By COURTNEY BONNELL (AP Business Writer)
LONDON (AP) — There were worldwide system problems at McDonald’s on Friday, causing some restaurants to close for a while. This led to complaints from customers on social media. The fast food company referred to it as a “technology outage” that they were working to resolve.
McDonald’s Corp., based in Chicago, said the issues were not caused by a cybersecurity attack and did not provide further details on the cause.
In a statement, the burger giant acknowledged a technology outage affecting their restaurants and mentioned that the problem was currently being solved. They expressed gratitude to customers for their patience and apologized for any inconvenience.
Earlier, McDonald’s in Japan communicated on X (formerly Twitter) that “operations are temporarily out at many of our stores nationwide,” describing it as “a system failure.” In Hong Kong, the company stated on Facebook that a “computer system failure” had disrupted online orders and self-serve kiosks.
Downdetector, a tracker for outages, also observed an increase in issues with the McDonald’s app over the past few hours.
Some McDonald’s restaurants resumed normal operations after the outage, with customers placing orders and receiving their food in Bangkok, Milan, and London.
A worker at a restaurant in Bangkok mentioned that the system was down for about an hour, preventing online and credit card payments, but still allowed cash payments for orders.
At another location in Thailand’s capital, there was a door covered with plywood and a sign stating, “Technicians are updating the system,” even as customers were placing orders and making digital payments.
An employee at a Milan restaurant noted that the system was offline for a couple of hours and a technician assisted in getting it back up and running.
A spokesperson for McDonald’s in Denmark confirmed that the “technology failure” had been resolved and their restaurants were open.
Reports from media outlets indicated that customers from Australia to the U.K. had experienced issues with ordering. This included a customer in Australia who posted a photo to X showing an unavailable kiosk.
Patrik Hjelte, owner of several McDonald’s restaurants in central Sweden, near the Norwegian border, stated to a local newspaper Nya Wermlands Tidning, “All McDonald’s restaurants are part of a global network and that is what’s messed up.”
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AP journalists Jintamas Saksornchai and David Cohen in Bangkok, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark; Kelvin Chan in London; Colleen Barry in Milan; and Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed.
