McDonald’s Plans U.S.-Wide Rollout Of Self-Service Order Kiosks
November 19, 2016 by Dave Haynes
The big moment for a lot of digital technology is when the big guys stop tests and trials and start rolling it out – and that’s what McDonald’s is now doing in the U.S. with self-service ordering kiosks.
The fast food giant says it is planning to roll out self-service kiosks to all of its 14,000 stores in the country. Restaurants in San Francisco, Boston, Chicago and Seattle will be at the head of the rollout list starting in 2017. There are already 500 stores with the tech, in California, Florida and New York.
The company is also going to pilot mobile ordering in the U.S. in the first half of 2017 and do a national rollout in the second half, with that capability built into an app that already has 16 million downloads. At a press event this week, McDonald’s execs told reporters the order screens will cost franchise operators about $7,000 each for the gear and installation.
The idea behind the kiosks is order accuracy, upsells and an effort to reduced perceptions of wait times, as once people make an order, then can go sit down at a table, and staff will bring the order to their table (the idea being you will whip out your phone or chat with who came with you, and not think about wait times).
The rollout is drafting off learnings from the use of such tech in Australia, the U.K. and Canada.
The press coverage does not say who is providing the kiosk solution, I have my suspicions, but big companies like McDonald’s are usually very restrictive about what vendors can say and promote. These guys provide the solution in Australia.
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