Regarding the Idiot Plot point I made which was later removed...

A single throwaway line (which later contradicts itself) doesn't justify a host of bad business decisions, and it's especially egregious when the episode itself shows how doubling the workforce can dramatically increase production in a single hour of work, albeit with them going full out to try and win the competition.

The Apples have a huge proven market (for years!) where demand massively outstrips supply, and they have no competition. Most businesses would kill for such a market. There's very little logistics, storage, and transportation to worry about, the raw materials appear relatively cheap (there's no real indication that the Apples will be particularly worse off for allowing the brothers to use their apples) and the product is quite simple to make with minimal lead time and costs.

It's also mentioned that cider sales are an essential part of their business to allow them to stay afloat during the winter. So not only does it appear a much more popular product than their regular apples, but much more profitable too (and sales are very important), so it would therefore make much more sense to spend more effort producing it.

Then there's the negative PR generated by constantly disappointing their customers...

Some of the many ways they could increase how much cider they produce:

• Hire more help during the busy season. Something that many farms do in the real world, especially when harvesting labour-intensive crops.
• Come up with a more efficient process. The episode shows how they can double the workforce and increase production by a factor of 5.
• Devote more time to producing cider during the cider season. Even if they didn't make the process more efficient or hire more help, they should still be able to dramatically increase production. Just looking at their daily production and how much they can produce in an hour implies they don't spend much time producing it.

Outside of this, they also have a large range of options to increase business such as producing more and storing it to sell at other time of the year, selling on it to local restaurants, and so on.

All these points cannot be disregarded due to a single line which contradicts itself as they show in the episode how production can be increased without compromising quality, and which require only a basic grasp of business sense and economics.

There are many businesses in the real world that are far more successful despite complicated production, logistical issues, high lead times, risky and expensive sunk costs and investments, competition, and unproven/irregular markets and demand spikes. So again, a single line of dialogue where all these do not apply does not work.

Not entirely sure what trope it would be, but it seems significant that after all the talk about beating Pinkie to the cider in the cold open, Rainbow Dash still lets Fluttershy get in line before her (which ultimately costs her a mug of cider).

(I also thought Fluttershy might be offering to share her mug with Rainbow Dash, but it really isn't clear what she was about to say.)

Yet another "progress is bad" cartoon aesop. I would give anything to see one episode where the INVENTOR is the protagonist, bringing a new, beneficial technology to the populace and having to overcome the stump-brained, mule-headed traditionalists.

Tradition supposedly made better apple cider... except the Cider Squeezy 6000 was producing quality cider too—- more of it, faster, and with a fraction of the labor—- until the Apples fudged the contest by tripling the number of workers. Any impartial judge would have seen that the Flim Flam brothers' method was better, and by all rights the Apples should have lost, or at least had their heads thumped for trying such a foolish wager.