McDonald’s restaurants in multiple countries including the UK and Australia have been hit by a “technology outage”, which the fast food chain denied had been caused by a cybersecurity attack.
Australia, the UK, Japan and China were among the markets where services were affected, with restaurant, drive-through and online orders hit.
In the UK, one franchise owner operating 21 branches in the Midlands told the BBC that for a 90-minute period on Friday they “couldn’t serve anyone”. In Hong Kong, the McDonald’s Facebook page said self-ordering kiosks and mobile phone orders were “not functioning” and asked customers to order at the restaurant counter.
McDonald’s said the outage occurred at about 5am in the UK (1200 CDT in the US) and that “many markets” were back online by Friday afternoon although some were still “in the process of coming back online”.
The company’s global chief information officer, Brian Rice, said the problem was not due to a cyber-attack. He indicated it was due to an unspecified change to IT systems run by an outside contractor for McDonalds, blaming a “third-party provider during a configuration change”.
“What happened today has been an exception to the norm, and we are working with absolute urgency to resolve it,” Rice wrote in a message to McDonald’s employees and franchise partners.
McDonald’s has about 40,000 outlets worldwide, with more than 14,000 stores in the US.
A UK spokesperson for McDonald’s said the outage affecting restaurants had been “resolved” in the UK and Ireland. In the UK, the Downdetector site, which flags outages on apps, reported more than 1,000 outages on the McDonald’s app on Friday between 6am and 3pm with a spike around 7am.
In a post to social media platform X, a customer in Australia said it was “impossible to buy anything” via drive-through or online.
@abcnews Maccas is down, looks like the system has crashed. No problem, food is still available and you can pay electronically but not via the app it seems. pic.twitter.com/Kcjcc6ZVRg
— Derek Bell (He/Him) (@derek_bell) March 15, 2024
McDonald’s spokesperson in Australia said the problem had affected restaurants “nationwide” but all outlets had since reopened.
Japan was also hit, with McDonald’s Japan’s X account confirming there was a “system failure” impacting stores.
“We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and ask that you please wait for a while until the service is restored,” a translation of the social media post read.
【お知らせ】
— マクドナルド (@McDonaldsJapan) March 15, 2024
現在、システム障害が発生しております。
お客様にはご迷惑をおかけいたしますが、復旧まで今しばらくお待ちください。
Many McDonald’s outlets in Japan stopped taking in-person and mobile customer orders because of a system disruption, according to a spokesperson. McDonald’s has almost 3,000 outlets in the country.
In China, the hashtag “McDonald’s collapsed” was the fifth most popular search term on the country’s Weibo social media platform on Friday afternoon.
McDonald’s is one of the most popular western fast food chains in China, with more than 5,000 stores. However, it’s main rival, KFC, has nearly double that number.
McDonald’s posted an update on Weibo on Friday saying the problem had been fixed, adding: “Love having you back!” But several people commented that they had already bought a KFC meal instead.
There were also unconfirmed reports from social media users of problems in Germany and New Zealand, as well as news reports of problems in Sweden.
