees are made to buy Coca Cola specifically. Agreeing to this sort of thing is part of the deal of being a franchise.

Yes, as long as they label it such to the public.

This isn't how franchising works. When you sign on as a franchisee, you agree to sell the food and use the equipment the franchiser tells you to.

How are you going to label that their ice cream machine is using generic parts? The whole point of a franchise is that I know what I'm getting. What's the point of a "mcdonalds" brand, when any franchisee can swap out arbitrary components/ingredients as they wish, and I have to carefully assess whether the replacements are up to snuff?

I'm saying label the machine if they don't use coke syrup but use rc cola syrup.

The generic parts don't matter because the parts are tested to be suitable replacements

It's no different than car parts.

Replying to your comment below here.

That's why I'm saying they need to label it if they serve rc not coke, just say what they're doing.

If they use one brand of straw that is approved vs another brand of straw that is also approved they don't need to label it, there is not material difference.

That's what I'm saying the parts in the ice cream machine are, not materially different.

The comparison you should be making is if they changed the ice cream base mix they put in the machine. Yes, in that case they should tell customers they are using soy milk or whatever, but If they use a different part in the machine that is equally suitable then it matters not.

Right, but what does it mean if I walk into a mcdonalds, and I don't even know whether I'm going to be getting coca-cola or RC cola, or worse yet real mcdonalds fries™ or generic sysco fries? It might as well be a generic burger joint. What's the point of the mcdonalds brand in that case?

Who guarantees the generic replacement is up to par? McDonald’s or the franchisee? Who suffers a greater cost if it turns out not to be?

For medical devoces its the manufacturer, and it's notified body.

It's no different than for the origami manufacturer.

It's all covered in ISO 13485 (and another similar standard for the software portion if your product contains software). It's called the risk based approach. You define what's called essential performance or your device, things it must do or the patient or caregiver is harmed. You then do a FMEA to determine what failure modes exist, and what the result of each failure is. You then make sure you have mitigation in place for each of those situations. You then document that all, get it signed off internally, by the FDA, by your notified body, and by the test house (for 14485, FCC testing, etc). All that makes up the stack of documents that allows you to sell a medical product.

It's no different if it's a generic product or a new novel one, same process same standards.

For food machinery it's also thr FDA for things like design and materials, and it's the local health department for those items. It's a similar but different ISO standard you need to meet depending on the specific machinery.