McDonald’s restaurants in several countries appeared to be suffering from some sort of software or system problem on Friday, which hampered staff’s ability to receive and process orders.
Service outages were reported in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, and later in the UK. McDonald’s told DW that there were “occasional” technical problems in German branches.
Later on Friday, the company said some of its branches were back online and work was underway to eradicate the remaining problems.
“Many markets are back on and others are in the process of being reinstated. We are working closely with those markets that are still experiencing issues,” McDonald’s global chief information officer Brian Rice said in a statement.
The company said Friday it does not suspect a cybersecurity incident, saying it believes the outage was caused by a third-party vendor during a “configuration change.”
He did not comment on the total number of affected restaurants. The chain has approximately 40,000 around the world, including about 14,000 in the US.
Japan was among the first to sound the alarm, Germany was also affected
The problems were of a technical nature, related to the mobile ordering system and self-ordering kiosks.
“There have been occasional technical disturbances in our restaurants,” a German McDonald’s spokesman told DW on Friday. “The issue has since been resolved. However, it may still lead to service impacts or changes to operating hours. We are working to restore normal service and are very sorry for any inconvenience.”
McDonald’s Japan was the first to report a “system failure” and apologized to customers for any inconvenience. A few hours later, many restaurants were said to be temporarily closed.
“Many restaurants across the country have temporarily suspended operations. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused our customers,” the company said online.
msh/sms (AFP, AP, Reuters)