Burger King, Domino’s Pizza, Mcdonald’s. These are known far and wide as fast-food restaurants, although for some patrons at certain establishments the “fast-food” descriptive has to them become some sort of misnomer. The prevalence of lines and slow order processing seems to have taken its toll on some of these fast-food chains. McDonald’s for instance, has decided to tackle the problem of getting orders ready on time with a rather innovative approach. They aim to develop a downloadable app to place orders in, so that they can be picked up later.
Get orders ready when you arrive
Wednesday March 1 saw McDonald’s announce their plans for the ordering app, so that customers can arrange for what they want to eat through the app with any McDonald’s branch in their area then simply drive up to the curb to pay and receive their food items. It’s sort of like drive through, except the order was made well beforehand, and a customer needs only read out an order code from the app so the drive-through cashier can identify their order and hand it over upon payment. It’s expected by the chain that their mobile app order-pay option can be given a trial run at 20,000 US McDonald’s branches and around the world by next year.
This is but one of the many varied steps that McDonald’s has taken in order to streamline its operations and drive up customer sales.
Some are of a similar tech bent such as the self-ordering fast-food kiosks where customers order their food like on an ATM. Other measures include introducing new fare like additional size variants for the Big Mac or special menus like All-Day Breakfast, or the dollar-drink price promo.
Order delivery development
If a customer would rather not have to go to a McDonald’s to even pick up their orders, the global chain has begun to experiment with new item delivery models in order to expand their branches’ delivery capabilities.
The company has made research indicating that in their top five global markets around three-fourths of the populations live within easy delivery reach of a McDonald’s. They therefore hope to improve themselves into a “global food delivery leader”, much like it already is in China. Meanwhile their proposed order-app is the latest effort in that vein by fast-food brands, right behind the likes of Taco Bell and Starbucks.
