Description

McDonald’s faced a significant system failure on Friday that impacted restaurants and disrupted online and app orders globally, including in the United States, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, and the United Kingdom. The outage occurred at around 1 a.m. ET and was attributed to a global technology system failure, according to McDonald’s global chief information officer Brian Rice. The issue, which affected various markets, was swiftly identified and corrected, with many markets back online and others in the process of restoration. McDonald’s clarified that the system failure was not due to a cybersecurity event but rather resulted from a configuration change made by a third-party provider. The disruption led to temporary closures and suspended operations in multiple countries, including Japan, where many stores were impacted, and the UK, where staff had to manage orders manually during the outage. Similar challenges were reported in Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other regions, with services like mobile ordering, self-ordering kiosks, and delivery affected. This incident adds to McDonald’s challenges at the start of the year, including the impact of the Middle East conflict on its business. The company mentioned experiencing negative effects on sales in Muslim-majority countries like Malaysia and Indonesia. With over 41,800 stores globally, McDonald’s is working to restore full functionality and address the fallout from the system failure while navigating broader market challenges in various regions.