McDonald’s Suffers Global Tech Outage, Claims No Cybersecurity Threat

The McDonald’s fast-food chain suffered a worldwide system failure on Friday that knocked out the ordering system in many of its restaurants. A spokesperson for the company said the outage “is not related to a cybersecurity event.”

CNBC reported that the problem was first detected in Australian McDonald’s restaurants. Soon afterward, McDonald’s Japan announced on social media that most of its locations were temporarily closed. Some Australian locations were reportedly able to soldier on by taking orders with pen and paper.

CNBC added:

There was also a spike in reports of issues with the McDonald’s app in the U.K. around the same time, with further reports of issues at around 5 a.m. ET, according to Downdetector. A map on the website also showed outages reported in U.S. cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Seattle.

McDonald’s Hong Kong apologized to its customers for a “computer system failure” on Facebook that caused its “mobile ordering and self-ordering kiosks” to stop functioning. The Hong Kong branch said counter orders at its restaurants would still be accepted.

McDonald’s in Taiwan announced on its website that online and phone orders were temporarily unavailable, and customers in the United Kingdom reported the company’s smartphone app was not working properly.

Japan, the UK, and Australia are the three largest markets for McDonald’s outside the United States, with thousands of stores in each country. McDonald’s has about 41,000 locations worldwide.

“The Mcdonalds outage is crazy. Went in tonight and drive thru + all kiosks were down. A system that can fail nation wide is bad but across multiple countries too!? Bonkers,” said a New Zealand customer quoted by Newsweek.

The problem seemed to have been largely resolved by late Friday morning ET. McDonald’s said it would continue working to restore services that were not functioning and would fully investigate the incident.

“We thank customers for their patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused,” the company said.

“The outage adds to a shaky start to the year for McDonald’s. During its latest earnings presentation last month, the company said the war in the Middle East was hurting its business and would likely continue to do so,” CNN reported. “Like other American brands, it has been hit by boycotts in several markets in the region.”